Slashdot Mirror
Patients get Solar Implants in Eyes
Ben Sullivan writes "As reported at Science Blog, ophthalmologists have implanted Artificial Silicon Retina microchips in the eyes of five patients to treat vision loss caused by retinitis pigmentosa. The implant is a 2mm chip that contains about 5,000 microscopic solar cells that convert light into electrical impulses. Already some patients have experienced improvements such as not bumping into objects around the house, and being able to read the time on a clock."
Sounds like we're on the road to the artificial eye one of OSC's characters had in the Ender's Game series. One of its cool features was that you could pull pictures and video off of it, as well as see through it. It was an in-skull camera.
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
Isn't this what Stevie Wonder has, w/r/t the pigmentosa? Furthermore, I seem to remember them talking about the possibility a couple of years ago that he would be a candidate for something similar, with a microchip.
I'd imagine that his condition has degenerated far too much along to be aided by this, but if I recall correctly, they nonetheless said he might be a candidate for something similar. I don't think they ended up using him, however.
i wonder what will be first: - a human of whom all parts are subsituted by technology - a robot which will have a real human soul
This development is very very^H^H^H^H^H important. I have been reading the material on this stuff and it looks as if it is possible to give people devoid of sight, some sight back.
THE REAL treasure here is knowing the brain can adapt. Think about it, they were deprived of sight, and then their brain was able to REORGANIZE itself to understand totally FOREIGN signals and use them as input.
It demonstrates how our wetware is more adaptable than any hardware.
Check journal for info on Anti-TextBook, an idea by me.
They don't have to know anything like that. All they need to do is to provide voltage that is within parameters of the cell resistance (just enough but not to burn the cells.) The brain takes care of mapping electrical signals to the visual part of cortex. I suppose this will only produce shadows of gray and not color. To produce color they will have to do more than a single electrical signal, but for shadows of one color (gray?) voltage difference will be enough.
I wonder what is the life of the solar cells? Will they have to be replaced time to time?
You can't handle the truth.
On friday I'm going in for essentially the same surgery, only instead of inserting a chip, they try to deal with the bad blood vessel. Then, after a week of lying face down, and a month of no flying (which kills my easy work commute and turns it into a 5 hour ordeal), I get to find out how much damage was done to my retinal pigments by the blood that has been pooling there for half a year.
Damage that *used* to be un-repairable. With this technology now deployed there's a good chance it will be routine for people like me in 10-15 years.
And given that the likelyhood of diagnosis in the second (currently good) eye is about 1 in 50 per year from now on, the stats give me 15-25 years before I start worrying about getting an artificial retina.
Hooray for bionics!
When surgeons re-attach a severed limb they don't worry about getting all the neurons connected correctly. They connect them randomly, and the brain learns the new mapping.
Physically therapy takes care of the learning, but it is a side effect, the brain is good at learning new mappings. The body generally has many more problems making everything work, in ways that are not related to incorrectly attached neurons.
One of [the] cool features [of a science-fictional eye implant that this product resembles] was that you could pull pictures and video off of it, as well as see through it. It was an in-skull camera.
Watch people with implants be banned from entering movie theaters.