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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."
Would it be possible to make it "see" infared. Then it would translated it to false color? It would be like the first upgrade in Rouge angent.
Actually, I think when want to know if you're avaiable for an ass-whoopin.
And no jokes, please. It's too obvious.
"Old man yells at systemd"
It would suck then to have a BSOD... though at least the color changes from nothing to blue.
Best death? What, die from a naked lady avalanche?
I'm not so sure that people bling from birth will benefit from any such device. That part of their brain is not even developed, you can't just "plug in" some video feed and expect them to see, do you?
The cookie told me to.
Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da...
See close-up view of its license plate.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Certainly I hope it doesn't run windows... we don't want the blind people to see only a blue screen all the time, right?
If I recall correctly, people who have been blind their whole lives can never really 'learn' to see, after age 3 or so. At least, not on anywhere near the same level that people can see naturally, even assuming that they had an absolutely perfect prothesis. Who this will benefit are people who have went blind at some point during their adult life due to injury, glaucoma, diabetes (yes, it can make you go blind), drinking too much rubbing alcohol, or something similar.
---- I'll take you in a Hunt deathmatch any day.
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.
Seriously though, I am impressed at this technology. ; I didn't think it was possible to do surgery precisely enough to connect into the optic nerve.
So, how long until someone is able to boot linux on it? >_>
Hero of Allacrost, a FOSS RPG for *NIX/*BSD/OS X/Win
> Who this will benefit are people who have went blind at some point during their adult life due to injury, glaucoma, diabetes (yes, it can make you go blind), drinking too much rubbing alcohol, or something similar.
You forgot masturbation.
Inevitable comment from the first person to get these implanted: "I see nothing but blue, man!"
but it kinda seems like cheatin' with the external camera. I wonder why they couldn't incorporate the simple optical train into the eye directly? The benefit is that you could see in UV, IR, etc. with a camera and software swap.
this is interesting, cuz i have been blind in one eye since birth, but i "learned" to see. if the resolution got a lot better, i wonder what it could do for me?
It sounds like their chip is hooked up to the optical nerve, not directly into brain, so while it might help people with macular degeneration it won't do much for cases when optical nerve is damaged (like glaucoma). I hope I am wrong though.
"You mortals are so obtuse." -Q
It's not made into a stylish visor.
How do we expect Star Trek to hold any weight if we do an end run around the technology!
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'm sure that Puffy has a lot of little brats running about the mansions bedecked in bling.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
"Science: Ophthalmologists, Physicists Design Bionic Eye"
One day it shall be revealed that scientists have just been playing cruel jokes all these years, and that most of those words are made up.
Is anyone else reminded of the Val Kilmer movie At First Sight (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0132512/)? Val's character has been blind since age 1 and undergoes a treatment only to find that seeing doesn't mean comprehending what one sees.
http://instagram.com/thephotographer
So how long before upgrades make this "bionic eye" significantly better than a human eye?
Will we reach a point where attaching this bionic eye becomes an elective surgery where someone wants to simply improve their eyesight beyond 20/20; beyond what a mere "human" can see?
Breast inlargements, designer babies, bionic implants....where is it all going?
Sugapablo
My great grandmother could hardly see or hear for years before she died. My grandmother has a cochlear implant and can hear better now than when she could 10 years ago. She says its the single most amazing thing she's experienced, and she experienced everything from the great depression to the Patriot Act.
The interesting question is, what is more important, being able hear and thus communicate with people around you, or being able to see?
Trying to use sarcasm in text-based forums does not work.
When do they release the night vision/xray models?
what about lasik surgery & corneal implants?
It was once my favorite program back in the '70s. I want the built in 40x zoom and night vision capabilities that he had!
My rights don't need management.
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.
And how would they know what blue looks like? ;)
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.
I once saw a recognisable picture of old Abe Lincoln in approx 16x16 pixels IIRC. This is not enough for pron or to driving etc, but is probably enough to make a vast difference to a blind person's life: being able to see some of the local environment can help a lot eg:Where's the coffee cup on the table? Where's the phone? Is the door open/shut? Am I about to fall in a hole? Is the lid up or down when I go for a pee?
