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NASA Technology Could Lead To Artificial Retinas

Posted by timothy on from the look-close-fellas dept.

NewtonsLaw writes "In this story it is reported that NASA has been working on technologies that could be used to restore the site of people with damaged retinas. It seems that they've developed some highly light-sensitive oxides that could be used in conjunction with "space-aged ceramics" to create an overlay that would be placed in the back of the eye and wired to the optic nerve. Science fiction becoming science-fact?"

3 of 13 comments (clear)

  1. "No wires" is just plain inaccurate. by Alik · · Score: 3

    True, it won't be like the Dobelle prosthesis, where there are wires running into the skull. However, the fact remains that the eye is not set up to use ceramic films as its detector. You'll need *something* to transduce the signal into a stimulus for the optic nerve, and that means you're going to need power. Power isn't easy, especially for something like this which has to be very low-heat (boiled eyeball, anyone?). That can probably be handled with something like the4 inductive transfer setups they use for heart pumps, but it's not just "stick it in your eye and forget about it".

    Someone above mentioned retinotopic mapping, which is of course a big ol' issue. However, if all they do is detect the light and trigger a stimulus at a corresponding point on the retina (and if there are still ganglion cells left to pick up the current), they should be able to get the mapping "for free".

    I actually saw a grant come out of a lab I worked in at CMU that wanted to do something very similar, except that instead of using ceramic films they wanted to use bacterial protein as the light detector. Pretty cool stuff. Didn't get funded, but I'm rewriting the parts I liked and trying to turn it into a thesis.

  2. not quite a "cure", a first step by caite · · Score: 3
    The first people to receive the benefits of new technology would probably begin by being able to see only light, the team's research shows.

    They expect it to get better, of course, but human trials aren't expected to start for at least a year. It's a small step, and there are a lot of people who'd like a way to see again. Especially the people who were blinded after a lifetime of seeing, and that's one of the kinds of blindness "cured" by this procedure.

    Like the curing dog blindness discussion, I'm not sure that everyone will be happy. There are a lot of blind people who think that being blind is what makes them special. It would be great if blindness really could be cured even if some people opted against it.

    As for it being science fiction leading the science, it will be a long time until we get the built-in cameras and zoom features. Too bad!

  3. Not So Fast by MOBE2001 · · Score: 3

    There are approximately one million fibers from the retina that make their way to the visual cortex via the thalamus. There is a one to one retinotopic mapping between the output of the retinal ganglion cells and cells in various layers of the visual cortex. Fibers that represent colors, for example, are processed in separate areas from fibers that are associated with motion. The latter are extremely sensitive to the direction of motion and must be arranged in a center-surround formation. Unless the NASA scientists at the University of Houston can maintain the proper retinotopic mapping and the center surround formations, the brain won't know what to make of those signals. The poor patient might just go insane.