The Curiosity of Sight

Speaker 1

Welcome to the curiosity of sight.

Speaker 2

Yes, the child is dead. Well, he's not dead. He's actually grown up and he's now a teenager. So we've gone for a subtle name change. So what we're going to be talking about this week, Anton?

Speaker 1

We're taking a close look at sight, saying eyes the perfect subject for a podcast.

Speaker 2

It is, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. So what we're going to do instead with our naming is each episode. We've got a topic and that becomes the. So we are hoping to cover all the sensors in the future, but we're going to start with site as it's probably the dominant primary sense for humans.

Speaker 1

So what we're going to be learning?

Speaker 2

We're going to look at the evolution of eyes from the very earliest ones. Simple light sensitive cells through compound eyes, all the way to human eyes and along the way we're going to meet scientists who made these discoveries and also look at some of the more interesting experiments that they did. And I've actually got a few things laid out in front of you.

Speaker 1

Yeah, I noticed that.

Speaker 2

So, shall we pick it?

Speaker 1

I wish I.

Speaker 2

OK. And Tom, close your eyes and you don't have to be the split right now, don't worry.

Speaker 1

I meant to read the scripts.

Speaker 2

Yes, your eyes are shut and all you can probably see is, well, darkness and maybe some shadows and some shapes to slowly open them. And then so. So as you open your eyes, you probably saw more form appearing, didn't you?

Speaker 3

M.

Speaker 2

So what I want you to do is actually imagine travelling back 3.7 billion. Years to the Earth and it's a very different place back then and life is actually just starting to appear, but it's in a really simple form at the moment and it's just going to be single celled organisms. Where did early life? Where did these primitive creatures? Where do they get their energy from?

Speaker 1

I don't know. The sun.

Speaker 2

The sun. Yeah. And also maybe geothermal vents, in some cases, deep in the sea.

Speaker 1

Oh yeah. I should have known.

Speaker 2

That, but it's the ones that got their power or their energy from the sun that we're interested in. So they would have got their power from what we call the visible spectrum of light and maybe a little bit beyond say, from infrared to ultraviolet. That now you get smaller wavelengths of light like gamma rays, but those actually have too much energy and they're damaging for cells. Then you have longer ones like radio waves. But those are too big and weak, and they're actually bigger than the creatures themselves.

Speaker

MHM.

Speaker 2

So our lovely son, you know, throws out loads of energy at just the right wavelengths for life. Or maybe life has evolved actually to adapt to the wavelengths that it throws out. If that's giving you your energy, yeah, it's gonna be really, really useful for creatures to learn how to sense it, isn't it? If you can actually start to detect and sense it, then you're going to have an evolutionary advantage, aren't you?

Speaker 1

Yeah, you can see things.

Speaker 2

Exactly. Yeah. And you can find that light. You can go towards that source of light. You can go out of shadow, and that might be why about 3 billion years ago, some tiny, tiny little creatures started to develop little eye spots. Now, do you remember when we looked at different things under the microscope and some had tiny little red dots in them? Yeah. So what? Do you see in this picture I've got here?

Speaker 1

I see a green sort of. Long. Thing. It's got a red spot where I guess a head would be. It's like a microorganism and it has. Yeah.

Speaker 2

Yeah. So yeah. So Tony microorganism, it's got a little red eye spot on it. And that is like sensitive. And it doesn't give it a view of the world like you and I have. It just gives a response to light and shade. Like when you slowly open your eyes or in the morning if you got your eyes shut and the sun shining on you, you hold your hand in front of it, you'll be able to see that shadow, won't you? Excuse me if you look at the. Sun. You might sneeze and this is say basic. They can't even detect the direction of the lights, just if it's present or not. So over billions of generations spanning billions and billions of years, this tiny eye spot would sometimes have mutations. Neither get better or worse. So what's 1 really basic improvement you could think of? From something that literally just senses light or shade.

Speaker 1

Sensing it from a direction.

Speaker 2

Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So some of these mutations might make a little concave shape. So that's. Action where the ice spot was situated, so think of that like a curved mirror that can reflect light. From different directions. And as soon as you've got that, you've got slight advantage if you're able to move, you can start moving towards your source of light and all that amazing life giving energy, can't you? And for a very, very long time, not much more actually. Happened. Ohh yeah, that was based as far as life had got. Eyes are amazing. We're going to tell you about how they might. Of course, the biggest leap in evolution and actually led to the development of complex life forms. And it was during an event called the Cambrian Explosion. So at this point, most life is still in the ocean and it's 451. I've got numerical dyslexia. It's 541 million years ago, and life is still pretty boring. I mean, what's that look like, mate?

Speaker 1

Corrine.

Speaker 2

Yeah, bit of a green splodge, but go to 400 and. 85,000,000 years ago and life is rocking. I mean look at that.

Speaker 1

That that's a lot cooler. It looks like underwater beetles.

Speaker 2

Yeah. So what's going?

Speaker 3

Uh-huh.

Speaker 1

Lots of crustacean. Any sort of things.

Speaker 2

Yeah, almost like half crustacean, half fish. Some of them it's really. Hard. Isn't it? Yeah. So the Cambrian Explosion was a really, really important event in evolution.

Speaker

Hmm.

Speaker 2

And it's when we started to actually have life branching into all these different forms, like mollusks or worms or sponges or anthropoids all sorts, yeah.

Speaker 1

Hmm, what's the Cambrian explosion?

Speaker 2

That that is the name of the this event. Yeah, just several million.

Speaker 1

Event. So all of them, all of them becoming more advanced.

Speaker 2

Yes. Yeah, yes. So the explosion is that explosion in the diversity of life. It's don't. Don't think of it like a volcano explosion or something. So what do you think might have actually caused this rapid evolution and this whole slew of new body plans to emerge?

Speaker 1

A change in temperature or something, or a change in environment.

Speaker 2

That's a very good suggestion, and there may have been some of that going on there, which my research hasn't covered. But one of the other major factors is quite possibly eyes. So how do you think eyes could have?

Speaker 1

Done that they can see food and they can see.

Speaker 2

Food. Well, yeah. Yeah, that's a lot of it that they can see food or they can see predators. So imagine your little creature swimming around and 1st journey able to detect light and shadow. You're gonna be a massive disadvantage to a predator that's able to. See. You and able to start hunting you, so even having some really rudimentary form of sight would offer a really big. Survival edge. If you're the hunter or the hunted. So organisms that developed eyes. Or better eyes, they're they're more likely to survive than part of their genes on. And they also have things like hunters and prey would need different types of eyes. So if you want to be able to see something you wanna have like eyes, like if you're a hunter, you wanna have eyes like us looking forwards so you can focus on it and have binocular vision and judge your distances and catch it. But if you are prey, you want to be more.

Speaker 1

You want to see all around you?

Speaker 2

Exactly. Think of a deer or something, or a gazelle with the eyes on the side. Compared to a cheetah. So all of these amazing new creatures that were evolving to the campaign explosion, they are actually your answer. This. Eyes and sight is so good that it may actually have evolved up to 60 times independently in the evolution of animals.

Speaker 1

Right.

Speaker 2

Yeah, it's amazing, isn't it? And some animals even have more than one type of eye. So we're going to take a look at a few eye types now, OK? Or you are? So I've already mentioned photoreceptor cells, which are these tiny small eye spot.

