How We See and How We Treat the Eye

"Every day we see objects, new and familiar. Amazingly, we recognize them instantly. How? How does our brain turn what our eyes see into the images we recognize? This is an important question as answering it may ultimately influence the way doctors treat patients with vision problems." So starts the National Eye Institutes post about its Project Prakash. "Nonetheless finding answers has been difficult. Learning to recognize objects begins as soon as we open our eyes after birth. So we can't recall how we learned to recognize objects, and infants are too young to communicate what they're seeing. Thus most attempts to find answers have been limited to indirect animal studies or studies on the rare blind person who gained sight later in life." 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.