You know your jargon. Yes multi-electrode arrays. You are probably already aware of Meister's work then. If not here is a reference to look at:
Meister, M.(1996). Multineuronal codes in retinal signaling, Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A,93, 609-14.
I am the postdoc in Steve Potter's Lab who did that work on the neurally controlled robots. I am now at Univ. of Florida continuing that work among others..
Your right, however, that the vision prosthetics are a long way off..
I aggree. It will be sometime. There are some crude devices out there, but none seem to last more than a few months without signal degradation.
The key will be to find ways to improve on this using both biological and technological approaches in my opinion.
It is really good to see a lot more researchers working on these areas. Hopefully that will speed up the time in which we can make a difference in peoples lives (aka restoring sight to someone that cannot see, or to restore movement, seems to me to be the best goal one can have).
Yes it is true they are cultured in an incubator with high CO2 (about 5%) to maintain PH in the media and is similar to levels found in the brain (much higher CO2 than atmospheric levels). We use equine serum however. The MEAs are run outside of the incubator for the most part using MultChannel Systems hardware (see http://www.multichannelsystems.com).
You should take a look at Marcus Meister's work using Salamander retina's on MEAs. Very interesting work to understand what processing occurs at the level of the retina. Your right, however, that the vision prosthetics are a long way off..
Slashdot Mirror
You know your jargon. Yes multi-electrode arrays. You are probably already aware of Meister's work then. If not here is a reference to look at: Meister, M.(1996). Multineuronal codes in retinal signaling, Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A,93, 609-14. I am the postdoc in Steve Potter's Lab who did that work on the neurally controlled robots. I am now at Univ. of Florida continuing that work among others.. Your right, however, that the vision prosthetics are a long way off.. I aggree. It will be sometime. There are some crude devices out there, but none seem to last more than a few months without signal degradation. The key will be to find ways to improve on this using both biological and technological approaches in my opinion. It is really good to see a lot more researchers working on these areas. Hopefully that will speed up the time in which we can make a difference in peoples lives (aka restoring sight to someone that cannot see, or to restore movement, seems to me to be the best goal one can have).
Yes it is true they are cultured in an incubator with high CO2 (about 5%) to maintain PH in the media and is similar to levels found in the brain (much higher CO2 than atmospheric levels). We use equine serum however. The MEAs are run outside of the incubator for the most part using MultChannel Systems hardware (see http://www.multichannelsystems.com).
You should take a look at Marcus Meister's work using Salamander retina's on MEAs. Very interesting work to understand what processing occurs at the level of the retina. Your right, however, that the vision prosthetics are a long way off..