Speaker 4

Yes.

Speaker 2

But what can be better than a single light detecting cell?

Speaker 1

Lots of light detecting cells or eye spots. They first appeared 540 to 600 million years ago. Eye spots are clusters of photoreceptor cells that can detect the direction of light and shadow. Jelly fish and flatworms are examples of creatures with primitive eye spots. Because Jelly fish don't have anything, they're literally like a. Flop.

Speaker 2

Yeah.

Speaker 1

The next step in eye evolution is pigment Cup eyes 500 to 540 million years ago. These eyes are slightly more advanced than consists of a pigment cup that partially encloses the photoreceptor cells. This structure allows for a limited sense of direction of light. Snails have pigment eye cups on their little. What are those called?

Speaker 2

They're not really antenna, are they? Yeah, just ice talks.

Speaker 1

No. Yeah, ice eye tentacles.

Speaker 3

Yeah.

Speaker 1

Eyes now take a bit of a leap from sensing light to focusing light about 400 million years ago. Creatures such as the Nautilus evolve pinhole eyes. They have a small hole in the pigment cup, but that focuses light and allows more precise detection of direction.

Speaker 2

So not only were these changes improving the eyesight, but they also starting to improve the protection of the eye. So as eyes change from flat spots to depressions to holes, they start to become more resilient to damage. But they're still pretty basic. Though, aren't they?

Speaker 1

That's starting to change, though, with compound eyes like insects, have they have rolled 500 to 540 million years ago. Unlike single lens eyes, compound eyes are made of lots of individual lenses called amazia, each with their own photoreceptor cells. They are like lots of separate eyes. Clustered together as W.

Speaker 2

Yeah, that's actually a little bit like some flowers because they're not one big flower that actually lays a tiny little flowers, all clustered together and Fibonacci spirals and then the yellow petals around the outside. There actually is another specialised type of flower called a ray florette. And their bright colour is designed to attract insect eyes. So without sight. We will actually need things that look so beautiful. Ohh.

Speaker 1

And that's the moral of this podcast. If you look at a photo of insects eyes, you can see the dense geometric arrangement of segments. Each one captures the light. Together they create a pixelated view of the world, like a low quality digital photo. But some insects can move their retinas inside each compound, which may mean their site is better than we previously thought. Some nocturnal moths may even be able to see colour using only Starlight.

Speaker 2

Yeah, it's amazing, isn't it? They wonder. They're attracted to lamps.

Speaker 1

Many insects can see polarised light. This lets them know where the sun is in the sky, helps them find prey, and detect water. Dragonflies have the largest compound eyes, their hunters, and need to be able to spot fast moving preys on the wing. Compound eyes are really good at seeing movement. This is why you shouldn't wave your hands at Wasps. As it helps us see.

Speaker 2

You so this is something called optical flow and it's used to judge distances how quickly the pixels change when they are watching. Thing. So if if you imagine something really far away, if their eyes made-up of lots of little sections, that's going to change very slowly, isn't it? And as it gets closer to something that's going to more rapidly change, one of the ways they discovered this was by showing cockroaches Star Wars, so they get them to watch it. Because there's lots of shots there, we have space and things flying towards you, so they would quickly rapidly fill the screen and then that's how they can judge distance and movement. And that's also why you watch a fly like bang into a white wall or something. Piece of white walls to solid colour. It can't do any it it can't see any change in its sight and it'll bump into it.

Speaker 1

Can they not see? That's the sea with windows and stuff, they would just be able to see through it or it just fills their entire view.

Speaker 2

Still, they'll just be seeing through it there. Yeah. Yeah. Except for they don't know what a window is. There's actually a few different types of compound dye, and do you know what trilobites are? No. Have a look at the picture on screen now.

Speaker 1

Still don't know.

Speaker 2

Imagine like giant aquatic wood lice type things. OK, OK. Yeah. So they were around in the Cambrian period as well. And they actually really cool lenses because they were made of calcite. And that's actually crystal. And it's similar to our seashells are made from, but it's arranged in such a way to be transparent like a window, and some of them actually had two lenses in their eyes, which would give them amazing, like depth of field. So you imagine when you got a photo of like an Ant or something and you've got a really short facial length, be like that. Like, really. But what's amazing is we can actually study the individual lenses that we find in fossils and then use the shape in those fossils to understand how that would affect their vision and their work, how how trilobites would have lived in their ecosystem based on what we understand from their eyes. That's not the only type of lens they had, either, because some of the eyes would become more pit like in shape, and then they're really membranes over them, which would offer like a protective coating over time, or different ways of focusing light. And then you get these amazing light structures of all these compound eyes and variations depending on the environment in which they're living. So what's clear here is that from like 5 to 600 million years ago, we started to get a really radical development in different types of ions branching out in all different directions. And with that, different types of body shape and body. Forms. Because once animals can see, they can start to predate, and once they can predate, you need to start being able to hide from your predators, don't you if you're. But none of these eyes are like mine or yours, though, are they? Or most of our listeners for that matter. So what happens next?

Speaker 1

Sometimes more isn't better. Rather than hundreds of thousands of compound lenses, one single big lenses better like invertebrates and cephalopods. Our eyes are soft and squishy, with muscles that change the shape of the lens, allowing us to focus on different objects. Our big lenses direct light onto lots of individual photoreceptor cells inside the eye that combine to create a single detailed image. But not all eyes use lenses to refract and focus. Light lobsters use mirrors to reflect and focus it. Their eyes are covered in a mesh of perfect square mirrors that Channel the light.

Speaker 2

Yeah, they're amazing. It's like a a grid of mirrors. And that's so weird. But lobsters are really strange creatures.

Speaker

Hmm.

Speaker 2

So, do you know what cephalopods are?

Speaker 1

Is that? Squid.

Speaker 2

They have amazing eyes quite similar to ours, but they developed independently of ours, but it's what's called convergent evolution, where you have two separate organisms evolving in a very similar manner to create very similar solutions to a problem. But one key difference between an octopus eye and, say human eye. Is that? In octopuses, the nerve cells are behind the retina. But then in human eyes, the nerves actually pass through a gap in a retina, and that's what gives us. Our. Blind spots. Exactly. Yeah. Our nerve cells actually to be transparent to allow the light to pass through them. But they're not totally transparent. They do actually block your vision slightly where the nerves are going onto the front of your retina and all the blood vessels and everything.

Speaker 1

Spot, yeah.

Speaker 2

So that actually tells us something really interesting about human sight. And that's that something that doesn't move in our vision will actually disappear. We will edit it out of our perception, so something's kept totally still.

Speaker 1

How long?

Speaker 2

I don't know how long I don't think to be that long. So if you could keep your eyes perfectly still. We should try it now.

Speaker 1

Didn't walk.

Speaker 2

Didn't work OK, but there were some experiments done where they'd actually stick. Like on contact lenses, basically something in front of the eye and with a spot on or a bright light, and that would vanish.

Speaker

Hmm.

Speaker 2

It also gives us a second interesting feature of our eye. Like you said, there's the blind spot, so you've got book in front of you, which if you carefully pick that up without disturbing the secret item beneath it and turn to page 46, please. Oh, nice. OK, so on page 46, you should find a diagram and on the diagram there is a cross on the left hand side and a circle on the right hand side about 5 centimetres apart.

