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 title is very misleading and is born of sloppy reporting. The whole eye was NOT transplanted, rather the cornea was what was transplanted. The cornea had adhered to the boys iris clouding his vision. Technically and surgically, this is nothing of note as corneal replacements have been happening now for years and years. Politically however stuff like this is good for Indian Pakistani relations.
The title suggests that the whole eye was transplanted which would indeed be very exciting as I myself work in vision rescue focusing on diseases that cause blindness through degeneration of the retina. However, the concept of rescuing vision once we have lost it due to trauma to the retina or degenerative diseases is much more difficult than simply replacing the tissue with a healthy donor tissue. We are working with a number of folks on bionic and biological therapies and replacements for retinal vision loss, but it is a challenging prospect despite what some commercial organizations would have the media believe.
In addition to the above mentioned corrections, there are other problems with this story. In particular, apparently the child was born blind from birth which would suggest that depending upon how old the child is, there will be problems due to vision being occluded during certain critical periods of vision pathway development. This means that there may be no vision in the eye that was clouded anyway, or that vision may not be fully "normal" and likely will never be.
(yes, I am a vision scientist)
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How can they tell that it worked?? Did they ask him - or is it some sort of objective test??
-FP??
"An eye for an eye, and soon the whole world is blind." -- Gandhi
Oh, wait.
And no, I'm not new to /.
:-)
A slow learner then, maybe?
Just kidding...
In the last 8 years of being a programmer my eye sight has gone from perfect to shithouse. I actually read this slashdot article title and it gave me hope - once my eyeballs fall out, I can just get new ones!
Though from the first few comments here looks like I shouldnt hold my breath. Better keep waiting for the video camera borg-eyes.
You are not reading the article very carefully. Only the cornea or the transparent outer portion of the eye was transplanted in this case, NOT the whole eye. Furthermore, the two references you report are bad science. First off, let me ask you if organ rejection is something to be considered, would you trade a lifetime of immunosuppresants causing kidney damage and joint disease for vision? Next, the two references in Wired are missing the boat and were written by some very deceptive science. Dobelle is a bit of a crackpot who is using high current electrodes on the surface of the brain and is kindling those patients brains increasing the likelyhood of seizures. Indeed seizures have been reported in those patients. Furthermore, from a conceptual point of view, stimulating visual cortex with crude electrical stimulii will certainly make one see phosphenes, but you can also see them by getting punched in the head. In other words it is not vision and those that are suggesting it is are either deceived or worse. To make things even more dubious, Dobelle has yet to publish his work in a peer reviewed journal and has to perform it outside the US because nobody will let him do it here.
The issue is much more complicated than these individuals would have you believe. There are a couple of corporations that have been started that are very good with media hype. They have good engineers, but the engineers are looking for a solution without understanding what the biology is.
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So there is an Eye in team afterall. :)
After the eye transplant, the pakistani boy began to see the world... AS AN INDIAN WOULD. When he looked at the Kashmir territory, he saw Indian territory. The horror! With time the Indian cornea began to take over his entire body, and he began speaking in 18 different languages.
THIS FILM APPROVED BY THE PAKISTANI FILM COMMISSION
I feel feel squicked just thinking about this, but I wonder if that kid will ever have really useable vision.
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I wonder if he'd get it if we sent him letters reading:
Dear Geordi,
Congratulations on your eyesight.
More power to the engines,
Captain Your Name Here
It is of note because the donor is from India, and the child is Pakistani. The two countries do not have a history of friendly relations. However, if you read the article, you'll notice the last paragraph says:
"Last year, a life-saving heart surgery was performed on two-year-old Pakistani girl Noor Fathima at a hospital in Bangalore, also in southern India. Since then a steady stream of Pakistani children has flocked to India seeking treatment for variety of ailments."
It may be that the Pakistanis will become increasingly dependant on India for medical care along with other social support services. This is increasingly likely as Pakistan remains fairly backwards and impoverished while India continues to modernize and grow in wealth.
If this trend does develop, and persist, Pakistan may be forced to improve its relationship with India for the express purpose of maintaining the availability of these services for its people.
