About Mothlight
Mothlight is a map of the labs and companies around the world working on visual prostheses: devices and therapies that bring back some sight to blind people by stimulating the visual system.
How to use it
Start from the visual pathway and pick where a prosthesis acts: the retina, the optic nerve, the lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN) or the visual cortex. Each site has a world map and a list by stimulation method, with filters for research stage, type, status and animal model. Every group has its own page with a link to its lab or company site and its papers in time order.
What the labels mean
Stimulation methods
- Electrical · epiretinal
- Electrodes on the inner surface of the retina, next to the ganglion cells (e.g. Argus II).
- Electrical · subretinal
- Powered chips or electrode arrays placed under the retina, where the photoreceptors were (e.g. Alpha IMS).
- Electrical · suprachoroidal
- Electrodes behind the choroid, outside the retina.
- Electrical · optic nerve
- A cuff around the nerve, or electrodes inside it.
- Electrical · deep brain
- Electrodes in the thalamus (LGN).
- Electrical · cortical surface
- Electrodes on the surface of the visual cortex (e.g. Orion).
- Electrical · intracortical
- Penetrating electrodes inside the visual cortex (e.g. Utah arrays, ICVP).
- Magnetic
- Implanted micro-coils that stimulate with magnetic fields.
- Photovoltaic & photosensitive materials
- Pixels or materials that turn light into a stimulus without wires, such as PRIMA, organic photovoltaics, nanowires or nanoparticles.
- Optogenetic
- Gene therapy that makes surviving cells sensitive to light.
- Chemical photoswitch
- Small molecules that make native ion channels light-sensitive.
- Ultrasound
- Focused ultrasound stimulation, including sonogenetics.
- Photoacoustic
- Light pulses turned into local ultrasound by an absorbing film or particle.
- Thermal / infrared
- Stimulation by local heating with infrared light.
Research stage
The furthest stage a group has reached: bench (devices, models or cells), ex vivo (isolated retina or tissue), animal, clinical trial, or approved. "Approved" is used only for the company and the inventor lab of a device that regulators have approved; labs that took part in trials are listed as clinical trial.
Status
Active groups have published visual-prosthesis research within about the last five years. Inactive marks companies that closed or left the field, and labs without such a paper in about five years.
Limitations
- Paper lists are filtered automatically, so a few relevant papers may be missing and a few borderline ones included. Papers without a DOI and most preprints are not listed yet.
- Companies are listed with the papers known so far, not a full search.
- The map is still growing; some groups working on visual prostheses are surely not here yet.
Credits
Country outlines from Natural Earth (public domain). Paper metadata from OpenAlex (CC0) and Crossref. Map built with Leaflet. No logos, photos or text are copied from lab websites; each group links to its own page instead.