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End To Blindness?
Kevin writes "For the first time ever, researchers from a company called Optobionics surgically implanted an artificial retina into three patients who are blind from retinitis pigmentosa. These highly-experimental prosthetic devices, made of silicone computer chips, are intended to restore ambulatory vision, thereby giving people the freedom to walk without the assistance of a cane or guide dog.
Researchers are begining to develop computer chips that might function in place of
damaged photoreceptor cells."
..isn't silicone used in other, more uh, cosmetic prosthesies? You mean silicon, I hope...
"Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
Now they'll have to be more selective about who they date.
Unfortunately this posting describes retenitis pigmentosa, a relatively rare from of blindness. By far the most common is macular degeneration which occurs mostly in those 55 and older. The numbers of people affected by this disease are staggering; one in six in this age range experience the affects. The fact that this technology may be useful in cases of AMD is exciting news indeed - it has been estimated that as many as 10 million 'boomers' may go blind due to AMD.
I'm curious about something and I think the follow-up discussion will be interesting:
How do people that have been blind their entire life visualize things?
I don't mean to imply that they can't visualize, only that I'm wondering about the extent of their ability to create mental images and how they differ from my own (FYI, I am not blind). That is, it seems as thought they could feel an object and create some sort of wireframe-like thing in their head. Maybe a more appropriate question would have been directed at what they visualize. Most my visualization consist of a combination of things I've perceived with my eyes, not to mention issues associated with color.
Well, there's my potentially ignorant question that's probably only answerable by either blind people or someone who has close contact with them.
Educate us.
Actaully, you can only see at something less than 200x200, with horribly lossy images. Your brain interpolates everything you see. Interesting factoid: your optic nerve carries more information to the retina than it carries to the brain.
When you get into real neurology 101, things get really interesting (even if you're auditing for amusement as an armchair scientist).
Has anybody else noticed morie effects in real life? There is a stretch of I-95 in Palm Beach Country, as you pass over Lake Worth Road... heading north, you can see the side of the water treatment plant. The side has close horizontal slats, all painted an off-white color. As you drive towards it on a bright day, it comes alive with "dancing bugs", similar to two morie patterns overlaid and rotating. The distance at which this occurs is different for different individuals. Some people can't see it, but that may be because they didn't know what to look for.
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Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
I've been legally blind since birth, and just had corrective surgery to "fix" my vision. IMO, the problems one will encounter doing this kind of procedure are not medical in nature, they're psychological. Before my surgery, my uncorrected vision was 20/200 in my right eye, and 20/1000 in my left. With correction, I could get down to 20/80 in my right eye and 20/200 in my left; a marked improvement. With special adaptation, I was even able to get my right eye to 20/30 at distance so that I could get and maintain an unrestricted driver's license. I still walked with the aid of a white cane due to my lack of depth perception (since the vision in my eyes was so unbalanced) and peripheral vision. All in all, I was a pretty well adapted, employed, and productive person. The problems I encountered were primarily social. I found that the sighted public in general wants very little to do with anyone who is obviously disabled. Even if someone would initiate a conversation in a social setting, the only thing they'd want to discuss is my vision. Now, maybe I'm at fault here, but after 25 years of talking about my vision with every Tom, Dick, and Harry; I just didn't want to do it any more. So I talked to an opthomologist and scheduled lens implant surgery to try and correct my vision. Although the surgery was deemed a success in medical terms, my useful vision is substantially less than before. The difficulty that I encountered wasn't medical. The medical procedure was perfect. The problem I'm encountering has to do with my perception of the images I see. Having worn thick glasses my entire life, my brain was used to a greatly magnified image of the world. After surgery, that image was no longer magnified at all, and everything seems small and distant. As a result, I'm not able to pick out much detail in the images that I see, which effects my useful vision. Some of the side effects are quite disturbing. For instance, I can no longer read a magazine, or street signs. This has severely impeded my independence as I have a great deal of difficulty even driving myself to work. These types of problems appear to be common in people who had significant vision impairments for most of their lives. The exact same surgery I had has been performed on countless people who had normal vision for most of their lives, but who developed cataracts later in life with no ill effects whatsoever. In fact, most people return to 20/20 vision or better within days. I had the surgery nearly a month ago, and even with glasses I can not see as well as I did before. This type of medical advance is great, and medically it's a quantum leap in the field. The problem is that there is no rehabilitation available to people in situations similar to mine. There must be a way to teach the brain how to deal with "normal" vision when it isn't used to coping with it. This same phenonenon is what causes the "confusion" in people who have been given sight after being blind for most of their lives. A great physical improvement does not always result in a higher quality of life. It certainly hasn't in my case, and I don't believe it will in others who weren't sighted before the procedure.