Speaker

MHM.

Speaker 2

OK. You wanna hold that up in front of you at about arm's? Length at first. So close your left eye. Hold the book in front of you so that you're looking at the cross with your right eyes. That's in front of that. And then keep looking directly ahead and slowly move it closer to your face.

Speaker 1

There we go. Now that's what's gone.

Speaker 2

Yeah, about 15 centimetres away. Yes, the spot vanishes. But what do you see there?

Speaker 1

It's filled it in with the the grey around the spot.

Speaker 2

Yeah, exactly. Really weird, isn't it? So the dot disappears and replaced by the ray background. So you your brain has filled that in, hasn't it? It's it's invented. What's there? Which can get quite scary as imagine you have a problem and part of your eyes, part of your rent gets damaged and you can't see a portion but say where my hand is. Now imagine I can see that my brain's gonna fill that in with what it thinks should be there. And sometimes it can even put a person there or something.

Speaker

Hmm.

Speaker 2

Weird. Yeah. And then so you you get maybe more often with the elderly people, they might be talking to somebody who isn't there, but it's because they've invented that their their brain has.

Speaker 1

That's weird. That kind of reminds me of a few trying to get AI to make a photo and it just adds something. Random for some reason.

Speaker 2

Oh yeah, it is. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You can also make people's heads vanish into your blind spot. Apparently, if you get in the just the right place.

Speaker 1

We'll try that later.

Speaker 3

Yeah, try later.

Speaker 2

What's really, really weird though, is even though you got your blind spot there and said that things disappear, there have been some experiments where they will hold a stick either vertically or horizontally, and somebody's blind spot and the the person in the experiment have actually been able to detect the angle correctly. Even though we can't see it, there's something that might be like your other eye pressing over. It's what happens when you got your nerves going in from your eyes. Whilst most of the. The quick pace production, correct? In here. Whilst most of the nerves go back to the same side of the brain that the eye is on, the actual left hand side of the right eye goes to the left of the brain and the right hand side of the left eye goes to the right of the brain.

Speaker 1

Sight is about a lot more than just seeing light. Listen to episode 29 of the podcast where we talk about perception. Do it, do it, do it, do it.

Speaker 2

That's good, I've said that one interactive as well.

Speaker 1

Hmm, back when it was called, they cured of a child.

Speaker 2

Yes, at least release episodes regularly rather than once to be 3 months.

Speaker 1

Yeah, sorry about that, guys. Although it's not entirely my fault.

Speaker 2

Then I've been busy. Things have happened anyway, so I think that's a fairly good foundation to. How eyes work. Don't you? Yes. Yes, we should. We find out about some of the people who actually performed the experiments and discovered how we know what we know today.

Speaker 1

Suppose.

Speaker 2

OK, well, in previous episodes we've occasionally learned about how the Greeks weren't always as clever as. People like to have you them believe. Yeah. Yeah. So do you know about any of their theories of sight, how they thought it worked?

Speaker 1

I remember 1 but I don't remember it. If that makes sense.

Speaker 2

OK. Should we cover it then? OK, how about?

Speaker 1

Late. Ohh yeah. Yeah, I do remember.

Speaker

Oh.

Speaker 2

Yeah.

Speaker 1

They thought that you shot leaders out of your eyes and then it bounced back. I think it was. Or is it just? Yeah.

Speaker 2

Yeah. Yeah, pretty much like laser eyes, so. Appetites. He was a Greek philosopher and was born around 994 BCD and he established the idea that we have the four. Elements. Fire, Earth, air and water that make up everything. And that wasn't anything he got wrong. He he thought that our eyes emitted raised, that they'd reach out to the world and top subjects. You can touch with your hands. And that actually allows us to see stuff and and then the ambient like that you'd have. From. The sun, whatever that was, the medium through which these rays pass. And if there was no lights, that meant our rays wouldn't work, and we won't be able to see anything. So he basically the theories backwards because we don't emit like, do we? We we receive it. But apparently he also lived 109 years old and UM, he jumped into Mount Etna and telling his followers that he would return as an immortal God. But when the volcano belched up one of his bronze sandals, it revealed the truth of his death to his disciples. Hmm.

Speaker 1

He did that 100.

Speaker 3

And nine, apparently, I didn't think he lived that long.

Speaker 1

OK, maybe a stock, yes.

Speaker 2

What would he be then? 12 or something? Yeah. OK, I'll let him off then. He did quite well for a 12 year old. Do you want to hear another Greek theory? Do you remember Lucius?

Speaker 1

Yes. Oh, that atom died. Yeah.

Speaker 2

Yeah, and The Alchemist? That's right. Well done for my elements. Said. Now they had the brilliant understanding that the world is made-up of laser tiny particles, didn't they, which they called atoms. But they also had that idea over to how they thought eyes worked and how we see. So they proposed the idea that objects release thin films of atoms or particles or eidola. And that they will fly at you from whatever you're looking at and. Enter. The eye and they'll be understood directly by your mind. And and for them. That explains why you could work out what something is from a different angle. So if you look at chair from 1:00. Side or another? Angle the shape is really different, isn't it?

Speaker 1

Yeah.

Speaker 2

But you still know what it is, so that's.

Speaker 1

Like, well, yeah, like that, some of the chair illusions you can see where? It might just be fragments of stuff that hasn't touched her.

Speaker 2

Hmm. Yeah, yeah, that's a. Good thought of that. So there's actually a few flaws of this idea, aren't there? So if objects are constantly emitting these layers, why don't they just quickly dissolve into nothing? And what about a mountain? I mean, how does a mountain fit in your eye? And if you have all these particles of everything flying into your element, they just interfere with each other and just make a mishmash like a Kandinsky. Painting or something? So none of these earlier ideas of sight were looking in the right direction. Drum roll, please.

Speaker 1

I think you were meant to do like a laughing sound effect then.

Speaker 2

Sorry, it wasn't very funny, but they did form our early understanding of site for a very, very long time until an Arab scholar by the name of Abner Al Haitham. Decided to shake things up now. He lived during the Islamic Golden Age and that took place in the 10th and 11th centuries and he was a scientist, a philosopher, mathematician and he contributed greatly to our understanding of optics and. And he was a true scientist. So he actually sought empirical evidence for his ideas. So he didn't know what that means.

Speaker 1

Not really.

Speaker 2

OK. So it's really important part of the scientific process so well than just creating theories, you actually look for evidence. So you find the idea that proves theory through through experimentation and evidence.

Speaker 1

That's a good idea. So just saying like this is it.

Speaker 2

If it is. Exactly. Yeah, different to how the leaks were thinking, where they were just philosophising on it. Let's actually try and yeah, let's do it exactly.

Speaker 1

Derek.

Speaker 2

An idea as a shell without any feeling of evidence. Yeah, even our hate him. He was born in Basra, in Iraq. But he got invited to Cairo by the caliph. Our hate him. But the Caliph wanted him to design a way to control the flooding of the Nile. So that's really important task. He sang basically manages the fertility of. Their entire Kingdom. Yeah, their crops. Now the caliph. He wasn't a particularly nice man, and he had given an impossible task to Abner Al Hate. And and the caliph, he actually ordered the persecution of many different peoples during his reign. And so he said that he so disliked the barking of dogs that he decided to have them.

