Computer model predicts the outcome of eye diseases
What are the mechanisms of vision, and where do visual diseases lead to? To understand how the retinal output channels represent the visual world, a team of scientists around Botond Roska from the Friedrich Miescher Institute and Andreas Hierlemann from D-BSSE together with colleagues perturbed a specific retinal circuit element while studying how this perturbation changes the functional properties of the different retinal output channels.
Our eye hosts a powerful biological computer, the retina. Understanding how the retina transforms images from the outside world into signals that the brain can interpret would not only result in insights into brain computations, but could also be useful for medicine. As machine learning and artificial intelligence develop, eye diseases will soon be described in terms of the perturbations of computations performed by the retina. Do we have enough knowledge of retinal circuits to understand how a perturbation will affect the computations the retina performs? An international team of scientists has addressed this question in a set of experiments combining genetics, viral and molecular tools, high-density microelectrode arrays, and computer models. The work shows that their newly developed model of the retina can predict with high precision the outcome of a defined perturbation. The work is an important step towards a computer model of the retina that can predict the outcome of retinal diseases.
Find the external page full news article on the website of the Institute of Molecular and Clinical Ophthalmology Basel.
Original publication
Drinnenberg A*, Franke F*, Morikawa RK, Jüttner J, Hillier D, Hantz P, Hierlemann A, da Silveira RA**, Roska B** (2018) external page How diverse retinal functions arise from feedback at the first visual synapse. Neuron (advance online publication; https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2018.06.001).
* These authors contributed equally to this work.
** Corresponding authors