Michael Beyeler 2024-2025 Plous Award Lecture: Learning to See Again: Building a Smarter Bionic Eye

What does it mean to see with a bionic eye? While modern visual prosthetics can generate flashes of light, they don’t yet restore natural vision. What might bionic vision actually look like? Why do some users struggle to interpret what they see, while others find ways to adapt? And why do many ultimately stop using their implants?

Learning to See Again with a Bionic Eye

Degenerative retinal diseases such as retinitis pigmentosa and macular degeneration cause irreversible vision loss in more than 10 million people worldwide. Although there is no cure for these diseases, advances in medicine and technology are enabling the possibility of restoring sight to the blind. Analogous to cochlear implants, retinal prostheses ('bionic eyes') use a grid of electrodes to stimulate surviving retinal cells in order to evoke visual percepts.