Here I thought a boys WHOLE eye was replaced! That would have been amazing and something for the whole world to rejoice for. Then I remember that we can not currently do eye transpants, and then I confirmed it by reading the article and other posts. You assholes should burn in hell for giving me that huge lump of amazment then slaping it down.
To be honest, yes. To me being blind sounds like hell and I couldn't imagine a worse disability. Obviously that's because I've been able to see for the past 20 years, so it might be different for someone who was born blind, but if someone said "vision and kidney/joint problems or blindness" it wouldn't be a particularly hard decision for me to make.
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.
There are also simpler tests. wave a hand a quickly in front and note reaction, move a light and watch if the eye follows it.
How much he sees and how well is of course another question. But if you had the choice between being completly blind and being able to see a ball on a table what would you choose?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
move along now
Sure, this kind of science has a long way to go. But doesn't everything? This is frickin' amazing! For me personally, I always had this weird fear growing up of anything making me blind. When I was a kid I actually wanted to get glasses specifically for the purpose of having a shield over my eyes! If there is eventually full transplant success, the possibilities would be incredible. I'm not sure if there's another physical feeling that would be as powerful and emotional as someone who has lived their life blind getting the opportunity to see at last.
Its really heartening to see the social ties the two countries still have inspite of the tussle at the top.I hope the recent talks between the two countries gets more bonds between the two countries.
fifteen jugglers, five believers
I remember some pop psychology book (author forgotten) with a story about some blind person getting vision when he was an adult. The problem was that he couldn't cope with it and got psychological problems. When his vision started deteriorating again he felt relieved.
Will this boy have the same problems?
It's not that bad. I'm not blind, but I do know and work with quite a lot of people who are, and you would be amazed at their independence and their quality of life. Like you suggested, many people who have never been able to see are perfectly content with their 'disability', and indeed can't imagine anything else. One of my friends says that if sight-restoring operations were possible in an everyday sense (which they certainly aren't), he would probably not take it. I'm not sure how typical of the blind community this is though.
The people who do really have trouble, obviously, are people who go blind later in life. They suffer more because they obviously didn't grow up blind, and thus didn't develop braille skills and other blind-person tricks like click-navigation (Seriously, a few people I know can point unerringly at furniture, doors and windows after clicking their fingers a few times!) These things take time, and a lot of older people unfortunately believe too strongly in the 'old dogs can't learn new tricks' maxim. The shock of this and the isolation that can come with blindness sometimes cause as many problems for older blind people than their actual physical condition.
Real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time.
-- Terry Pratchett, Hogfather
Stem cells seem to know what to wire though. Putting stem cells near kidney cells turns them into kidney cells. The cells themselves must have known how to wire it in the first place (since we can see).
I think much more money should be spent in this kind of research. Immortality is just around the corner if successful brain transplants can take place. As well people inprisoned in quadriplegic bodies can be helped by this research along with many others with similiar neuron/motor neuron problems.
In Cringely's latest "pulpit" column, he talks about a video compression technology which uses one aspect of human vision physiology -- namely losses in the path from retina to brain via optic nerve -- to compress video. Apparently the bandwidth of the optic nerve isn't all that high, and not all the data available at the retina is transmitted to the brain. The brain makes up for this by filling in the gaps. I'm rather interested in this from a philosophical standpoint, having touched upon philosophy of colour recently. Is it true that much of what we perceive visually is imagery generated by the brain rather than directly produced in us by external stimuli?
proof, n. A demonstration that a conclusion is implied by certain premises and axioms.
I'm not completely ignorant, and I realise that there us such a thing as a Cashmere Conflict. That's what I find so disappointing about this world. People still hold archaic views about nationality and territory. People can have their lives taken or neglected simply because they live on the wrong side of an arbitrary line somewhere.
Stick Men
Damn...I really need to find the link. But basically, it was about cloning eyeballs and having them grow inside a chicken egg. As the organ develops (such as the eyeball) it would feed off the yolk.
:)
As funny and strange as it sounds, bio-mechanically I don't see why this wouldn't work. If this is possible, maybe in the future I can have a cloned heart grown in an ostrich egg. Just a thought.....
None the less, it does make for good SciFi material.
Life is not for the lazy.
I guess the most difficult part of the whole procedure was to convince the Pakistani family to accept the donation from an Indian. =)
What is best in life? To crush your enemies, to see them driven before you and to hear the lamentations of their women.
