Night Vision

Have any of you tried playing with this idea?


I don't understand biochemistry all that well, but this seems interesting at least.
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  • Yeah, been there. Done that.
  • Hehehe, man, we should have used screen names in interviews....
  • I figured anything I'd come across you guys would've already done. :p
  • ya know they're the ones the article talks about right? just to be clear XD
  • I got that vibe, yeah.
    I should've guessed. I mean, I read the article and thought
    "Hey, this seems like something Glims and/or Cassox would do!"

    I should've anticipated that they're about the only ones crazy enough to do it and then publish that they did it.
  • if you think they're the only ones crazy enough to try stuff like that on here, maybe you haven't looked around? :P  everyone on here who does stuff other than magnets tends to lean into the crazy category quiet often. 
  • I haven't seen any of them actually on science sites. I've seen at least 4 articles involving those two now, possibly more. :p
  • Ha I didn't realize you guys are the one on SFM I offered to try it next time around as a partially colorblind person. By the way my offer still stands ;)
  • i was reading that article about the night vision and saw cassox in the picture and was like, hey that looks like cassox. have you done any follow up work on that? 50' is pretty impressive for being like a temporary videogame like attribute. have you written any other papers or articles about it? 
  • No, although I'm seriously considering round two on this. There are a few significant improvements that I think could be made in both efficacy and safety. Anyone interested in participating?  
  • edited October 2015
    I'm interested. In terms of experimental design if you didn't do this last time, I suggest making use of negative and positive controls (regular eyedrops as the negative and infrared goggles as the positive perhaps if you can afford them) as well as taking a baseline night vision test before the eyedrops are tested. I suggest you develop some type of metric to test for. Perhaps being able to reliably detect motion at a certain distance in the dark, or being able to read a set of characters at a certain distance in the dark, and take baselines for these as well. Also I'm not sure about the scalable cost of these eyedrops but it would be nice to include multiple subjects.
  • IR goggles are a piece of cake to make, all you need is an old flipphone or a cheap webcam and a screwdriver.
  • I'm in if you want another person.
  • Ok. I'll do a write up of my intended changes to the procedure and a cost analysis. BCI, I'll be emailing regarding design as well.
  • Man, if you could think of a way to get rid of the A1 without the extended diet, that would be amazing. That sucked.
  • I'm also interested if I'm not already too late
  • oh wait, we're talking about the eyedrops. The procedure itself is blisteringly stupid simple. This is really a matter of getting enough people in a room and having enough materials, and having the ERG setup and actually working.  We just needed a few more people trying it out.

    Infra red goggles are still down at the lab space so that's covered, but this doesn't matter cause IR isn't really a thing. ERG is the metric
  • I'm interested in possibly joining in on the testing, Say where and when and I'll say yay or nay.

    I was going to ask about the dieting thing, would just taking the A2 pills enmasse work, or does it need to be done along with the dieting? Second question, what were you guys eating exactly? A list of food items would be helpful. I would like to try to recreate your results.

    Sans available magnets, I still want to do stuff with sensory modification. This seems like a (relatively) easy and temporary way to do that. Either with the eye drops or through the more elaborate vitamin A alteration process.
  • I'm thinking I may be a bit to far away from you for this but if you don't mind a. Mainer being involved I'm still in
  • Yeah, I want to design a simpler metric for this. The ERG thing is just too much to deal with. It's not actually CE6 I'm interested. The way CE6 works is that it's excited by light that our eyes aren't particularly sensitive to, causing it to release a singlet free radical molecule. This is taken up by the native opsin chromophore complex. The problem though is that this process is producing free radicals - The low doses used for the drops aren't terribly risky, especially when shielded from light, but those who recieved the drops reported somewhat mixed results. At GF meandering man was talking about the effects being that people could spot the planets effortlessly. They looked significantly different from stars.. other members of the party couldn't see this. We can't increase the dose because it increases the associated risk of killing off blood vessels and retinal cells.

    There is another solution. Actually a few others. Take a look at:
    http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0042698998003320

    What we're looking at is either pheophorbide a or pheophytin a. Another study (Washington) found pheophytin to act similarly to CE6. It wasn't quite as large a shift of sensitivity at comparable doses.. but that's the rub. The mechanism is different. Rather than making and handing over a free radical, there's some process Im only starting to understand : generate a triplet state (T1) of the pheophorbide which could then transfer energy to the ground state of the 11-cis chromophore of the visual pigment to generate its triplet excited state ( Turro, 1978). This triplet state is (likely) less damaging than the singlet state meaning we can increase amount of drug.

    Hopefully, a safer, more effective type of eye drop for night vision. We also need to play around with the delivery mechanism. The CE6 was nearly impossible to get into solution. At this point, I've played around with a lot of photosensitive pigments and let me tell you.. they are a pain in the ass. The reason the CE6 remained a suspension was because it's only soluble when in a somewhat narrow ph range. The solution should be more effective than the suspension. Also, I need to follow up on a few possible upgrades such as EDTA. I don't know that this is desirable to place in the eye but it certainly boosts the DMSO absorption trick.

    Ok, so ideas? If we do decide to go with a more complicated way of gathering data, then we'd need clusters of people. There seems to be an enclave of biohackers in SF and in the Seattle-ish area. I can definitely host down here for a group. I'd bet that Glims would be willing to take lead for a group in Washington.

