Bionic Eyes

DNAhelix writes: "From NASA: Bionic Eyes - Using space technology, scientists have developed extraordinary ceramic photocells that could repair malfunctioning human eyes."

Comments

Next generation of glasses ? :)

[boaworm]

Looks to me like a brilliant joint venture between biology and technology. This first step is to see if we can provide some vision to blind people, or to enhance the vision of almost-blind people.

If we can get such things to work, we could be close to getting good night-vision enhancements for people with normal sight as well.
And the best thing... I dont really see how this technology could be abused. Many other implants and biotech research projects are accused of being too much sci-fi (stem cell research, organ transplants, organ growth etc). Some communities are having a hard time accepting those, because they see the risks that follows (ethical questions about life). But this seems to be more like improved glasses, and even the Pope are using those =)

Re:Next generation of glasses ? :)

[psavo]

And the best thing... I dont really see how this technology could be abused. Many other implants and biotech research projects are accused of being too much sci-fi (stem cell research, organ transplants, organ growth etc). Some communities are having a hard time accepting those, because they see the risks that follows (ethical questions about life). But this seems to be more like improved glasses, and even the Pope are using those =)

Well.. technology is wonderfull :)

Possible abuses:
o infra-red enhancements -- see all the fun biological functions of anyone..
o x-ray vision enhancements -- see anything anywhere
o distance vision enhancements -- see thing far away or too small (lawyers would get less good deals because you'd be able to see the small print =)
- if this can be linked to silicon, all kind of computer-based vision enhancements would come to mind.. something in series of terminator 2 ;)

And if inra-red will become true, then our (yours actually, as i'm scandinavian already ;) standards of privacy (physical) will change very, very much as bodily functions will become transparent to anyone. Pretty much the same as nudism. I personally believe that it will enbetter society, and removes possibility for several perversions.. but that's MHO.

Cool!

[krmt]

That's weird, I was just thinking about the artificial eyes in William Gibson's novels and how they'd possibly be done.

I think the most difficult part about this is how the nerves will react. I think they're very right about the brain needing training to adapt to this. I'm pretty confident it could do it, but I don't know how much training it would take.

I thought the process with the dissolving film was an incredible idea too.

I hope this one pulls through. Does anyone with a neuroscience background have any thoughts on the feasibility of this one?

Re:Cool!

[pcbob]

Problem with brain is that unless you can see from the begining of your life, being able to see for the first time when you are 25 is not going to do you very good - brain simply hasn't had much training as to patern recogniton, depth perception, etc. People who get their vision later in life have hard time dealing with it, and it becomes more of a burden than heplful - they would still have to tuch things in order to recognize them, sometimes even different colour of the object will confuse them... So, while this is great news for people who are about to lose their sight (kids including), people that are blind today, and have been so for most of their lives, probably won't have much use of it.
I knew that psychology class i took last semester was worth something :)

Re:Cool!

[Raving]

I think they're very right about the brain needing training to adapt to this. I'm pretty confident it could do it, but I don't know how much training it would take.

IANAB, but I remember some experiments about human vision which involved wearing during some days glasses-like devices which comprised prisms and reverted the left/right, up/down or both.

It took people some hours to adjust, but then they could react properly again to their environment (walking and the like).

So, yes, our visual cortex is very flexible to unexpected visual stimuli modifications, and seems to adjusts in a relatively short time...

Olivier.

Surgery

[Larkfellow]

Based on the location within the eye that the surgery would need to take place, it seems to me that the surgery could acctually cause more problems than it fixes. Apart from that, it would be interesting to see what kind of images the brain would actually produce from the implant (no pun intended). Would it mean people being able to see again, albeit in black and white?