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
The input really comes from external stimulis, but yes in a way, what we see is the brain's own interpretation of those stimulis.
:
The information is never used as-is by the brain, but at each stage it processed, and information is extracted and spareted.
The vision, for exemple, doesn't work at all like in a computer with a pixel grid.
The input from the cones and the rods (the "pixels") is not sended as-is to the brain. Instead, in other layers of the retina, value from rods close to each other is compared (for : exemple you have "off-/ and on-centers", a signal is genrated only if surrounding cones are off and central cone are on, meaning there's something in the middle of that region).
The information transmited in the optical nerve isn't "pixel at coordinate (150,175) is color rgb(126,129,32)" but "there a change between these points and their neighbours, so there must be something there".
Further stages in the brain works the same way
point are compared together to extract edges (comparing point close together), or motion directions (comparing the timing between two near region).
Then motion, shape, colour, etc... is processed independently in deffirent arrea of the brain.
This analysis is also done at different frequencices : some region compare difference between point very close to eachother, where other regions compare global differences between the two half of your field-of-view.
So : when you see a red pen falling, you're brain isn't processing the images at a whole (not like a sequences of pictures of the pen falling).
But one region of your brain say it found a red object, another region of your brain tells there's an object that is long and thin, a third region see ther's motion going downward, etc...
Also, it isn't possible to have a single nerve fiber for each "pixel" while keeping a high resolution. So there's some kind of information drop : only the center of the view has a high density of receptors (cones & rods), the rest of the field of view has much less receptors.
Only the center of the view can see fine details.
The rest cannot give details, but can still give an alrt if there's something, and you'll automatically point your eyes int that directions to bring the interesting objet in you "high resolution" zone.
The whole scene is the kept reconstucted in some kinf of mental visual scratch pad.
So when you look at a plant you can see it well with all details, leaves, etc...
Then when you look at your computer screen, you can't see that plant that well, but even in your peripheral vision you can still a bullry green spot, and you remembre that you saw a plant there. Even if you can't see details anymore, your brain can still notice that the green spot has suddenly turned brown-orange. You turn your eyes and see that you can is trying to eat your plants....
This also explains why we don't "see" our blind spot. (Due to some poor cabling, the optical nerve is running thru the retina, and there's no receptor in that place, to leave room for the nerve).
It's like a grid with some pixels missing.
The vision works by comparing points. It's just that in the blind spot, the brain is comparing receptors that are VERY far appart. So if something small is located just in the blind spot, we won't see it, but we won't even realise that we are missing it, because when the brain compare the points above, below and on the sides of this spot, it doesn't notice any change, so the brain thinks the background is continuous. (That's what some call 'filling the gaps').
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
The biggest factor that influence if one can have it's vision back or not is the age and the brain itself.
It is because the center of vision finish developping at a certain age.
In your exemple, if the person is a ful grown adult when he looses his eyes, he has an already functionnating center of vision. And when he has a new eye, he'll be able to use it again.
If he lost his eye when he was a baby, and he waits until he's 20 before gettint a new eye, the new eye won't work, because during the childhood, the brain has only learned to use 1 eye.
The person has developped what is called "amblyopia" (he has only monoscopic vision).
That's why the article mentions that the transplantation happened when the child was only 1 year old. That means the child is still young enough to learn using both his eyes.
Another exemple are retinoblastomas. They are a form of cancer that can happen inside the eyeball. If it happens to an adult, as soon as the cancer is removed, the adult can see again.
But if this happens to a baby, the doctors have to be quick, because if they wait too long before diagnosting it and removing it, the child will develop "amblyopia" and won't be able to use this eye, even after the removal of the cancer.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
The average /. reader can't see.
/. you might be interested to know that India and Pakistan aren't the most friendly of neighbors. So things like this are good for improving the way people in those two countries think about each other.
If you had RTFA you would know that it wasn't about the technical details of some new surgery. Far from it.
For those who wont RTFA, it was mostly about doctors in India helping children from Pakistan. And for thost who won't read anything but
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Human eye transplant sounds good. However I'd like to see a more useful eye transplant. I'd like to see a Borg style transplant; this will give you the ability to zoom, night vision, sun proctection, x-rays in one package.