Slashdot Mirror
Eye Transplant Enables Blind Boy to See
Chris Gondek points to this story carried by the Sydney Morning Herald, excerpting: "A one-year-old Pakistani boy saw the world for the first time yesterday through an eye donated by an Indian. Mohammed Ahmed gained partial vision after a difficult operation at the Agarwal Eye Institute in the southern city of Madras. Doctors said Ahmed, who was born blind, would get near-normal sight by the time he heads back to Karachi next week."
The implications would have been staggering if they had been able to transplant an entire eye
Thus my interest.
a "BladeRunner" level of futuristic technology. "I made your eyes", etc
I am working on it.... Seriously.....
It would presumably also be relatively easy to graft an artificial electronic "eye", to create vision enhanced cyborgs - or to plug a video feed straight into the optic nerve for the ultimate in immersive graphics.
There are folks that are working on these solutions as well. One guy has a good approach while the others are basing their solutions on flawed assumptions of the basic biology. We are working on correcting these flawed assumptions.
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What do you think are the chances of ever seeing a complete eye transplant ? In 10 years ? 50 ? 100 ? Or maybe never at all ?
I've thought about this a lot. There is some very promising research in the neuromuscular community that suggests that spinal motor neurons can rewire rather successfully. The problem is that the retina (and the "wires" (axons) that come off of it is a very complicated tissue and rewiring them might be too much to attempt even if you could 1) get the retinal neurons to survive and 2) get them to rewire properly and perform the precise pathfinding necessary. Immunological considerations are another issue, so the approaches I am interested in a other biological and possibly bionic approaches.
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Would re-wiring the nerves properly be THAT important in allowing the eye to send information to the Brain?
The brain has astounded scientists in it's ability to reconfigure itself so as to perform the same tasks, but using a different region
For example, I remember a story about a boy who had a hemisperectomy. Doctors expected him to wake up paralysed down one side of his body, but, when he did wake up, he could do everything he could before. Which, IMO, amazing.
I've never shoed a horse, but I once told a donkey to piss off!
You need to exercise you eyes.
Staring at a screen all day every day will cause your eyesight to get worse.
Put an eye chart on a wall 15 feet away, and look at it every 15 minutes. Your eyesight WILL improve.
Actually, it is doubtful that this technique will work on those who are born blind. Through a number of experiments with eye-patches, electrodes, and kittens (it's not the prettiest side of science) we have found that the nerve connections that are formed in the first few weeks after birth are necessary to vision. So much so that if a patch is put over a kitten's eye for those first few weeks, it will never be able to see out of that eye even once the patch is removed.
I suppose that it would be possible to make electronic connections deep into the brain (past the optic nerve) to get around this. But I would still be skeptical that the brain would ever be able to adjust to processing the new information.
My father had a cornea transplant in his left eye back in 1987.
They first had to do a plaster mold of his eye (the first one broke). And then he had to sit and wait for an acceptable donor.
When the cornea came in, they numbed his eye completely (locally) and all the surrounding area (he was fully awake when the procedure was done). And stitched in the new cornea.
Late one night, I was sitting in the hospital room with my dad -- this is late the very same day (mind you, I was only 14 when this was done) -- the nurse came in to change dad's eyepatch, reapply some goo, and just do a general check. Soon as the nurse walked out of the room, my dad grabbed me and said, "Holy shit, son. I JUST saw DEPTH! I can't f*ckin' believe it. I saw in three dimensions!!!!" -- I've never saw my dad so excited over something. I told him something to the affect of "welcome to the world of depth" or something stupid like that. He told me to wear one of his eyepatches for a day, then take it off and look at how different the world was.
Later on some months, I couldn't handle driving with him. "The TREES are coming AT ME!!!"
I guess we stereoptic folks take this stuff for granted sometimes.
--Xan
"Congratulations, Boots. Your robot has become self-aware. You're a daddy now." -- Dr. Rho Bowman