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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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
Apparently you don't see to well.
Your bionic eye may need a firmware update.
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.
A human brain encased in a robot running linux?
Who will guard the guards?
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.
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.
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
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.
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
...what causes the hair to grow in your palms?
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
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.
Actually, there is a scenario they have experimented with. Some people are born with severe cataracts. Surgery can remove those cataracts now, but 20 years ago when they started doing this, they found that if they did not remove the cataracts within a certain amount of time, the brain did not develop sufficiently for eye-sight to be restored. A friend of mine has this problem (she is legally blind). Her daughter was born with the same defect but this time they were able to operate quickly after birth, remove the damaged lenses and replace them with special contacts. When the child is 6 or 7 they will replace the contacts with new lens implants.
"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."
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.
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.
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.
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!
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