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SUMMARY:“Seeing” and reading with the ears\, hands and bionic eyes: fr
 om basic research to visual rehabilitation
DTSTART:20130515T140000
DTEND:20130515T150000
DTSTAMP:20260408T082259Z
UID:dc316c35b4dbd8fe6bcd65747785f38664459c4b10b237ac27196b5a
CATEGORIES:Miscellaneous
DESCRIPTION:Prof. Amir Amedi\nBio: Associate Professor of Medical Neurobio
 logy and Cognitive Sciences\,\nInstitute for Medical Research Israel-Canad
 a (IMRIC)\nEdmond and Lily Safra Center for Brain Sciences (ELSC)\nHebrew 
 University of Jerusalem\, Israel.\nMy research focuses on blindness\, whic
 h is both a limiting condition affecting many millions worldwide\, and con
 stitutes a unique model for answering fundamental questions in cognitive n
 euroscience. My lab's work ranges from basic science\, querying brain plas
 ticity and sensory integration\, to technological developments\, allowing 
 the blind to be more independent and even “see” using sounds and touch
  similar to bats and dolphins (a.k.a. Sensory Substitution Devices\, SSDs)
 \, and back to applying these devices in research. The central hypothesis 
 of the work is that visual areas can process sound and touch to a similar 
 extent as they process vision\, but only when subjects learn to fully extr
 act the relevant information encoded by these alternative senses. I propos
 e that\, with proper training\, many (if not all) visual brain areas or ne
 twork can change the type of sensory input it uses to retrieve behaviorall
 y (task)-relevant information within a matter of weeks/months. I also sugg
 est that visual-like selectivity might develop without any visual experien
 ce. If this is true\, it can have far reaching implications also for clini
 cal rehabilitation\, the second major aim of my lab. To achieve this\, we 
 are currently developing several innovative SSDs which try to encode the m
 ost crucial aspects of vision and increase their accessibility the blind\,
  along with targeted\, structured training protocols both in virtual envir
 onments and in real life scenarios using these novel SSDs (or veteran SSDs
  like The vOICe). For the results of such training and summary of the conc
 ept see this video.\nFinally\, SSDs can also be used in conjunction with (
 any) invasive approach for visual rehabilitation. We are developing a nove
 l hybrid Visual Rehabilitation Device (VRD) which combines SSD and visual 
 prostheses that at present lack in terms of resolution and in rehabilitati
 ve power. In this VRD\, the SSDs are used in training the brain to “see
 ” prior to surgery\, in providing explanatory signals after surgery and 
 in augmenting the capabilities using information arriving from the same im
 age (e.g. adding color\, depth and\, increased resolution).
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