Engineering is the art of compromise.
This crops up in the news every once in a while but I haven't seen it go anywhere, the artificial eye is never good enough to go into mass usage.
Another variety of eye bionics actually fuses microchips to the eye, but they found that eyes are much to sensitive to be able to withstand the heat generated from the IE chips.
or else!
Some people who have been blind since birth get very depressed when their vision is medically restored and they see the world as it actually is. It doesn't correspond at all to the colorful paradise their hardware has come up with in lack of sensors.
I guess it's like realizing there is no god after having been brought up in a religious home, or finding out that W. Gates III isn't the saint he has been described to be after filling his pockets for twenty years.
Or maybe it is like Neo finally seeing the rotting world after swallowing the blue pill.
Here's an article about Stanford scientists doing the same a while ago.
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.
252 pixel grey scale Abe: http://home.earthlink.net/~wlhunt/History/History. html
Engineering is the art of compromise.
The development of the visual cortext that supports sight occurs considerably before age 3. If one were to develop a prosthesis for those born without sight, it would have to be introduced very early.
You're right that the research mentioned in the article will help those who have had sight and then lost it through disease or injury, a huge group of people who I'm sure will welcome it when it becomes available. And I have hopes that future research might help those blind since birth to "see" in some way as well, though it will be a lot more difficult.
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.
You wouldn't need the Hubble Space Telescope anymore, that's for sure!
I wonder if it will make that cool boopity sound like Steve Austin's Six Million Dollar eye did?
[For the record--I have no idea WTF that music is in that sound byte!]
I might know what I'm talkin' about, but then again, this is Slashdot...
...but it'd have to be the $6 billion man. Unless you want 40x digital zoom.
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
For those with really horrible vision (like me), or astigmatism (like me), lasik surgery doesn't have a success rate high enough for me to risk it. At this point in time, dealing with contacts and glasses is preferable to the chance of making my vision even worse.
Hopefully, however, the technique will improve even more with time and I'll eventually have perfect vision.
Here's a wild idea. What if you simulated the processing done by the visual cortex in a chip and then fed the result into the retina?
How we know is more important than what we know.
A simple description of visual system development in mammals might be interesting to some.
Nothing like seeing the world for the first time, and all of the sudden a damn online casino pop-up ad fills your vision, blinking furiously.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
My wife works for an ophthalmologist, and it seems like every few months she's telling me about some new procedure or surgery to improve someone's eyesight. If you haven't been to an ophthalmologist (not optometist) recently, you really should make an appointment. I can't give you any specifics on the new treatments (other than there's some contact lens you can wear at night that reshapes your eyes as your sleep so you don't have to wear any glasses, contacts, etc... during the day). The whole idea of putting something in my eyes, or having someone cut my eyes or even get near my eyes really FREAKS the bajesus out of me, and yes my wife loves to tell me all of the gory details about her job.
A treat to eat, in a puppet that's neat!
Apparently you don't see to well.
Your bionic eye may need a firmware update.
Will it have a feature where you can see through women's clothing? I think it should be an absolute necessity. Only physics could bring the unthoughtof reality where I could actually be jealous of a blind person for their (lack of) sight. (-_-")
Hero of Allacrost, a FOSS RPG for *NIX/*BSD/OS X/Win
I'll bet you win at Balderdash all the time.
...but it does say, "U.S scientists have designed a bionic eye to allow blind people to see again.", implying that said blind people had seen once before.
It's possible that the summary said differently, but there's no "edited" note.
That's right. All your base.
drinking too much rubbing alcohol
Drinking ANY rubbing alcohol is too much if you ask me.
A human brain encased in a robot running linux?
Who will guard the guards?
The human (and AFAIK most other animals) have a hugely higher pixel density towards the middle of the field of vision. When you think about it you actually build the image of a scene in your head by "running your eye over it".
Most of the resolution will only have to be at the center therefore you could get a lot bigger "bang for your pixel buck" than if you were building a camera or monitor.
I'm pretty sure I remember a few years back there were a few articles about a device that pretty much did the exact same thing. It interfaced with the brain and used a video camera to let blind people see. Anybody know if this new technology is any different (other than smaller)?