Speaker 1

All killed, and that's why, emphatically, he's was thrown in the volcano at 12 years old.

Speaker 2

For well, 109 dog years, yeah. But do you wanna know the worst thing that the K lifted?

Speaker 1

OK.

Speaker 2

He banned watercress, watercress. Like I said, he's not a very nice man. So what do you do if a horrible man gives you an impossible idea?

Speaker 1

Kill them.

Speaker 2

Not quite. You feign insanity.

Speaker 1

Ah yeah, that's a bit like what some theories about Claudius did. After Caligula, because basically he had tried to be killed. If he wasn't pretending to be crazy, or he was actually crazy. But yeah.

Speaker 3

Oh yeah.

Speaker 2

Uh didn't. Is that the one? Who had the pet rock? Yeah.

Speaker 1

But he might have done it to act crazy.

Speaker 2

Yes, very clever plan sometimes. So Abner, our hate him, he actually spent 12 years under house arrest and during this time he conducted his greatest work. So I don't know if he did this or if it's done to him, but any of the windows of his house were blocked top. So he needed to use candles to illuminate indoors. And then he started to explore how light behaved. And he set up mirrors and lenses and holes and walls and all sorts of things. And he's the guy who discovered that light actually moves in straight line. Then they build camera, obscure ears and they'd study like the optics of the eye and through all of that, he started to understand how vision itself might work. And his key discovery was intermission theory. And that's that light travels to the eye and there is focused by the lens and onto our retina at the back of the eye. And the images averted. 8K inverted like a camera obscura. And there's one of his amazing diagrams of the eyes there. So his most famous work is called the Kitab al Mancia. And that translates as the Book of optics, and it was considered one of the most influential books in the history of optics. So perhaps the caliph he mysteriously died in 1021. So Abner, I'll hate him. He announced that he was no longer mad and he had been faking it all along, and he's allowed.

Speaker 1

To go free. This feels like. I mean it is. Over way off yet, but this sounds like a completely different era to the Battle of Hastings. Sort of. Time. Which is fairly easy and this doesn't feel right.

Speaker 5

Does doesn't it?

Speaker 2

That's the other thing about history, actually. How?

Speaker 1

Yeah, I saw some. I saw some video where like.

Speaker 3

There's all these parallels.

Speaker 1

Where it's comparing things which you didn't expect to be together. This isn't an example, but. It. Could be like the Prussian Empire was at the same time that Cavemen existed in Antarctica or whatever. Yeah, things like. That.

Speaker 2

The one I find really odd is I always think that the Raymonds in my head, they feel like they came after the Anglo Saxons in England. And like the Arthurian legends, they always felt older to me. In some way.

Speaker 1

I see that.

Speaker 2

OK, back to. Eyes it discoveries that it makes they pace a problem because as we've said a couple of times, the eye inverts the image, doesn't it? So how could it be that we see everything in the correct way up? This led to a bit of a dilemma and split the world in 2. The external one, which we sense and the internal one created by the brain. But don't worry, that's not really a problem we're going to worry about today. Because we got another thousand years of history to cover and I want to talk about a couple more people who looked at how the eye worked. So we've got two types of light sensitive cells in our eyes, don't we? Yeah. Do you remember what they are?

Speaker 1

Cones and rods.

Speaker 2

Yes. And what do they do? Sense light. I always get them mixed up. OK, so yeah, you got your Robson cones in your retina, but they're not evenly spaced out and you got more rods around the outside and you got your cones in the middle. OK. And you're you're rods. They don't pick up colour. But your canes stay. So what this means is actually the vision in your periphery has less colour in it, but it's more sensitive to light. That's why India, maybe you're lying. In bed, in the dark, and you see a little light in the corner of your eye, don't you? And what happens if you turn towards it?

Speaker 1

You see a horrible, scary figure coming out of the wardrobe.

Speaker 2

That, that, that's just me.

Speaker 1

Oh, OK.

Speaker 2

But imagine I'm not there. What do you see when you turn to look at a tiny little sparkly light? Yeah, it disappears. That's because your rods are less light sensitive, and they're more in the middle.

Speaker 1

Yeah. It disappears.

Speaker 2

Of your eye.

Speaker 1

No, your canes somewhere in. The middle of the eye.

Speaker 2

Your canes are more in the middle of your eye. Thank you God, I'm rubbish at this. Now you have three types of cane and they detect red light, green light and blue light. Now red and green. They're more heavily clustered towards the centre and then you have more ones to take in. Blue light kind of around the outside, but still the outside of the middle, yeah. Then only the very centre of your eye sees things at full resolution. So hold your arm out front of you like this with your thumb up. Now look at your thumbnail.

Speaker 1

Oh yeah.

Speaker

That.

Speaker 2

It's the only part of your eye that sees it full resolution. Everything beyond that actually starts to get less and less detailed.

Speaker 1

So our eyes are really good, but also really bad.

Speaker 2

Yeah. Yeah. So that tiny little point is brilliant, but the rest of it isn't so good, and it doesn't need to be. We've already said that if you keep your eyes perfect still, all things disappear from your vision. So why doesn't that happen?

Speaker 1

All the time our eyes are.

Speaker 3

Always moving. Exactly. Yeah. Do you?

Speaker 2

Know what it's called.

Speaker 1

Eye movement.

Speaker 2

It is good even, but it's also got more scientific name called saccades and they are rapid movements that you make 4 to five times a second. So that's quarter of a million times a day. So every time your eyes are moving, you know, even though it's happening, you're refreshing the scene and taking all this detail. Again, your brain blocks any visual processing when you saccade. So if you look in a mirror, you can't see your own eyes moving, can't you? What it means that we're technically blind for a small moment each time we do it, and as we're doing it four or five times a second, we might be blind for up to 40 minutes a day. What I know it's mad, isn't it? That's a lot of your life that you're actually blind. Luckily, all of this happens automatically, and our eyes are amazing at capturing just the right image at just the right time. And these movements aren't random either, because if you need something in your peripheral vision, your eye will automatically go and say, oh, what's going on over there and what's really weird is it can also happen by what you're listening to. So if I start saying telling you a story that this bird is flying up in the sky. And all, such as things. Your eyes will just naturally cascade upwards. Or if I tell you a story about things happening down by your feet, your start circulating down more just by what you're being told. So as well as arcading, our eyes will automatically jump to different points of interest. And that's called the Vesti boluo ocular reflex.

Speaker

Hmm.

Speaker 2

Which I think I pronounced very badly. Denny's going to turn me off again. As briefly called Purkinje's Reflex, and he was a anatomist, and he built his own rotating chair like the spinning chair which he used to test the limits of vision. So here's it in there, getting spun around really, really quick until he became sick. See what happened to. All these other sorts of. Crazy experiments, yeah. So motion is really important to site. And the first image forming eyes, they actually evolved to determination and not objects specifically like you mentioned by insect eyes. Yeah, and how movements important there. So if you think of rabbits like the one in front of you, I mean, they're brilliant at seeing movement. Maybe a fox or something, but actually their general vision is really cloudy. But what if you can actually? Move your eyes.

Speaker 1

You're about to see.

