This session will discuss how cortical activity is modulated by eye movements, the challenges of eye movements with the loss of the fovea in macular degeneration and the use of fixational eye movements, and eye movements in general, as a biomarker for disease.

Jacob Yates, PhD, Assistant Professor, University of California, Berkeley.  

Title: Active visual neuroscience in non-human primates 

Jorge Otero-Millan, PhD, Assistant Professor, University of California, Berkeley. 

Title: Effect of head tilt and stimulus tilt on saccade direction biases and their dependency with saccade amplitude.

Esther Gonzalez, PhD, Research Associate, University of Toronto. 

Title: Oculomotor consequences of macular degeneration. 

Christy Sheehy, PhD, CEO, C. Light Technologies. 

Title: Quantitative measurements of fixational eye motion in multiple sclerosis

Discussant: Preeti Verghese, PhD (Senior Scientist, SKERI).

This session will discuss neural circuits underlying vergence and accommodation, the consequences of impaired accommodation and vergence during visual development and their association with strabismus, the importance of binocularity in daily visual function and the consequences of impaired binocularity on eye-hand coordination.

Paul Gamlin, PhD, Professor, University of Alabama, Birmingham. 

Title: Neural control of vergence eye movements

Jenny Read, PhD, Professor, University of Newcastle. 

Title: Control-theoretic models of vergence and accommodation

Rowan Candy, MCOptom, PhD, Professor, Indiana University. 

Title: Disparity-driven reflex vergence during infancy and early childhood

Ewa Niechwiej-Szwedo, PhD, Associate Professor, University of Waterloo. 

Title: The effects of amblyopia on the control of eye and hand movements

Discussant: Dennis Levi, OD PhD (Professor, University of California, Berkeley).

This session will discuss the functional assessment of vision in health and disease using the electroretinogram, adaptive optics and optical coherence tomography, fMRI to assess visual field integrity, and the use of magnetic resonance spectroscopy to understand the role of inhibitory neurotransmitters in human vision  

Omar Mahroo PhD, FRCOphth, Professor, University College London. 

Title: Advances in electroretinography

Ravi Jonnal PhD, Assistant Professor, University of California, Davis. 

Title: An introduction to optoretinography

Yoichiro Masuda MD, PhD, Lecturer, The Jikei University School of Medicine.

Title: V1 Projection Zone Signals in Human Macular Degeneration Depend on Task, not  Visual Stimulus

Holly Bridge, DPhil, Professor, Oxford University.

Title: Investigating the role of neurochemistry in human visual perception

Discussant: Christopher Tyler, PhD, DSc. (Senior Scientist, SKERI).

This session will discuss the synaptic basis of plasticity, the changes in neuronal connectivity with learning, the effects of non-invasive brain stimulation on brain plasticity , and the effects of long term visual deprivation on human visual processing.

Mriganka Sur, PhD, Newton Professor of Neuroscience, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 

Title: Visual cortex plasticity: mechanisms and implications

Wu Li, PhD, Director, State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning, Beijing Normal University. 

Title: Modifications of visual cortical processing by implicit learning

Lotfi Merabet, OD, PhD, MPH, Associate Professor, Mass. Eye & Ear. 

Title: Assessing functional vision in early brain-based visual impairment 

Ione Fine, PhD, Professor, University of Washington, Seattle. 

Title: I can hear what you see: cortical plasticity in congenitally blind individuals 

Discussant: Lora Likova, PhD. (Senior Scientist, SKERI).

The session will discuss computational models of human visual processing and machine vision , factors that improve the robustness of deep neural networks in the simulation of biological vision, a deeper computational understanding of visual processing, and computer vision and machine learning models for accessibility.

Miguel Eckstein, PhD, Distinguished Professor, University of California, Santa Barbara. 

Title: From Bayesian ideal observers to deep neural networks

Dan Yamins, PhD, Assistant Professor, Stanford University. 

Title: Beyond ConvNets: deepening our computational understanding of the visual system. 

Frank Tong, PhD Centennial Professor, Vanderbilt University. 

Title: Understanding the computational bases of robust object recognition in humans and deep neural networks. 

Danna Gurari, PhD Assistant Professor, University of Colorado Boulder. 

Title: Describing images taken by people with visual impairments with AI: the past, present, and future. 

Discussant: Laura Walker, PhD (Vision Scientist, Apple Inc).

This session will cover a range of virtual and augmented reality applications from visual assessment and training to accessibility tools that convey spatial information non-visually, in addition to tools that provide an enhanced visual display of the environment for people with low vision.

Ben Backus, PhD, CTO, Vivid Vision. 

Title: VR as a platform for new vision tests and treatments: at-home monitoring of fields and a holistic approach towards treating amblyopia

Brandon Biggs, MDes, Doctoral Candidate at GeorgiaTech. 

Title: XR through the senses: navigating the cross-sensory digital frontier

Paul Ruvolo, PhD, Assoc. Prof., Olin College of Engineering. 

Title: Bridging the gap: models for bringing assistive, augmented reality technology research to the public

Yuhang Zhao, PhD, Assistant Professor, University of Wisconsin, Madison. 

Title: Augmented reality systems for people with low vision

Discussant: James Coughlan, PhD. (Director, Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center in Blindness & Low Vision, SKERI).

This is a capstone session that not only discusses recent advances in vision restoration techniques, including optogenetic therapies, AI to improve a bionic eye, and brain-computer interfaces to directly stimulate visual cortex , but also includes the voices of prominent blind and visually impaired scientists on the relative merits of restoring vision versus making the most of available senses. To further amplify the needs and viewpoints of the patient community, this session will also include lay individuals with visual impairment as well as clinicians familiar with the challenges of different low-vision populations.

Juliette McGregor, PhD, Assistant Professor, University of Rochester.

Title: Vision restoration at the fovea

Michael Beyeler, PhD, Assistant Professor, University of California, Santa Barbara.

Title: Towards a Smart Bionic Eye: AI-powered artificial vision for the treatment of incurable blindness

Dan Adams, PhD, Principal Investigator, Neuralink. 

Title: Development of a visual prosthesis using the Neuralink implant

Gordon Legge, PhD, Professor, University of Minnesota. 

Title: Vision restoration: the dream

Josh Miele, PhD, Accessibility Lead, Amazon. 

Title: Messianic Dreams and Mundane Realities -- the unintended consequences of raising from the dead and restoring sight to the blind

Sile O’Modhrain, PhD, Associate Professor, University of Michigan. 

Title: Attuning to the world: sensory substitution or sensorimotor recalibration?

Don Fletcher, MD, Clinical Scientist, SKERI. 

Title: Insights from 37 years of seeing patients who can't see me 

Arvind Chandna, MD in conversation with Mae Lane-Karnas and Katie Lane-Karnas

Title: Cerebral Visual Impairment (CVI). From Diagnosis to Directing Our Future. A conversation with a 13-year-old CVIer and parent

Discussant: Santani Teng, PhD (Associate Scientist, SKERI).