Nothing disturbs me more than blind loyalism towards some unrealistic and over-idealistic notion of one's nationality.
Wow! Finally my entire world will look just like the good old Atari 2600!
That's not a duck... it's a dragon!
Sometimes my arms bend back.
You do recall correctly, however like we have talked about almost ad nauseam on Slashdot, there are all sorts of problems with the current strategies of rescuing vision with bionic (and many biological approaches). My doctoral dissertation work focused on this problem and on what happens to the retina when it has become deafferented. What you refer to is the creation of visual pathways leading to and organizing within the cortex a the critical age. Without these pathways, one could attempt to bypass many of the subcortical structures by wiring the implant directly into the cortex ala Dr. Normann's research. However, for folks that suffer from injury, glaucoma, diabetes, or retinitis pigmentosa, bionic implants will not work until we have reigned in retinal/neuronal remodeling.
The issue is that simply bypassing the diseased cells in the retina is impossible, because all of the neurons in the retina are involved in the degenerative process. What needs to be done is to control the degenerative process before retinal implants/transplants can be successful. Also, these guys are building implants with 50-100 "electrodes", but in reality, they will have to have far more to generate reasonable images, and they will need to be at even higher densities.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
There was something on cybernetics on public TV that was broadcast around the 90s I think. They had the eye chip and glasses setup that was mentioned. The resolution wasn't so great from what I saw of their approximated simulations though.
The US RDA (diet guideline) says you need 15 mg per day. Wikipedia says you lose 5 mg each time you abuse yourself. So, at a rate of 3 squirts/day, you'll have no zinc left for your eyes. You'll go blind, just like your momma told you.
Boo
No one ever on their death bed ever says: "My regrets in life?
Yes, even if it couldn't be interpreted by the brain directly, it could be interpreted by hardware and translated, say, into different colors.
This is a joke. I am joking. Joke joke joke.
I'll buy that for a dollar!
Ok, I'll shut up now.
Long reign Helob.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Oh come on! There is a difference between ALL the time and MOST of the time.
A difference of about 5 minutes of run time =)
and keep the radiation to a minimum...
and check for loose wires.
What comes first, finding a teacher or becoming a student?
Just to add a little perspective on this:
Remember the first time you played pong? (if you're old enough) or the first time you played the Atari 2600? They were both wonders of modern technology and quite amazing... with the next step "light years" ahead of the last.
I think the same can be expected here. Trouble is, the human brain can't be mapped with a great deal of certainty and when someone is blind from birth, there are going to be few if any pathways for that information to flow. It is nothing short of an amazing discovery that the brain's pathways are dynamic and continually updating. So to find that it is adapting and assimilating alien signals is nothing short of miraculous in my opinion.
Not only is this a way for the blind to see, it's a way that our bodies can live in artificial bodies... and if we can learn to regenerate brain tissue, live forever.
Now a good excuse/reason to tell the girls
:-)
"Have you had your zinc supplement today?"
3 rations sounds good, morning, evening, late evening.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
I was an interpreter for some time, and learned one magic thing about implants adding abilities missing from birth or from accidents... it only works to the degree that the person accepts the information. If the blind person (from birth) *WANTED*, they would most definitely train their brain to use the data. maybe not perfectly, but they would have some sight. I knew deaf people who WANTED to hear with their implant, and could quite well after a few years of training.. others who never did get the hang of it. Its like trying to train someone to smell music... if some device provided the input, and you really wanted it, you'd learn. with much dammit and aggrivation, but you'd do it.
meh
why would the visual cortex have to be the only place to process vision? Why would those neural routes have to be the only ones to carry vision signals?
:)
yes, I know the types of neurons in the back of the brain are best suited for this type of processing. but what is to say that other regions of the brain couldn't handle some of the tasks.
someone blind from birth can still navigate around by touch. Could we not someday make an "eye" which allows them to more "feel" things at distances than "see"?