Speaker 2

You won't be able to see. Yeah, you might be like Ernest Mark. And he actually put potty under his eyelids to. Stop the moving. Or. Or maybe the student who was discovered in 1995. He said she couldn't move her eyes. So when 2 scientists, John Findlay and Ian Gilchrist, heard about that, they invited her in to examine her. Really. And she actually twitched her head like a bird.

Speaker

Because.

Speaker 2

She had basically had to mimic succeeding with her own physical movement. It's like really weird.

Speaker 1

So do birds that have succeeding.

Speaker 2

I don't know, actually. They might have some shading, but I think they're twitching is important part of how. Yeah, they keep their vision working, so they've got big guys that stick out a bit, aren't they inside of. Their. Heads, but back to Robert and Keynes. I mean, how do they actually capture light to find this out, we're going to need a rabbit. Rabbit acquired. Fantastic. What's your rabbit called?

Speaker 1

Abbott acquired. Flopsy these are rather real. No. OK. We had to dig it out.

Speaker 2

We did so. It's 1851, and the German physiologist Heinrich Mueller. He actually noticed a red pigment in the eyes of frogs and squid. But it will take his young compatriot of Franz Kristen Bowl to find its source. Now, he observed frogs eyes and he saw that the pigment would fade after about one minute. When they died. However, if you kept dead frogs in the dark, it take 24 hours for this pigment in the eye to. So he thought, OK, this must have something to do with vision, and he called it visual red. And this is the light sensitive pigment that we today call. We adopts. It said when you look at the sun or something or a bright light, you know you get that retinal image, that's the pigment.

Speaker 1

Ohh so when you look around again, it stays there for.

Speaker 2

A bit. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So that's the pigment in your rodson canes reacting to the light and it would take his successor, Wilhelm Kin King Kintner, Kindney.

Speaker 1

I've been doing German on Joe Lingo. Uh TH is usually like a I think. Yeah, kidnap.

Speaker 2

OK. If you could, professor, his professor, his successor Wilhelm Kintner to unlock the mysteries of his 1800s Germany was a real hotbed of vision research. So the first thing that he realised was that this pigment wasn't really red. It was purple. Then on the 16th of November 1880. And a young man like a a criminal, he was beheaded by the guillotine, and his body was taken to Kintner, and he already had this darkened room. Top and the only light that came through was through some red and yellow glass stained windows, so he really quickly extracted the eyes so he could dissect them looking for an imprint captured on the back of the retina, almost like a photograph in the light sensitive pigment. It'd be the last image seen by a living eye, something that he called an optic gramme.

Speaker 3

Hmm.

Speaker 1

I remember these we we did slight. Now I remember you talking to me about this a while ago. And I remember in art we are like you are like photography stuff and they I didn't think this specific thing of dropping out someones eye came up in art photography.

Speaker 2

OK.

Speaker 1

But a similar sort of way of photography. Was done and although maybe. With the rabbit, they did mention a rabbit. Maybe with the. An imprint.

Speaker 2

Well, Speaking of the rabbit. Can you very carefully lift up the towel next to you please?

Speaker 1

The towel.

Speaker 2

Yes. Well, he says there's something underneath it because as well as a rabbit, we need a.

Speaker 1

Oh my God.

Speaker 2

A sharp knife.

Speaker

Oh.

Speaker 2

Be very careful. So this wasn't the first option. Ram that kidney had made be seen in an earlier experiment. He had actually covered a rabbit with a towel or Clough. So can you do that please?

Speaker 3

Alright.

Speaker 2

OK, so now the rabbit is starting to go become acclimatised to the dark. So once that happened for a while and all the pigments in the eyes have had a chance to reset and he then removed the towel and the rabbit would then be staring at something and he kept his head very very still so it couldn't move its head. So I'm guessing they can't shave much. Very very good. And then he quickly chopped off the rabbit. 'S head. And plucked out the eyes. And cut them in half and stuck them in some our limit solution which I don't actually have, but this will fix the rhodopsin and then he used that to capture the image of the bars that the rubber had been looking at actually on the retina and printed on the IC. He then proved that these pigments are how the eye will capture. Light and dark.

Speaker 1

That's cool. Alright, let's take a break there. I'm gonna put the knife back.

Speaker 2

OK, we're back and we've been to the.

Speaker 1

Rabbit, I've cleaned the blade and the only thing left to do is finish.

Speaker 3

Place.

Speaker 2

The podcast? Yes, let's get on with that. There's no blood left around here, Sir.

Speaker 1

Ohh wait last little bit.

Speaker 2

Actually, that that's reminds me of something. Piece that's a bit like a crime scene, and there was a book written with this idea of the what I call them, the optic grammes and.

Speaker

Hmm.

Speaker 1

All the corpses could have, like the picture of. It was something on.

Speaker 2

Exactly. Yeah, the killers face in the story. But what gets really, really horrific is some, I think there was a film made of it as well. And I think it's in Mexico. Somebody watched this film and she killed her husband or something. And she pulled out the eyes thinking that they would have, like, had her face etched on them at the moment of death.

Speaker 3

It.

Speaker 1

Yeah.

Speaker 2

Pretty gruesome. That's why even be careful with science.

Speaker

So.

Speaker 1

This is this is a family friendly podcast. It's a PG, but it's not directed at kids, so we probably should have said that before the show. But. You don't know.

Speaker 2

Yeah, too late now.

Speaker 1

Anyway, the rabbits in the.

Speaker 2

Bed. Yes. Yeah, the rabbits gone. OK. So let's go back to adoptions, shall we? So how does that actually work? Well, we're going to need to meet yet another person. And this is George Wald. And he was born in 1986 in New York. And he's the son of some Polish immigrant. And he moved to Germany naturally, as that was the hot bed for vision research for his studies in 1932. But what was going on in Germany around that time and time?

Speaker 1

Adolf Hitler.

Speaker 2

Yeah. And Hitler came to power.

Speaker 1

This is not good.

Speaker 2

But that was I was expecting a little bit more from you rather than just his name.

Speaker 1

We need his name. I think most people know who he is.

Speaker 2

I suppose, yeah. That's. Which actually, yeah, he's done quite well for himself, actually. Well, not a good reputation. You smell. Name respectable reputations.

Speaker 1

Like risky, it's just very.

Speaker 3

And what you're saying?

Speaker 1

We're gonna. We're gonna lose some followers and gain the wrong ones.

Speaker 3

Yes.

Speaker 2

Anyway, yeah, so there's a lot of political uncertainty around at the time that actually gave us quite a good opportunity in the form of 300 frogs, which have been delivered to the university where it's working because his supervisor was a man called Moto, Moto, Moto Meyerhoff and he was a Jew. So he was rightly really nervous at the time. So he he went into hiding. But with all these frogs allowed wood to repeat King's knees. Kidneys. Yeah, Kittner allowed him to repeat kittner tests. And he actually watched as the adoption went from purple, and then to yellow, and then to transparent as it reacted and was bleached by the light.

Speaker 1

Kittner kitner.