    Input?
  • Ok, well the next steps are to design the study, do further research as to the risks and characteristics of the chosen material, and to price it out so we can get a per person cost. We can set up a slack channel on Grind Syndicate for this. I think discussion should stay here but the slack channel can be used to share documents and such easily. Let me know if you're interested in participating.
  • @cassox is it possible being one of the only guys (known) over here in Maine to still participate?
  • Ya, totally. Especially if we keep the data collection simple.
  • So, originally I was going to say that if you look at chlorophyll c and pheophorbine a you'd notice they're almost identical except for the magneisium center. And I was going to suggest buying that instead as it in theory should be cheaper. The problem is that no one seems to carry it. Although in future we could make it by growing the algae it occurs in and extracting it but that would require HPLC at the least and would be a pain in the ass. SO for now, phoephorbine a is the most promising and is actually fairly cheap at $88  for 10mg. Although I dunno how much you need per drop so that might be expensive. 

    as to teh EDTA it has ben used for opthamalic use http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/588636_5 and I'm sure I could dig up a study. But realistically, that shit is in everything you use on a daily basis, from soaps to make and more. 

    The DMSO freaks me out tbh. One screw up and you've got a nasty eye infection. So an alternative would be good. As to dissolving the stuff, did you try a sonication bath? Seems to work well.

    I thought of one way to make this way better. Using microcapsules that could pass between and into the cells fairly easily. and once inside would be digested releasing the molecule. I've seen nanocapsules like this made out of BSA (bovine serum albumin) which could work nicely. I'll have the equiptment to make them in the next week or two hopefully and will be playing around with them anyway. Just a thought, not necessarily something for this batch but maybe future batches if we wish to improve it and get away from DMSO

    Also a single molecule may not be ideal. We may wish to use some combination of the candiates as well. If they work through different mechanisms they may compliment each other. 
  • actually i kept reading, both pheophytin an phophorbine both come from chlorophyll treated with weak acid to remove the magnesium. which would explain why they look exactly like it. Buying chlrophyll a or b is cheap and we could try treating it with weak acid to make the active compounds on mass. Even if we had a mixture of chlorophylls it looks like as long as we can remove the magnesium compound and acid afterwords we could use all of the products. Sort of like making broth for micro use, we could make a "broth" of chlorophyll digested with weak acid and use that. Hell if we're clever we choose an acid that'll form a a magnesium product that's non toxic so any left after the purifcation would be harmless.
  • Where did you get that quote from? There are a slew of photosensitive chlorophyll derivatives. The reason I'm looking at those two is related to a study by Washington showing an effect comparable to ce6. Many depend on that singlet being produced and handed to the opsin as well so phototoxicity might be an issue. The advantage of the soup would be having a crap load of absorption peaks. This might be better.. I don't know. Its definitely worth looking into.
  • edited November 2015
    It was an estimation based on what i've seen about degrading chlorophylls. Cholin e6 was made by treating with base, both pheophytin and pheophorbine are made by treating with weak acid. And it doesn't seem like a particular one is much better than the rest. I like the soup idea for exactly the reason you said, lots of peaks and a better chance one'll work. Or at the least if we pick a single one and purify it down any contamination would also be photosensitive so should only add to the affect rather than lessen it. Easiest way to test is to make a few bottle of eye drops. a couple with various "soups" and then a couple with the individual molecules and then see which works best. if soup works it's a much cheaper alternative.

    although toxicity is always a problem so ideally we test each on like a rabbit or something first and see how they respond. or do it the grinder way and yolo our way through it. which honestly, it's chlorophyll. i know people who eat that shit by the bucket and also, every plant you've eaten. I doubt anything it breaks down into easily is toxic. so the just try it method should be fine. Mind you, there's a difference between eating something and putting it in your eye, obviously. 

    Heres a LINK to a book describing the procedure. I found one article about using regular silica gel column to sperate out the different pigments to end up with remarkably high purity samples even at high volumes. But my school's shitty website is giving me trouble letting me download it. so once i find it i'll post it. Point is, this is dirt easy to do. It's also really easy to switch out the magnesium center, something which also changes how well this works and is something we can play around with potentially.
  • I'm definitely interested. The first run will most likely simply be purchased materials to avoid having to go through the purification steps. I'm also interested in the microencapsulation. Let me know how it works out.
  • So, the Singlet radical reacting with the chromophore complex is what tells the eye that light is hitting it (Or rather, hitting the CE6)?


    @cassox Have you had any more success grasping the mechanism that pheophytin operates on?



    Lastly, will the transport mechanism you all used for the CE6 drops work for the "soup" that seems to be coming together now?
  • edited November 2015
    the transport mechanism is pretty simple atm. DMSO is a sort of crazy solvent that will take anything dissolved or suspended in it and bring it into the body. It's pretty dangerous in that way if misused since it can drag bacteria and such in with it. Hence why everything needs to be really sterile and clean. There's insulin in the original formulation right? I believe that was for getting the compound of interest into the chromophore complex but I don't remember. so as long as that's the entire mechanism then ya the soup should work fine since al the compounds are very similair.
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