I think just because a kitten's neurons prefer to take the path of least resistance is no reason to just throw in the towel on allowing someone blind from birth at least the remote possibility of sight.
after all, the final bit of what you actually "see" takes place in the frontal lobe. why couldn't we just shortcut the occipital lobe altogether? pre-process the signals for the frontal lobe? (my favorite lobe btw
Just another reason to swallow.
If what you are reading sounds funny, or sarcastic, lame, or stupid
it is because it is supposed to be. just laugh
They'll complain until the iBall manufacturer concedes and installs in each iBall a sort of advanced Foxblocker that blanks from your vision anything that Michael Moore would not want you to see.
Ted Kennedy's rummy nose? Look while you can.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
and found the world isnt really worth that $250000 they spent so they want a refund.
Then again, what idiot would consider getting rid of it when theres so much beauty in the world to see.
Get out of the city you idiots who have new sights.
How else will you ever see stars in the sky or sunsets.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
it's money !
There's no big money involved for med. firms.
Also notice there is no photo of what patients visualize with this device. It's not photographic quality.
Not a big achievment in my opinion. Not newsworthy. I have heard of something similar years ago.
Now the world has gone to bed.
Darkness wont engulf my head.
I can see by infrared.
How I hate the night.
Now I lay me down to sleep.
Try to count electric sheep.
Sweet dream wishes you can keep.
How I hate the night.
- Marvin the Paranoid Android.
Help save the critically endangered Blue Iguana
The first upgrade in Rouge Agent would be Covergirl or Lancome.
I have seen this theory before, with a period varying from one to ten years for the "plastic" period of brain formation. The question is, how do they know? No one has ever been able to fully restore eye function on someone who was born blind. This means no one really knows if someone who was born blind can or cannot learn to see if given perfect eye function at an adult age.
The fact is that adult people *can* learn new things. The brain remains flexible until old age. Learning becomes more and more difficult as one ages, but there is no magic threshold when we become unable to learn new things. Given enough effort and motivation one can learn many things, including speaking a foreign language with the national accent. Difficult, yes, but not impossible.
I imagine it would be useful in a lot of those cases if they were given robotic eyes as newborns.
...what causes the hair to grow in your palms?
I'm out of my league here but i'll chance an opinionated responce.
I don't think what you are saying it out of the realms of possability. The human body has shown extream abilities to compensate for sensory functions lost and i have no reason to believe that it couldn't do the oposite. It might require the loss or lack of some other sence (maybe wearing earplugs) to "shock" the body into a self preservation state were it would develope or work with the other areas.
If i understand the article right, the sight is little more then electrodes stimulating nerves like hearing aids do. I know a guy who lost his hearing and now wears a hearing aid. He says that sound isn't like what he heard before and it took a while to distinguish it. Now he can tell the difference from quality sterio equiptment and boom box style counter radios. HE lost his hearing around age 15 and is now 38 so he has had enough time to work with it. I doubt somethign would produce overnight results but i am optamistic that somethign could be acomplished.
Imagination of the recipient might be the only limiting factor. If all the sudden you started noticinng somethign different, could you imagine what it meant or just consider it anoying. Blind and deaf people can still learn sign language and braille to an extroidenary extent. Could a blind person achive this outcome again? I think so.
Yes, but real sex is more important than eyesight.
I'm not so sure that people bling from birth will benefit from any such device.
Bling from birth?! That's the shit fer shizzle, ma nizzle!
Disconnect your television. Do your own research. Draw your own conclusions. They're probably lying. Don't be a sheep.
There.. I said it.
One to beam up.
It takes you to a star trek site
You can learn anything, whenever you want...but the extra effort required to do some kinds of learning at different ages, is exponentially greater than if learned while young. Depending on what you're trying to learn...it might not be worth it.
I imagine that, for some of the more automatic structures of the brain (visual nucleii, etc) which serve as sensory relay stations, it's simlpy not possible to rewire the brain in a way that will take advantage of the full capabilities of new sense. (I imagine this can be offset by application of neurological growth factors applied to that area while stimulated.)
Your state of mind can, to some degree, influence your phisiology...but, again, there *are* hardcoded limits as to how far that can go.
