Slashdot Mirror
Ophthalmologists, Physicists Design Bionic Eye
InfallibleLies writes "For the first time ever, those who have been blind since birth will have a chance to see the world. It's still in the early stages, but this is a giant leap forward in medical science." From the linked BBC article:
"U.S scientists have designed a bionic eye to allow blind people to see again. It comprises a computer chip that sits in the back of the individual's eye, linked up to a mini video camera built into glasses that they wear. Images captured by the camera are beamed to the chip, which translates them into impulses that the brain can interpret."
It may help people that were blinded later in life through an accident or cataracts. However, if someone is blind from birth then their visual cortex never develops and vision would be impossible even with an artificial eye. Many studies have been done. Click here here and here for more info.
Some related recent press releases about this kind of technology :
- Emory Eye Center Implants Its First Retinal Chips In Patients With Retinitis Pigmentosa
- Ophthalmologists Use Artificial Silicon Retina Microchip To Treat Vision Loss
Eureka Science News - automatically updated
I recall during my 4th grade year (about 4 years ago), scientists devised a method for an Indiana man who was blind to see again. What they did, IIRC, was create a pair of glasses that fed the digitized data through a wire to a processor worn around his waist, which in turn transferred the data as electrical signals into his brain directly (as you can guess, they had to drill a hole in his head; a small one though). This method allowed the once-blind man to see about 20 feet in front.
Soon after, they ended up innovating that even more.
Not really close to the bionic eye idea, but close; earlier in the generations.
Debugging? Klingons do not debug. Bugs are good for building character in the user.
They were stimulating nerves in the eye with tiny electrodes, although they had to ask the patient where in his field of vision he saw the phosphene as they stimulated him. From this they created a "mapping" of sorts.
This sort of research was frowned upon on the US, and so it had to be carried out overseas. Check out the article -- more info than the linked BBC one.
Yes, this jibes with what I've heard too. Google for "Parmelee Sigman kitten" and you find references to a study in which kittens were blindfolded from birth to adulthood; when the blindfolds were removed, they were unable to see and never gained the ability to see, despite the fact that their eyes were physically normal - their brains simply weren't wired for it. Still, we've discovered that the adult brain is more plastic than we used to think, so I wouldn't totally rule out the possibility. They mention macular degeneration in the article, and this is a big one, since it's a major cause of blindness in the elderly (my grandmother and great-aunt were both legally blind in their old age because of it). Something that can fix that would help make living longer better, instead of just longer.
Masturbation can only possibly cause night blindness if your diet does not have enough zinc or vitamin A. Zinc is needed to transport vit. A to the retina, where it is needed for the rods that provide black-and-white night vision, but it is excreted in relatively high amount with the semen.
In late 2002 this method was up to 68 implanted electrodes (which would be about equal to an 8x8 matrix)
HOWEVER, you need more than 1000 (say 32x32 or 1028) or above for any really useful vision With 8x8 you might recognize one or two ASCII characters. A Face??? Only if it's an emoticon.
Now granted these are implants in the retina and not the visual cortex, but I have seen other claims for retinal implants over the last five years.
Why is this research taking so long to bear fruit? In 1978 progress was limited by the available CPU horsepower to translate images into usable grid stimulation patterns. Now it seems we are stalled out with our ability to put electrodes in organic systems.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying this is easy, but why doesn't this stuff scale like Moore's Law with integrated circuits? Given the state of research over a decade ago we should be up to VGA quality arrays of 640x480 by now.
In general prosthetics systems always seem to be on the verge of some "Steve Austin" "Million Dollar Man" arrival and then never makes it. I assure you when we watched Lee Majors in the early '70s wha-na-na-na-na'ing all over the place we assumed such feats would be common place by the year 2000. What the hell happened? Is this just hard like AI, or under-funded and poorly organized?
Letter To Iran