A daredevil researcher’s latest quest: to restore sight lost to glaucoma using virtual reality

PALO ALTO, Calif. — In the name of science, Andrew Huberman has gone diving 40 feet underwater with great white sharks. He’s gone mountain climbing without ropes or harnesses, traversing some sections where one slip would have sent him plummeting 650 feet.

Now, the Stanford neuroscientist is embarking on a different kind of daring quest, testing an intriguing but unproven hypothesis: that virtual reality could be used to preserve or even restore vision for patients with glaucoma.

Academics and companies all over the world are betting on virtual reality to help patients with conditions like anxiety, depression, PTSD, and ADHD. Huberman believes in the potential of the technology for vision issues, too, but he speaks about it less like an evangelist than someone who’s discovered a useful tool. He’s also harnessing it in pioneering ways.

In the case of his glaucoma clinical trial, Huberman is asking patients to gaze at flashing white dots in the hopes that they can trigger the firing of neurons that connect the eye to the brain and coax them to regenerate.

He’s also using virtual reality to study the physiology of anxiety and fear. He has recruited volunteers to watch virtual reality footage of scenarios they may never encounter in real life: Being attacked by a dog. Climbing more than 250 feet up a tree. And swimming with sharks.

Huberman, 42, traveled to many of the shoots, putting himself in personal danger to collect the footage