The field of visual prosthetics has concentrated primarily on two targets for stimulation, the retina and the primary visual cortex. The lateral geniculate nucleus of the thalamus, the relay station between these two areas, has been largely ignored because of the difficulty of surgical approach. The development of deep brain stimulation techniques for addressing pathologies of the midbrain has opened surgical access to the thalamus, and motivates a reconsideration of targets for visual prosthetics.
With this background, we have performed experiments in an animal model to demonstrate a proof of concept for a visual prosthesis based on thalamic microstimulation, followed by an experiment in a computer model to set basic engineering parameters for a thalamic visual prosthesis, in turn followed by a series of experiments with sighted humans to assess design performance. In this presentation we will review the compelling motivation for the thalamic approach, review the experimental results thus far, and provide a preview of future work.
Time:
12:00
Description:
John IOANNIDIS
Professor, Stanford University School of Medicine
Honorary Member of the Foundation for Research and Technology-Hellas
Title: "Improving reproducible research".
Friday, December 5th 2014 @ 12:00
Main Amphitheater [FORTH's bldg]
Host: T. Fotsis
Time:
16:00
Description:
Speaker
Ioannis Konidakis
Affiliation
IESL-FORTH
Title
Growth of functional materials inside Photonic Crystal Fibers:
towards the lab-in-a-fiber protocol
Location
Department of Physics Bldg., Voutes, 3rd floor Seminar Room
Time
16:00
Language
English
Abstract
In this talk results on the growth of glassy and crystalline materials inside photonic crystal fibers (PCFs) are reviewed, seeking specific
actuating and light confining properties. Initially, results refer to the infiltration of silver metaphosphate glasses inside silica PCFs,
and the subsequent thermal poling of those for inducing plasmon resonance transmission characteristics. On a different manner, the wet
chemistry growth and characterization of crystalline zinc oxide (ZnO) layers inside PCFs is shown, while latest work on to the exploitation of those PCFs for developing sensing and actuating optofluidic devices
is presented.