Speaker 2

And then he also observed that in the dark, and then turned back to the original purple colour, and it was already known that a deficiency in vitamin A LED to poor eyesight. So when Woods tested the bleach for adoption, he actually found that it was pure vitamin A in the eye when exposed to light, biochemical process actually transforms her adoption into vitamin A. Then, over time, the body would need new vitamin A to replace what has been lost during this process. Actually, all animals, it doesn't matter if you're an insect, a bird, a mammal or a lobster, he wants Wasps. We actually all use rhodopsin. It's the same process. And we all descend from 1 common ancestor 600 million years ago, which gave us this incredible gift of light, light sensitivity and the process of adoption has hardly changed in that time. It's incredible even with like these 40 or 60 different types of eyes evolving in the same process.

Speaker 1

Must be pretty good then.

Speaker 2

It's very effective, which really well. So I think you're starting to get quite a good idea of. How I see. Aren't you? Yes. So like enters into our eye. Then we've got muscles in our eye which changed the search our people and allow us to focus light on our retina. And like any muscle that needs to be exercised, and there was evidence that kids during school time, they would become more short sighted. Why? Because they'll be looking at books and things close up to them, and then during the holidays they would become more alongside it all. All regular sighted again. Yeah. Well, though that's probably changed these days with the kids looking.

Speaker 1

Just staring at the air.

Speaker 2

At things all the. Time. So in our eyes, with our roads and our canes and they contain the adoption that is sensitive to different wavelengths of light and that enables us to see different colours.

Speaker 1

Yeah.

Speaker 2

Now, really interestingly, blue light actually comes into focus about one millimetre in front of our retina. So it's never perfectly sharp because it's different wavelength of light to the red and the green. It's going to focus at a different position and then our eyes will also automatically move and fake us and they will react for us. And like we said, static objects just disappear. But what happens next in our vision? I mean it's it doesn't stop in the eye, it only begins there. So we need to go back in time again, or rather we need to find a time travelling fossil. The horseshoe crap. Do you know who they are?

Speaker 1

The horseshoe crab. It looks a bit like.

Speaker 5

Yeah.

Speaker 1

I'm I'm a weird looking lollipop.

Speaker 2

Yeah, well, they're what's called a living fossil, and they're they've been around for 450 million years. They are the closest living relatives to our trailer bike friends. Have you met earlier? And what kind of blood? Do you think they have? Yeah. Do you know that?

Speaker 1

I'm just skilled.

Speaker 2

It's an amazing colour blue though it's really, really bright now their blood contains loads of immune cells and they're really sensitive to loads of toxins. So we will actually milk these crabs and use it to test vaccines for toxicity. So really important, but it's not a particularly nice process.

Speaker 1

That is actually.

Speaker 2

But it's not actually their blood that we're after today. So I had enough of that. The rabbit, it's their eyes that they're interested. So they also have compound eyes, but their photoreceptors are 100 times larger than ours. That makes us it makes it really easy for us to study them, and they're connected to the brain via the optic nerve. Now, in 1932, Keefer Heartline, he managed to actually record the activity of a single one of those nerve. Fibres that was going from the eye and we've got John Dowling here who was talking about when he met George Wald and Kiefer Hartline.

Speaker 5

He described that as one day, he said. I always used to do my experiments in the dark, as most of us who work on the. A vision do because you want to have a constant environment, so he said one day he said that I was sitting there recording from an optic single optic nerve fibre coming from from the eye and somebody walked into the room and turned on the lights. And he said, you know, they've added more light to the preparation, but the activity went. Down. He said I turned off the lights, the activity went up. I turned on the lights, I went down and he said, Gee, there must be some interactions going on in the eye and pretty soon I was able to show that there is this reciprocal lateral inhibition between the imitatia, which are mediated by very fine nerve. Processes that come off the optic nerve and run laterally in the eye and they've been identified anatomically and so on and so forth. And that really began the real important contribution that he made of lateral inhibition explaining the mock band phenomenon.

Speaker 2

OK, so it's a bit of an odd process. You'll think that with more lights, you're gonna get more. Activity in the eye, aren't you? So do you know what you meant by like this lateral link?

Speaker 1

Not really.

Speaker 2

So it actually means that individual photoreceptor cells in their eyes are linked together and they can communicate with each other because sunlight at a million times brighter than Starlight. But even in that massive range of lighting, we can actually see, well, can't we? Well, we can't see where that dark, but we can still see some detail, can't we? That Starlight or moonlight? Yeah. And you would think that something's a million times brighter during the day it's going to. Burn. Out our eyes, isn't it? So that means that our eyes must be really good at actually adapting to broad ranges of light. It's not just an absolute scale. That he mentioned Mac bands there. You would have seen these diagrams or you would have seen in the past where say if you've got stripes of grey different grey bars next to each other, they don't look a flat colour, do they? When you have a mid grey next to a lighter grey it looks darker on that side. And then next to a dark grey, it looks lighter, doesn't it? It's hard to explain we have. A pitch in the shade. It's sort of. I just.

Speaker 1

So also.

Speaker 2

Said this sort of colour. So the way that this works is your photoreceptor cells. They don't actually work alone, they'll. Work as groups. And they will communicate together and then say if one cell gets really sensitive to light, its neighbours. Adaptive, they get less or more sensitive and then that allows us to see all this relative contrast. So what happened after studying horseshoe crabs here? Then move on to fro. Next, and he discovered that rather than having a single layer of nerve cells, they'd have many, many layers going back from your eye towards your brain. Then, at each of these different layers, they would actually detect different things and have a different function, like some might be. Is what this cell is looking at getting lighter as it getting darker? Is it moving? What colour is it? And then over each kind of layer, there be more and more processed. If you think of all the stuff that you're seeing through your eyes, or 120 million photoreceptor cells in your eye but in and you have 1,000,000 nerve fibres. So that information has to be made 120 times smaller, doesn't it must be compressed together and just the really important information has to be sent through to your brain. And then that's what your nerve cells and all these layers in your eyes are doing behind your retina. And it's really optimising what you're seeing and then working together. So all of your canes around the outside of your eye.

Speaker 1

Change from the inside.

Speaker

Sure.

Speaker 2

Or leave your rods around the outside of your eye, which are the ones that are more light sensitive. They work together, so you might have, say 10 of them or 100 or whatever clustered together, combining their information to make it more light sensitive because it's getting information from lots of cells. Yeah. And that's where your vision looks grainy in the dark.

Speaker 1

Yeah. OK.

Speaker 2

It gets so sensitive that you could actually see a single candle burning over 25 kilometres away, so there's loads of processing happening before even your brain starts to interpret what you're saying. So I think it's time to hand over to you again and find out a few things that might have happened when your eyes go wrong and some ancient remedies.

Speaker 1

I've got some very humane and nice ancient medical practises and odd remedies people used to use, so we've already dropped open a rabbit. But now we're gonna be chopping you for some heavens as well. I imagine. Ohh. Nice. How long ago do you think the first eye operations happened?

Speaker 2

It seems like it should be quite recent in some ways, but I'm sure people used to experiment it, experiment with it quite a long time ago.

Speaker 1

Well, basically as soon as you get a. Sharp stone. There are records from Egypt dating back to 2500 BC to remove cataracts.

Speaker 2

Why that's crazy.

Speaker 1

Poppy seeds or some other opioid would be chewed up and spat into the patient's eye to reduce the pain.

Speaker 2

That's that's nice.

Speaker 1

A. Couching needle would then be used to dislodge the cataracts until it came loose and would be pushed into the.

Speaker 2

Eye well, actually into.

Speaker 1

It. Yeah. So yeah, just be rattling around in there.

