UC News Story on Dr. Michael Beyeler’s Research

UC News recently featured research led by Dr. Michael Beyeler, director of UC Santa Barbara’s Bionic Vision Lab, on the promise of AI-powered bionic vision. More than 40 million people worldwide live with incurable blindness, most often caused by hereditary conditions that damage the eye’s light-sensing photoreceptors. Bionic vision systems attempt to restore a rudimentary form of sight by electrically stimulating surviving neurons in the retina. However, conventional approaches such as treating the retina like a grid of pixels often result in blurry or distorted percepts.

Dr. Beyeler and his team discovered that the retina’s neurons are wired in complex, nonlinear ways, meaning that pixel-based stimulation does not align with how the brain interprets visual signals. By leveraging artificial intelligence, the lab is identifying optimal patterns of neural stimulation that produce clearer, more recognizable percepts. These cutting-edge findings from the Bionic Vision Lab show how AI can help bring the field closer to restoring functional sight for millions living with blindness. Read UC’s full coverage of the study here: UC News coverage.