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Need A New Retina? Look No Further

Posted by simoniker on from the g'kar-deluxe-model dept.

wap writes "Restoring sight to the blind is a Bibical miracle, a sign of divine powers. Now it is being tested at the Boston Retinal Implant Project, with some very limited success, according to Technology Review. They only have fifteen electrodes implanted, but it's a start. Great quotes: 'The eye doesn't like stuff inside it, that's why it doesn't have a zipper.' Will artificial eyes and retinal replacements someday be as good as good human eyes?"

9 of 310 comments (clear)

  1. As good??? by Vo0k · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Heh, they will be 100 times better.
    Extended spectrum, nightvision, antiblinder, zoom, the possiblities are unlimited!

    --
    Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
    1. Re:As good??? by dmayle · · Score: 4, Insightful

      5 months later it'll be deemed that our eye sight can be tapped under the PATRIOT act and similar.

      printf("%s",szDeity) that should have been modded insightful. It actually makes me think of Minority Report, and how it's illegal not to have your own eyeballs. This sort of stuff will happen if we let it...

    2. Re:As good??? by wowbagger · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Actually, the raw data you get from a CCD is better than the raw data you would get from the back of the human retina. The retinal is covered with blood vessels, has a big hole in it (the blind spot), had a great deal of noise (phosphene activity).

      However, the nerves just after the retina, plus the optic nerve, plus the visual cortex, do a HELL of a lot of signal processing - removing the fixed imperfections like the blind spot and the blood vessels, using the dithering created by the small jittering of the eye to increase spatial resolution, averaging out the random phosphene activity.

      IF you could get the same spatial resolution coupled into the retina, you could improve vision. However, that is a BIG IF - getting the millions of electrodes into the eye and coupled to the nerve cells, giving the correct voltage levels and firing patterns, without destroying the nerves by releasing metal ions or overvoltaging them, without provoking an immune response - quite a task.

      Now, the question that I have is the plasticity of the brain - consider this: imagine the above difficulties are resolved. Now, instead of using a CCD array that approximates human normal vision by using RGB, what if you made an imaging element that generated RYGCBM - instead of three response curves you use six to increase the color-space resolution. Now, normally our brains learn to parse the basically RGBY data from the eye (the rods just return luminance data). Suddenly, the brain is getting a different set of signals. Is the adult brain plastic enough to learn to process this data at all? What about a child's brain?

      --
      www.eFax.com are spammers
  2. Minority Report and the Future by KageMonkey · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Will artificial eyes and retinal replacements someday be as good as good human eyes?

    Reminds me of the scene where Tom Cruise went to get his eyes replaced in the Minority Report. Nevertheless, the question that "will be as good as someday?" is somewhat pointless, because we all know that as technology advances, will ALWAYS be as good as in the future. Unless we blow ourselves up, I am certain that we will have eye implants that gives humans super-vision, as well as being able to see-through walls, amongst other goodies. The better quesion is, how long will it take for technology to get there.

  3. You mean DIGITAL zoom by caitsith01 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    999X DIGITAL ZOOM! Actually creates data out of nothing WHILE YOU ARE ZOOMING! Who needs those fancy optics and lenses and whotnot?! DIGITAL is part of the WORLD OF TOMORROW!

    Seriously, though, without an extra lens how could it be anything but 'digital zoom' (i.e. 'magnification')?

    On the other hand, most people nowadays appear to be dumb enough to buy anything so long as it is digital or contains the prefix i- or e-, so maybe we can just market these as "eYes : now with DIGITAL zoom."

    --
    Read Pynchon.
    1. Re:You mean DIGITAL zoom by LostCluster · · Score: 4, Insightful

      There seems to be a segment of the marketplace that loves the word "digital" thinking it must mean "better technology" which is true most of the time, but there are some things that are just meant to be done in analog sound amplification and image magnification being two of the biggest examples.

  4. 15% of the worlds blind by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful


    could be cured for the cost of 1 Nuclear submarine, but as we are not serious about curing blindness we would rather have multiple subs and lots of blind people

    http://www.mercyships.org

  5. Re:I must be a Luddite... by nwbvt · · Score: 4, Insightful
    " I might consider it if say it was to restore something I'd lost completely (like my sight)"

    Well thats sort of what they are for.
    Thats like me saying I cannot imagine using crutches, ever, though I might consider them if I had broken my leg.

    Leave it to /. to make research restoring sight to the blind an issue primarily about turning human beings into a race of cyborgs.

    --
    Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
  6. "Common sense" health modification - not by hab136 · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Dude, I don't think it will be automatic. Remember, circumcision has been around for thousands of years, and even this common sense health modification doesn't get done on all newborn males automatically.

    Common sense isn't. Circumcision is not only unecessary, but risky and detrimental to one's health.

    The only reason to circumcise is religous - there is no medical reason, and there are good medical reasons not to.

    There is no extra care required to be uncircumcised - basically, leave it alone, wash the outside (as you would circumcised).

    http://www.cirp.org/

    http://www.sexuallymutilatedchild.org/