The Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute is a nonprofit research institute in

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

, California, with a focus on

vision science Vision science is the scientific study of visual perception. Researchers in vision science can be called vision scientists, especially if their research spans some of the science's many disciplines. Vision science encompasses all studies of vision ...

and

rehabilitation engineering Rehabilitation engineering is the systematic application of engineering sciences to design, develop, adapt, test, evaluate, apply, and distribute technological solutions to problems confronted by individuals with disabilities. These individuals ...

. It was founded in 1959 by Arthur Jampolsky and

Alan B. Scott Alan Brown Scott (July 13, 1932 – December 16, 2021) was an American ophthalmologist specializing in eye muscles and their disorders, such as strabismus (eye misalignment). He is best known for his work in developing and manufacturing the drug th ...

, when some members of

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

's Ophthalmology Department elected to stay in San Francisco rather than move to

Palo Alto Palo Alto (; Spanish for "tall stick") is a charter city in the northwestern corner of Santa Clara County, California, United States, in the San Francisco Bay Area, named after a coastal redwood tree known as El Palo Alto. The city was estab ...

Scientific contributions

The Institute did early experiments in

sensory substitution Sensory substitution is a change of the characteristics of one sensory modality into stimuli of another sensory modality. A sensory substitution system consists of three parts: a sensor, a coupling system, and a stimulator. The sensor records stimu ...

, especially the substitution of tactile information for visual information to help blind people navigate and other methods to obtain accessible technology. This research is often performed by scientists who are blind, such as Josh Miele. The institute's use of

botulinum toxin Botulinum toxin, or botulinum neurotoxin (BoNT), is a neurotoxic protein produced by the bacterium ''Clostridium botulinum'' and related species. It prevents the release of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine from axon endings at the neuromusc ...

in humans as a therapy to treat strabismus. This initial therapeutic use led to later cosmetic use in

Botox Botulinum toxin, or botulinum neurotoxin (BoNT), is a neurotoxic protein produced by the bacterium ''Clostridium botulinum'' and related species. It prevents the release of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine from axon endings at the neurom ...

. Other impactful work involved Anthony Norcia's study of vision in infants and Erich Sutter's invention of the multifocal electroretinogram and of the multifocal evoked potential. The Institute has originated various visual illusions, including

Christopher Tyler Christopher William Tyler is a neuroscientist, creator of the autostereogram ("Magic Eye" pictures), and is the Head of the Brain Imaging Center at the Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute He also holds a professorship at City University of L ...

's development of

autostereogram An autostereogram is a two-dimensional (2D) image that can create the optical illusion of a three-dimensional (3D) scene. Autostereograms use only one image to accomplish the effect while normal stereograms require two. The 3D scene in an a ...

s, and Anthony Norcia's coffer illusion. Also popular are Tyler's analysis of the position of eyes in paintings, of

Mona Lisa The ''Mona Lisa'' ( ; it, Gioconda or ; french: Joconde ) is a half-length portrait painting by Italian artist Leonardo da Vinci. Considered an archetypal masterpiece of the Italian Renaissance, it has been described as "the best known ...

's smile and of

Leonardo da Vinci Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci (15 April 14522 May 1519) was an Italian polymath of the High Renaissance who was active as a painter, Drawing, draughtsman, engineer, scientist, theorist, sculptor, and architect. While his fame initially res ...

's possible eye condition.

Scientists

Over the decades, the Institute has hosted generations of vision scientists, including *

Paul Bach-y-Rita Paul Bach-y-Rita (April 4, 1934 – November 20, 2006) was an American neuroscientist whose most notable work was in the field of neuroplasticity. Bach-y-Rita was one of the first to seriously study the idea of neuroplasticity (although it was fi ...

Laura Busse Laura Busse (born c. 1977) is a German neuroscientist and professor of Systemic Neuroscience within the Division of Neurobiology at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. Busse's lab studies context-dependent visual processing in mouse model ...

Matteo Carandini Matteo Carandini (born 1967) is a neuroscientist who studies the visual system. He is currently a professor at University College London, where he co-directs thCortical Processing Laboratorywith Kenneth D Harris. He studies the visual cortex at ...

* Julie M Harris * Suzanne McKee *

Ken Nakayama Ken Nakayama is an American psychologist and prior to retirement was the Edgar Pierce Professor of Psychology at Harvard University. He is known for his work on prosopagnosia, an inability to recognize faces, and super recognisers, people with sign ...

* Anthony Norcia * Alan B Scott *Erich Sutter *

Alan Yuille Alan Yuille (born 1955) is a Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Computational Cognitive Science with appointments in the departments of Cognitive Science and Computer Science at Johns Hopkins University. Yuille develops models of vision and co ...

Joshua Miele Joshua A. Miele (born 1969) is an American research scientist who specializes in accessible technology design. Since 2019, Miele has been Principal Accessibility Researcher at Amazon Lab126, a subsidiary of Amazon that works on hardware products ...

References

External links

ski.org
* https://barkansociety.com/partner/the-smith-kettlewell-eye-research-institute/ * https://www.afb.org/aw/15/9/15535 {{Coord, 37, 47, 28.5, N, 122, 26, 2.9, W, type:landmark_region:US-CA, display=title Medical research institutes in California Research institutes in the San Francisco Bay Area