I can just picture it now... the resolution gets improved, windows gets installed, a blind person gets a driver's license and the blue screen of death gets a new meaning.
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
Now a good excuse/reason to tell the girls
:-)
"Have you had your zinc supplement today?"
3 rations sounds good, morning, evening, late evening.
You meant that as a joke, but serious medical studies have found that depressed girls who start swallowing are made less depressive from the semen intake. The hormones and zinc in the ejaculate counteract deficiencies and improve the woman's mood.
Can just see apple lining up for the law suits against any "i" related naming!.
also, how soon till someone decides that WiFiEye would be handy? then suddenly ad's will pop-up in view of those using the eye! Operation is free if you get the shareware version (adds included).
And I think it'd be even cooler if the eye could be switched from real, to cell shaded polygon mode!
----- Concentrate on promoting more than demoting.
"Certainly I hope it doesn't run windows... we don't want the blind people to see only a blue screen all the time, right?"
A million Slashdotters called, they want their joke back.
"Derp de derp."
Although in that book the implant was in the optic nerve, modyifing its output.
Modern theory is that if you're blind since birth, the visual part of your brain simply doesn't develop (with no stimulus, nerves die off). Therefore, this might give hope to those who had an accident and lost their vision but for it to help someone blind at birth, I guess they would have to get the surgery done just after they were born (and their blindness had better be caused by their eyes and not something else beyond the optic nerve).
This has got to be some sort of a reccord, first the MSN/Logitec protocol and now the human eye - that's great :D good work fella's.
ps. if a baby was born blind, and this was an option for the baby to see (before the developmental limitation on vision), wouldn't you want the bionic baby in your home?
19 year old son talking to his father.
"hey son, quit looking through those girls clothes!"
"yes dad...."
"So, son?..."
"ya?"
"They lookin' good under there or what?"
Check journal for info on Anti-TextBook, an idea by me.
drinking too much rubbing alcohol
That's wood alcohol, CH3OH. The body converts it to formaldehye, CH2O, which is rather reactive and cross-links your retinal proteins, leaving them unable to respond to light. Rubbing alcohol is CH3CHOHCH3, and basically gives you a hangover without making you drunk.
Submitted in the morning and rejected, submitted after 6:00 and accepted. Sure would like some of what the moderators are drinking...
</rant>
Add a clocking device and we're hunting for aliens in no time !
Ok, this is obviously pretty cool stuff, but what kind of images could you really get with 50-100 "pixels"? We're talking 10x10 resolution here... Hardly enough for face recognition... Or anything really.
I've always wanted to be able to control what someone is hearing, seeing, feeling, tasting, and smelling by directly sending electrical impulses to the brain. sorta like the Matrix. hehe.
anyway. i was thinking, if they go do this for sight, how hard would it be for the other 4 senses?
HD Trailers
Mike May, blind from age 3 to age 46, had a stem cell implant and was suddenly able to see. He kept a detailed online journal about his experiences. He still doesn't see perfectly, but it's mostly because it is very slow to teach the mind to understand the input its suddenly given.
On another note, I'm an extremely cynical person. This guy's journal is the only truly inspiration thing I've read in my entire life. His description of the intimacy of looking into a stranger's eyes for the first time gave me chills.
That would explain why the blind man at Bethsaida described in Mark 8:22-25 who couldn't see properly after Jesus restored his sight. To copy and paste,
And they came to Bethsaida, and they brought a blind man to Jesus and implored Him to touch him.
Taking the blind man by the hand, He brought him out of the village; and after spitting on his eyes and laying His hands on him, He asked him, "Do you see anything?"
And he looked up and said, "I see men, for I see them like trees, walking around."
Then again He laid His hands on his eyes; and he looked intently and was restored, and began to see everything clearly.
At first I was pleased with my new sight. I could finally see such beautiful landscapes and visages again...But why, why is everyone sitting around watching the text "Unlicenced Broadcast" on black monitors for an hour and a half?
I can stop reading /. in braille.
We raise our slide-rules high.
