Physics (Internal)

What Does the Eye Tell the Brain?: A Journey from High Energy Physics to Neural Systems

This event is part of the Physics Department Colloquia Series.

Abstract: The back of the eye is lined by an extraordinary biological pixel detector, the retina. This living neural network is able to extract vital information about the external visual world, and transmit this information in a timely manner to the brain. In this talk, after a brief introduction to the retina, I will describe how we measure its functional properties, show what we have learned about its functional organization, and discuss studies aimed at guiding the design of retinal prosthetic devices. This project was inspired by the development of particle detectors for high energy physics experiments, including the search for the Higgs Boson.