Report on Progress in the Development of Visual Prostheses

□ In summary, we can say that as a result of recent work in implanting visual prostheses in correlated work in visual physiology, data processing, and materials technology and in the development of sophisticated simulation techniques, we have approached several steps closer to a vantage point from which we can state the conditions under which a reliable visual prosthesis in the armamentarium of sensory aids has been clarified as a result of the conference and the interest of the scientific community in the development of such a system has been stimulated. It is significant that Dr. MacNichol (the new director of NINDS) has made our computer program for simulating the output of a prosthesis available to scientists at the National Institutes of Health as well as members of the newly-formed National Eye Institute. It is also obvious that we can sustain scientific interest in the problems involved in the development of experiments toward a visual prosthesis, because of the simultaneously human and personal involvement of researchers in alleviating the problems of blindness.