Speaker 2

Ah.

Speaker 1

It's like if a coin was wedged between something, or if you've. If you've had a board game or something and you have the cardboard pop out things, it's like you've pushed. It's like you've pushed one of these. Into the box.

Speaker 2

You've ruined my life because I love pushing those things out. If I don't say therapeutic. But I'm gonna be traumatised.

Speaker 1

Without a cataract, vision would be very blurry as the eye can't focus the light. It was a dangerous procedure and the operation was also dressed as likely to blind you to to cure you or or kill you.

Speaker 2

Or kill you? Yeah, there must be so many infections and things. You got some needles that they used to. To put these in the show notes. That looks horrific. Yeah. OK. So you've just blinded me. So is any way you can make me see it again?

Speaker 1

The Egyptians would mash up two pigs eyes and mix them with red lead and wild honey to make a powder. Because you're trying to cure the eyes, they would pour the mixture into your ear, obviously. And then he's, like, jiggle around a bit, probably get into your eyes. You can hear cash, uh, your whatever you pushed into your eye moving, yes. They would say I have brought this thing and put it in its place. The crocodile is weak and powerless.

Speaker 2

OK. That makes perfect sense. I'll put it in its place in the ear so you can see it again.

Speaker 1

But that didn't work. OK, there is a cure. Another cure cure.

Speaker 2

Hi.

Speaker 1

There is another cure though, for night blindness. This is an inability to see well at night or in poor lighting, a rare case.

Speaker 2

I think I think I've got that I don't see.

Speaker 1

Very well at night. No. Ohh, well, we'll we'll perform this later. Several texts describe similar procedures. 1 from 1500 BC says to take roasted ox liver and press it to the eye. Another from 1825 BC tells women who cannot see to eat the raw liver of an ****. I mean an ***. Thank you. Greek texts such as gallon would recommend raw liver soaked in honey to me. Taken once or twice a day by mouth. Or their continuous eating of goats livers.

Speaker 2

I'm seeing a theme here.

Speaker 1

Livers. And it's not just old remedies. Similar treatments are still used today.

Speaker 2

Why would that be?

Speaker 1

Because like you said, with the. Red dopson yeah. Is made of vitamin A. The liver is a rich source of vitamin A and we need enough of it for healthy eyes.

Speaker 2

Ah, so there's actually may be some truth in these olds, like fake remedies.

Speaker 1

Yep, just cross your eye.

Speaker 2

But we've actually come a long way since those experiments, haven't we? Well, I hope so. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1

I would hope so.

Speaker 2

Half the time back then, they didn't have a clue what the problem was, but they'd even they're still trying. To. Something to fix it a little bit scary, but today we know a lot more about how sight works, and we've actually gone beyond just trying to fix the eye by cutting bits out of it to trying to restore sight through adding things such as neural brain implants. In the future, we could actually be looking at humans with beyond, like regular sight and special abilities that we can't even imagine today. So remember how at the start of the episode I told you to relax and tell them?

Speaker 1

To leisure wise. Wait. Whoa, whoa, wait. You said that we can have laser eyes earlier as well. Does that mean with these new rules? Implants. You can have laser eyes.

Speaker 2

Maybe. Sorry, Anton, please your eyes. OK, now I'm sure you gonna feel really relaxed after some of the medical experiments that we've described today. Now I want you to remain very still and calm as you listen to my voice. How much is still here? I'm just rearranging my windows so I can see what I need to do. 1 moment keep calm. This is trickier than I hope, OK. Good. Just listen to my voice now. Whatever you do, do not move. You must keep your head perfectly still. Now you might just feel me by your left ear, OK and keep. I'm just going to start drilling through your skull. Very good, very, very good. This shouldn't hurt too much because I spat some poppy seeds onto you.

Speaker 3

I don't feel anything.

Speaker 2

Now I'm going to move over to the right hand side. Now, keep still. It's going to mop up a little bit of the blood little hole in here. Now, this actually revenge for Episode 1, where you gave me brain surgery. Little bit of squishing and stuff there, but don't worry about it. That's just fluid leaving your brain. OK, So what I've done is I have carefully cut some openings into your skull. You may open your eyes now face like ohh. And and I have inserted some wires very finely into your visual cortex and they will actually allow me to take signals from a camera outside your body, directly into your brain. But you're also going to need a special box containing a computer to interpret the signal into something that your brain understands. We will also have to train your brain to understand this new information that can be sent to it, so this might sound like science fiction, but it's not to be. Back in 17th of January 2000. And that sounds a long time. Ago to you? William H Dobell or double Dobell, he announced to the world that he had restored sight to a patient. And it wasn't perfect, and it wasn't without a. Teams. Now in his booked Maryland, Stephen Kotler, he actually got to meet Stabell and a man called Patient Alpha during a really critical stage of this this process.

Speaker 1

Oh I. I remember Harry about this.

Speaker 2

I think you have. Yeah, I think listen to something on this. So he had actually been writing this book and. He'd. Been trying to find out about. Like brain implants and restoring sight. And he thought that what he was about to witness was impossible, and he had found nothing to this level with everybody had spoken to the patient alpha. He's 39 years old and he's a tall, strong man. But he lost his sight due to a series of unfortunate accidents, and he now knows today that his name is Jens. And he was sat in a chair being watched by Debo and this assistants, and from his head there's some wires trailing out to these machines and computers around him. And in his head are some plugs. Where the cables like like a headphone cable plugged into the skull, and the surgery is so good that you can barely what you you can't see almost where the the metal ends and the flesh begins. It's so clean. And he's got a small camera mounted on some glasses on his face. So the electrodes are turned on and they start to run through a series of tests, and Dennis describes what you can see, he says. You can see like a medium sized phosphates about 5 inches from his face, then another. This was too bright and they're all different shapes and sizes like so much shaped like bananas and all sorts of stars and his vision. And what they're starting to do is map the result from this video feed to his brain and calibrating it. But suddenly things go wrong and patient alfy's face goes white and his hands curl up into claws and they start slowly rising into the air. And then he arches his back and his necks craning, and his legs are twitching and convey. Missing and he's been over stimulated and he's starting to have a fit. His brain that that's like put too much into it and now dabell he actually refuses any request to call for help. They're saying, look, we've got a call like an ambulance or something and help him. But the bill was like, no, he stops that happening. And it takes about 5 minutes for Jenna's breathing to return to normal. And he he sort of groggily wakes up and he asked about what's happened and the bell shows and there's sympathy and telling him that he'll be fine and that they will terminate the day's proceedings. But over the following few days, Jenny keeps coming back to have his sight restored and like, hour by hour, day by day it improves and the picture becomes more and more detailed as they calibrate these sensors and his brain and everything all together. But it's not like regular sight. It's nowhere near as close to the resolution that we see. And it's also only one frame. Second says that he manages to. Leave. And they put an item like a telephone or something on the desk. It takes him several minutes to find it. But then after only 30 minutes of practising, he can find it in under 10 seconds on the desk, no matter where it is, and pick it up. And by the end of the training, he can actually drive a car around a car park, not safely on the road. But he's gone from being able to see nothing at all. To being able to drive. And what I described there, that's over 20 years ago. And if you look at your phone and think how advanced cameras and electronics things have become in that time. So I couldn't imagine a phone like that 20 years ago, just imagine how far we could go today with our quality of like implants and vision. But it's actually really difficult to perform these experiments. Uh, because you have to pass over the regulation and then, uh, the operation that Jen had for his implants was performed in Portugal, as the procedure wasn't allowed in the US and about here's a bit of a maverick. And he I think he funded a lot of it through making uh prosthetic limbs and different implants of people like amazing inventor but. Also, maybe slightly crazy scientist. Like neural link and things like Elon Musk and different people trying, it seems to be a very renaissance in this type of science.