Wha? The visual cortex is a region of the brain where visual input is processed. It gets its input via the optic nerve from the retina in the first place. What you're suggesting makes about as much sense as physically showing the magnetic tape from a video cassette to a camera and expecting the camera to see what's recorded on the tape.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Look, light hits the retina, travels down the optic nerve and is processed by the visual cortex. Now, if you've blind from birth your visual cortex does what? Let's say it does nothing. If you put data on the optic nerve that data will just hit an uncomprehending wall of neurons that should be the visual cortex. So what would happen if you put data on the optic nerve that was already processed? The data would hit those uncomprehending neurons that should be the visual cortex, by harmlessly passed on and enter all the other systems of the brain that have developed normally.
How we know is more important than what we know.
I wonder if it's anything like language acquisition. Deprived of language input in early childhood, children past a certain age exhibit very limited linguistic development and never really recover. To tie this idea in with the current thread, it seems that the components of the brain that are specialized or would be specialized for language simply atrophy or are otherwise non-existent to the rest of a person's cognitive abilities; a parallel situation may exist with sight.
Of course, this is all wild speculation and I have no proof to back up this hypothesis tying the two situation together, so take it for what it is: the early morning brain farts of an insonmniac grad student.
Humorless sig goes here.
mostOfTheTime = (allTheTime/2)+1
kaens.blogspot.com
Like many people have said, this can't bring vision to people who are blind from birth, because of the lack of development in the parts of brain that handle vision. But what about people with one eye blind since birth, is the brain fully developed because of the one good eye, or are there still some underdeveloped parts?
I'm asking because a bionic eye would be even cooler than a pirate eye patch.
Fun neuroplasticity story: In my biomedical engineering seminar we had a professor in who was involved with the development of a laser vision correction system. Their first human tests were safety and basic efficacy studies done in people who were 'brain-blind', meaning that their eyes were fully functional but they had some kind of damage to the visual centers in their brains that left them totally without sight. Oddly enough, following the treatment to their eyes, a number of them regained some proportion of their vision. The explanation? As best as anyone could tell, although they understood when they gave consent that the treatment wouldn't help them, they still unconsciously believed that something had been done... and their brains went along with it, remapping the input from their eyes.
*There's no big money involved for med. firms.*
there is. you have to be *blind* to not see that.
and that's why you need to keep using hotmail.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
... safety and fitness for purpose. Indeed, breast implants usually look simply out of place (it's a matter of taste, I suppose). And they can backfire, causing damage to the girls.
I suppose every machine fails, so these bionic eyes'd better be designed to fail gracefully, not damagind your ability to see forever. The same goes for every kind of machinery you would bet your health on, I guess.
Interesting comments on the development of vision from birth. Obviously, most of the readers did not see the movie " Terminator" with the cyborg's damaged eye. Another thought came to mind upon reading the comments. It is called blind vision. I saw on TV several years ago a segment on people who's Optic Nerve had stopped functioning and the normal pathways to the brain had cease to function. But, a primitive secondary path developed in the brain that allowed the detection of movement without visualization. This is what allowed the Dinosaurs to capture prey while not being able to real see. They just detected the motion of their prey. I learned that in the movie '" Jurassic Park ". See going to the movies and watching TV is educational!
in this article we've seen about solar cells using quantum dots. Quantum dots are tiny crystals smaller than an atom, and they can receive light.
So, if you think this artificial eye is cool, just wait till nanotech gets into the picture!
* Telescopic eyes! As seen on TV!
* Night vision
* Miniature laser rays coming out from the eye (remote control isn't that far fetched)
* Infrared / UV vision?
The sky's the limit!
how much is this asking to be used for VR, man this world sucks but if I could plug myself into World of warcraft or FFXI now that would be cool.
I'd get the surgery done with a bypass switch that let me use my eyes or plug a VGA inputinto my head.
on another note I misread ophalmologists as Ornithologists, makes it more interesting.
I've seen such devices advertised in the back of various magazines for years. The ads clearly imply that the X-Ray glasses will allow you to see through clothing.
how long will it be before someone figures out a way to hack these bionic body parts? beaming images of porn, and making ceo's give the board the finger durring a meeting?
Later,
Phil
Comment removed based on user account deletion
...struggles to come up with something original, fails, puts on tinfoil hat and broods.
