A Last Look Back to Beginnings and a Dramatic Look Forward

Abstract Optogenetics has been successfully deployed to help restore vision to the blind. Doctors have given intraocular injections of a red light-sensitive channelrhodopsin called ChrimsonR into a patient’s eyes. They combined this with the use of special goggles that delivered light pulses onto the retina in real time to activate optogenetically transduced retinal ganglion cells. During visual perception, multichannel electroencephalographic recordings revealed object-related activity above the visual cortex. In addition to laboratory tests of vision, the patient reported identifying crosswalks and could count the number of white stripes, testifying to a major improvement in daily visual activities. The chapter also describes work on vision restoration with intraocular channelrhodopsins that employs knowledge of the neural code specific to the retina—the language the retina uses to inform the brain of what you’re looking at.