Tootfinder

At #ARVO2026, Wednesday May 6: The vOICe visual-to-auditory sensory substitution device (SSD) for the blind evokes stronger visual cortex activity than a tongue display unit (TDU), for both early blind and late blind people https://mas.…

A mesoscale optogenetics system for precise and robust stimulation of the primate cortex https://www.cell.com/neuron/abstract/S0896-6273(25)00928-6 "enables flexible million-pixel stimulation over a centimeter-sized area of the primate cortex." visual prosthesis

Cortigent IPO document: "We are unaware of medical devices comparable to the Orion system (designed to restore certain forms of functional vision in persons who have become blind due to a broad range of causes) that have been approved by regulatory agencies in the U.S. or Europe." https://www.

Rapid sequential activation from A1 to V1 in congenitally blind and sighted subjects https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0361923026001784 on primary visual cortex activation by auditory stimuli;

Vision as looking and seeing through a bottleneck
Li Zhaoping
https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.23030 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2604.23030 https://arxiv.org/html/2604.23030
arXiv:2604.23030v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Progress in vision research has been slower downstream than upstream of primary visual cortex (V1). Traditional frameworks have largely overlooked a central constraint: only a tiny fraction of retinal input is recognized. Thus, to a first approximation, vision is better formulated as looking and seeing through a bottleneck. Looking, mainly by the peripheral visual field, selects visual information to enter this bottleneck, largely via gaze shifts that center selected contents at fovea. Seeing, mainly by the central visual field, recognizes this content. Converging evidence suggests that V1 initiates the bottleneck and contributes to looking by generating a bottom-up saliency map that guides saccades exogenously, and that top-down feedback along the visual pathway, targeting mainly the representation of the central visual field, refines seeing. Progress will accelerate through falsifiable theories that explicitly link behavior with neural substrates, and by experimental designs that avoid forced fixation and precisely track gaze.
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Chronic alteration of Ca2 and hemodynamic signals induced by intracortical microstimulation in the visual cortex of awake mice https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0142961226003005 on frequency-dependent

Coming up at #ARVO2026, May 6: Comparing tactile and auditory sensory substitution on visual cortex recruitment in the early and late blind https://eppro02.ativ.me/web/pag…

(Flashback, 2012) Real-life science closes in on Star Trek as scientists show they can to hack into blind people's visual cortex to let them 'see' https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/ar

Real-life science closes in on Star Trek: TNG with new device to hack into blind people's visual cortex to let them 'see'
he Sensory Substitution Device, which uses an algorithm to translate visual data into sound, can actually activate the visual cortices of congenitally blind people, giving them the opportunity to see.

FDA grants breakthrough device designation to ReVision Implant visual cortex prosthesis https://med-techinsights.com/2026/03/09/fda-grants-breakthrough-device-designation-to-revision-implant-visual-cortex-prosthesis/

FDA grants breakthrough device designation to ReVision Implant visual cortex prosthesis - Med-Tech Insights
Belgian neurotechnology startup ReVision Implant has received Breakthrough Device designation from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for its visual cortical prosthesis, Occular, clearing the way toward first-in-human clinical trials. The Occular system is designed to restore functional vision in people with severe blindness, including patients whose condition cannot be treated with retinal implants or optic nerve therapies.

A hierarchy of spatial predictions across human visual cortex during natural vision #neuroscience

Simply sticking electrodes into primary visual cortex (V1) to evoke phosphenes ignores the feedback loops from higher visual areas back to V1. A Neuralink Blindsight brain implant will almost certainly perform very poorly. Engineering is one thing, biology/neuroscience another.

Seeing with the Brain (not the eyes) #LGN (lateral geniculate nucleus) over visual cortex for a visual prosthesis.

Seeing with the Brain - Eye & Ear Foundation of Pittsburgh
Xing Chen, PhD, James Herman, PhD, and J. Patrick Mayo, PhD, shared their expert insights in the Eye & Ear Foundation’s March 10th webinar, “Seeing with the Brain.” First up [...]Read More... from Seeing with the Brain

The new era of sensory augmentation https://cacm.acm.org/news/the-new-era-of-sensory-augmentation/ "a visual implant could convey the overall spatial structure of a scene directly to the visual cortex, while a non-invasive sensory substitution device provides complem…

Hierarchical and non-hierarchical network flows generate complementary representational dynamics in human visual cortex #NeuroAI

The neural organization of visual information in the auditory cortex of the congenitally deaf https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/hbm.70444 "visual spatial information is represented in the auditory cortex of congenital deaf individuals through deactivation signals&qu…

How psychedelic drugs affect the brain https://www.sflorg.com/2026/02/ns02132601.html "High-resolution brain imaging reveals that psychedelics suppress external visual processing and instead drive visual areas to access the retrosplenial cortex, [...], thereby generating hallucinati…

How Psychedelic Drugs Affect the Brain
Research findings reinforce new approaches in psychology, using psychedelic substances under medical supervision to treat certain clinical conditions.

A retinotopic wiring principle of the human brain https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.04.03.716412v1 "well-known perceptual asymmetries correspond to systematic asymmetries in connectivity within early visual cortex"

A retinotopic wiring principle of the human brain
A central challenge in neuroscience is to understand how anatomical connectivity links neural representations to behavior. In sensory systems, cortical areas encode structured maps of the external world, yet it remains unclear whether and how this representational geometry constrains long-range connectivity in the living human brain. Here, we show that structural connectivity in the human visual cortex preserves retinotopic organization, revealing a retinotopic wiring principle; cortical region…

The adjacent case https://barnes7.substack.com/p/the-adjacent-case "What is it like to be blind?", "The label 'visual cortex' names a developmental default, not a functional destiny", "Sensory substitution sharpens the point."

Beyond Nagel & Chalmers: Echolocation and Consciousness
Philosopher Barnes argues Daniel Kish's echolocation rewrites the hard problem of consciousness | Beyond Nagel and Chalmers.

Separable neuronal and glial correlates of visual acuity and lifespan in mammalian primary visual cortex https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.04.08.716558v1 "humans are revealed as outliers in glial support of neuronal metabolism across the lifespan"; so …

Article on the ReVision Implant brain implant originating from China (WeChat): WeChat #BCI #NeuroTech

Milestone: Flexible Electrodes Implanted in Cerebral Cortex Offer Glimmer of Hope for Restoring Sight to the Blind; Brain - Computer Interface Gets FDA Breakthrough Device Designation
Recently, ReVision Implant, an innovative Belgian brain - computer interface firm, declared that its core product, the Occular visual reconstruction brain - computer interface, got the "Breakthrough Device Designation" from the US FDA.

Movies reconstructed purely from mouse brain activity https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-03-movies-reconstructed-purely-mouse-brain.html
Movie reconstruction from mouse visual cortex activity