Ignorance is curable, stupid is forever.
Some have argued that this is the very foundation of "taste". What you see as blue is not the same as what I see as blue. That is why blue is my favorite color and perhaps, not yours.
Same can be said for smells, flavors, girls' figures, etc. All are the same to each of us, yet each of us is different.
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
- When waking up, the first thing you will see is a message saying "where do you want to go today?"
- When bumping against something, clippy *will* show up and annoy you to death.
- When watching pr0n, at 'the moment of truth' you *will* get a BSOD
- Bionic Eye 2039 (tm) *will* feature WiFi connection and IE7.001 making it possible for retail shops, wall mart and even grocery shops to blast you away with pop-ups from hell.
If I was born blind in 2039 and got one of these babies. I'd rather shoot myself before I install Mickeysoft on it. I dearly hope someone has ported GNU/Linux by then!
For all married guys, that mute button will be doubly-handy on a night of extreme nagging...
Brains don't work that way. They're not a collection of distinct units communicating via discernable serial interfaces. There is no distinct "output" for the visual cortex that could be simulated. The visual cortex isn't a one input/one output thing, it's a complex system that acts as both a processor and a router. If it's non-functional, you can't see.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
There was a cool related article linked from the original here
Personally, I'd rather regenerate my original optic nerves (if that's what is damaged)... although I do admit being wired in would be cool if I could have infrared vision enhancements or something similar.
Hearing aids don't stimulate nerves. They simply amplify sound. They are basically a microphone and speaker system possibly with a computer preprocessing the sound. They depend on your eardrum, middle ear, and inner ear to convert the sound waves to nerve impulses.
Cochlear Implants(CI) on the other hand, do stimulate the auditory nerve. There's a lot of research going on with respect to CIs and people born deaf vs people who lost their hearing. The results go both ways, it really seems to depend on the individual as to how well it works and how different the sound is. In any case the hearing delivered by the CIs is nowhere near as good as the real thing, which is what the article states about these eye implants.
I don't really think this is all that close to a CI though because all it is doing is shifting what cells in the retina are being stimulated by the incoming light. It's not directly stimulating the optic nerve but is using the remaining working cells in the eye. I think that this would have the effect of scrambling the image around. I think it would take a lot of work for someone to learn to see much with it, other that general things such as lights on/off, something directly in front of you etc.
...she was a preemie, and was in an incubator. Back then, though, they didn't know how to mix the gases properly, and the pure oxygen destroyed her the use of eyes. Eventually, due to otehr problems, they were removed, and she has artificial ones now. Her brain is very well developed - she speaks several languages, she earned a PhD. But she's used to functioning non-visually; she pays a huge amount of attention to her hearing, and has always done so. Thus her brain is patterned this way. If she got these bionic eyes, I'm sure her life would become very chaotic as, she'd have to learn a whole new and totally different of perceving and interacting with the world, and her brain would have to re-pattern itself.
I didn't think the house band in Hell would play this badly.
Do you me an that se e i n g do ts pr ,I
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ev en ts yo u fr o m s ee in g le
tter s? I do n't th in k so
th in k th a t t he br ai n ca
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evels of reality in its input, so that you can choose to concentrate on the wholistic view or take a more reductionist approach and appreciate the details. But no matter, how deep you look into the dots, the big picture will get into your brain screaming, and you won't be able to avoid it. You want proof? How about your reaction when you first saw this post?
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
One of my eyes was damaged when I was around 18 months old. I wonder if this technology could be used to replace that eye with something that can actually see. Ideally your'd want the entire thing built into your head. The future is promising...
I have Usher Syndrome, part of that condition is the development of retinitis pigmentosis. It causes tunnel vision and night blindness.
For the most part I see well enough - I don't need a cane or a dog yet. However I'm practically useless at night-time or in nightclubs due to the low levels of light.
If this could be equipped with a night vision camera it'd be a nice enhancement for people like me!
"Your bionic eye may need a firmware update."
I'm seeing a Matrix-style jack in the back of the head for firmware updates, right?
I am not left-handed, either!