Speaker 1

And now it seems to be crazy, though I can't.

Speaker 2

Yes, maybe, but perhaps you need that right at the fringes of society. Perhaps you need people who are willing to take that risk. But we we've got a new K Hey St we. Do we? Yeah. We've got an UK host and we're going to introduce them to you now and we're going to ask them what their thoughts are on the future of brain implants and artificial vision. Hello could you tell us all about what you think the future of artificial vision will be? I am plants, brain implants, any problems or solutions that it may present?

Speaker 4

The future of artificial vision is quite exciting, with several advancements on the horizon, eye and brain implants are key areas of development. Eye implants like Bionic eyes could restore or enhance vision. They might use tiny cameras or sensors that send signals to the brain, helping those with visual impairments. These implants might even offer. Capabilities beyond normal vision, like zooming or night vision. Brain implants take a different approach. They might bypass the eyes entirely, stimulating the visual cortex directly. This method could help people who have lost their eyes or have damaged optic. Nerves. However, there are challenges and considerations. For one, the technology needs to be safe and reliable. It's also important to ensure it's accessible and not just available to a privileged few. Ethical concerns like the potential for surveillance or privacy breaches are also crucial in terms of solutions. Ongoing research and trials are key. Collaborations between tech companies, medical researchers and ethical boards can ensure the technology develops responsibly and benefits as many as possible. The integration of artificial intelligence with these implants could enhance their capabilities. But it's essential to balance technological advancement with ethical considerations and societal impact.

Speaker 2

I think you've raised some very good points there, but Anton wanted to know, are we going to get laser eyes?

Speaker 4

Ah, the idea of laser eyes, often seen in science fiction, is a fascinating concept. While the idea sounds like it's straight out of a superhero movie in reality. The development of laser eyes as a form of artificial vision is highly unlikely in the near future. The main focus of current artificial vision technology is to restore or enhance normal visual capabilities. This includes improving sight for those with visual impairments or adding functionalities like zoom or enhanced night vision. The development of laser emitting eyes would involve significant challenges, both technically and ethically. Technically, integrating lasers powerful enough to be useful while ensuring they are safe for both the user and others would be extremely complex. Ethically, the idea of weaponizing a human capability raises significant concerns. In short, while technology is advancing rapidly, the focus remains on medically beneficial enhancements rather than the kind of fantastical abilities seen in comics or movies.

Speaker 2

So what do you make of that, Anton? That's our new AI Co host.

Speaker 1

The Cohoes is alright, but he upset me because he said that there's not going to be Lee's rice soup.

Speaker 2

And I I saw your little face drop when he. Told you that. Actually, that makes me think a little bit about other things that we might have in the future with augmented reality. So imagine you've got contact lenses in your eyes. That argument what you see along with the combination of AI, where everything you look at could be like Google vision, where you look at the Eiffel Tower. And. And because obviously you don't know what that is, overlay in text over the top of it Eiffel Tower. It might tell you how big it is or when it was built, which in some ways is quite interesting, but it's that destroying our sense of discovery or imagine you meet somebody for the first time and it tells you their favourite food, their age, their name, everything that's might be destroying conversations. Or or one thought I had is people like to do avatars, or you imagine everybody's got a Snapchat philtre on all the time. Yeah. And that's where you see you never see the real person, you just. See an avatar. Ohh.

Speaker 1

Yeah, anyway. Good episodes.

Speaker 2

Yeah. So that's the end of our episode. But I I think it shows how important it is to. Follow good scientific processes. To really get an understanding of the world, doesn't it? Don't just go. Off. With ideas like the Greeks did, but also how even with that. Sometimes the experiments that we've used to get where we are today might not necessarily be the most ethical in some cases, but. Is that the right thing to do or not? What do you reckon, Anton? Do you think we sometimes need those Renegades to push us forwards?

Speaker 1

Sorry, I'm just shocked because the picture has changed colours for me.

Speaker 2

Ohh OK yeah, so this is the picture. Of the dress. What colour do you see? It.

Speaker 1

Well, before you just scrolled away from it and scrolled back, I saw for the first time ever as the Golden White. For the first time, and then you just scrolled away and scrolled back and that's black.

Speaker 2

And blue, black and blue. Yeah. So this is you probably would have heard the address that did the rounds on the Internet a few years ago, and it's about how we perceive colour and we're actually gonna do a little bonus feature, I think, on how we perceive colour and how the dress works and why some people see it as gold and white and. Some people see it as blue and black. So look out for that episode scene on our Patreon. Probably Anton, so you can tell them.

Speaker 1

Yay, we've got Patreon. We released like our little bonus episode after most of our episodes. Yeah, you can support for, I think $1.00 just to be nice. Yeah, there's a $5 which I think well with the $1.00 you get some little rewards and stuff, but the $5 you get a whole episode.

Speaker

MHM.

Speaker 2

You get the virus, yeah.

Speaker 1

And. And with the $10 you get like some videos or extras like you mentioned much, much, much earlier where you said some animals have multiple types of eye. We've got some sea monkeys. Yes, which we might do, like a mini documentary on, potentially. And that I think that'll be in the. 10 the $10.

Speaker 2

Yeah, yeah, it's sea monkeys actually have two different types of eye, and we've been growing and we've even got our first generation of babies, don't we?

Speaker 1

Yeah, but no more spoilers. No more spoilers, no. To get subscribe to our Patreon.

Speaker 2

Yeah, yeah. And that that will help support us and mean that we can record more often. And yeah, bring more cool stuff to you as well as what have some patron you can do what on social media and on.

Speaker 1

You can follow us on Twitter or X.

Speaker 3

Uh-huh. At Kerri Child pod Instagram at Curie Child pod Facebook. Yeah, we're on Facebook as well. Yeah, what else?

Speaker 2

Really good things to do would be to write and leave a review somewhere or rate us on Apple Podcast or Spotify because that really helps to get the word out or tell a friend about the show or share.

Speaker 1

Yeah. And we got a YouTube channel. We've got all of our episodes on there and a few bonus like extras, little fact.

Speaker 2

Yeah, you've been doing some shorts that haven't, which are really good. Yeah. So thank you very much. Sorry it's been so long since we last recorded. We do still love you. Despite the absence, but has been due to us talking out intelligent speech which will be live on the feed in a couple of months time. Yeah, where we spoke about the Pavloff Institute and that was really cool and yeah. So thank you very much.

Speaker 3

Thank you. Thank you. Goodbye. Bye. Love you.

Speaker 1

Our eyes are soft and squishy with muscles that.

Speaker 2

Sorry, I was squishing my.

Speaker 1

Yeah, that's a bit weird. That's unstable cast. I don't like how I'm. Talking today. Sight is about seeing a lot more about than just seeing light.

Speaker 2

Neural.