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Bionic Eyes
DNAhelix writes: "From NASA: Bionic Eyes - Using space technology, scientists have developed extraordinary ceramic photocells that could repair malfunctioning human eyes."
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Would it mean people being able to see again, albeit in black and white?
no. that's what the cones are for.
There is also a story in the press today about some Japanese researchers who have developed eyes biologically.
"Space technology"? What is this, the 1950's?
The depositation process used to create the ceramic photosensor WAS developed in space. I see your point, but we can hardly blame NASA for wanting to make sure people know that spending their tax money on NASA can directly benefit them later. It's awefully hard to create a vacuum that good on earth.
About the LASIK surgury...
It's true that if you have LASIK surgery you may require glasses again when you are older, but this is due to the natural aging process of the eye, not the LASIK surgery. Your risk of needing reading glasses when you're old remains exactly the same as if you never had any eye surgery.
Your eye has special muscles that reshape the curve of your eye's natural lens. These muscles weaken over time, and can't change shape to focus on objects near to you. This is what reading glasses correct, and is a different problem than what LASIK corrects.
http://kered.org
There are a number of issues with the use of retinal prosthetics. One is the light sensitivity. Silicon based retinal implants have been explored for some time and beyond the silicon toxicity issues, there are issues of the sensitivity of the photoreceptive properties of aritificial circuits. The retina is not simply a CCD and artificial silicon "retinas" are nowhere near the real sensitivities of a human retina. The light required to activate many of these chips is equivalent to shining the full brightness of the sun into the eye.
Additionally, these studies are making several assumptions about the nature of retinal degenerations in that bionic based implants will be able to successfully interface with the ganglion cells or the output cells of the retina. I have read nothing that examines the field effects of these chips. In other words, how do we know that when these chips are activated that they just stimulate the ganglion cells? Basic physics tells us that there should be field effects that also might influence amacrine cells, horizontal cells, remaining bipolar cells etc...
The other assumption that almost no-one in the visual research community has addressed is the intrinsic circuitry of the retina in cases of retinal degeneration. The underlying assumption is that in retinitis pigmentosa and macular degenerations the photoreceptors degenerate from a variety of primary insults (genetic and environmental) and the rest of the retina remains relatively intact. Preliminary research by myself and others indicate that this is NOT the case. The retina continues to degenerate and remodel itself with large numbers of retinal cell subclasses that dissappear and move into other layers of the retina among other dramatic changes.
This does not neccessarily shut the door on retinal transplantation research, rather it indicates that there are other issues that need to be addressed and straightforward transplantations (biologic and bionic based) are not neccessarily going to work in the short term. I think eventually they will work with a combination of pharmacotherapy and/or gene therapy, but we are probably 50 years or more off. Therefore in response to another poster who has a family member who suffers from retinitis pigmentosa and refuses to learn braille, I would suggest that she does not hold out hope that a cure will be just around the corner and make the effort to learn braille and use other methods such as computer mods with large text etc... to compensate.
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