What Do We Actually 'See'?

Medical News Today asks: "Glance out the window and then close your eyes. What did you see? Maybe you noticed it's raining and there was a man carrying an umbrella. What color was it? What shape was its handle? Did you catch those details? Probably not. Some neuroscientists would say that, even though you perceived very few specifics from the window scene, your eyes still captured everything in front of you. But there are flaws to this logic, MIT researchers argue in an Opinion published in Trends in Cognitive Sciences. It may be that our vision only reflects the gist of what we see." Read more.

Non-Invasive Brain Scan Shows What You See Now

"Every time you open your eyes, visual information flows into your brain, which interprets what you're seeing. Now, for the first time, MIT neuroscientists have noninvasively mapped this flow of information in the human brain with unique accuracy, using a novel brain-scanning technique," says Medical News Today. "This technique, which combines two existing technologies, allows researchers to identify precisely both the location and timing of human brain activity. Using this new approach, the MIT researchers scanned individuals' brains as they looked at different images and were able to pinpoint, to the millisecond, when the brain recognizes and categorizes an object, and where these processes occur." Read more.

Eyes Process Images in 13 Milliseconds

"Computer processing speeds seem to exponentially increase every year. But a new study suggests that the original computer, the human brain, can process images the eyes see for only 13 milliseconds - a speed much faster than previously thought," says a Medical News Today post. "The study, conducted by neuroscientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), was recently published in the journal Attention, Perception, and Psychophysics. Though previous studies have suggested the fastest speed at which the brain can process images is 100 milliseconds, the researchers from MIT gradually increased speeds until their subjects' answers were no better than chance." Read more.

Hand-Held Scanner to Change Screening? Maybe!

Researchers from MIT and the University of Erlangen and Praevium/Thorlabs developed a portable ophthalmic scanner for used in offices of a primary-care physicians, a pediatricians, or even in the developing world. The researchers essentially shrank a table-top optical coherence tomographer (OCT) with the help of a MEMS mirror. The scanner sends infrared light into the eye and onto the retina. The scanner measures the lights' "echoes," tracking changes in the time delay and magnitude of the returning light echoes. Then it creates a cross-sectional tissue structure image of the retina, resembling ultrasound imaging. To deal with the motion instability of a hand-held device, the instrument takes multiple 3-D images at high speeds, scanning a particular volume of the eye many times but with different scanning directions. By using multiple 3-D images of the same part of the retina, the instrument "in effect" corrects distortions resulting from the movement of the operator. It still needs to be evaluated in a clinical setting. One major problem with the scanner: Cost. Read more.

Start-Up Hopes to Make Eye Exams More Accessible

“Somerville startup EyeNetra, which has developed inexpensive eye-testing technology leveraging smartphones, has raised $2 million in new equity funding,” notes the Boston Business Journal. “’We're excited to have raised another round of funding and look forward to continued progress in bringing new access to eyeglasses around the world,’ co-founder and CEO David Schafran wrote in an email.” The device is based on work conducted at MIT. Read more.

Sinha Receives PECASE from the White House

The White House selected Dr. Pawan Sinha to receive the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE). Dr. Sinah,a professor of vision and computational neuroscience in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, received the award in part for his program, called the Project Prakash. The NEI-supported endeavor gives sight to children in India suffering from treatable blindness such as congenital cataracts. These children are old enough to describe what they see, allowing Dr. Sinha and his colleagues to study visual cognition in terms of learning and recognition. The project provides an opportunity to address important and basic issues of neuroscience. The study's finding also could open up applications in the clinical and artificial-intelligence domains. Dr. Sinha was one of 96 to receive the award, the highest honor bestowed by the U.S. government on outstanding scientists and engineers beginning their independent careers.