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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.
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.
> 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.
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
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.
I'll bet you win at Balderdash all the time.
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.
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.
Indeed. Your brain can do a lot of interpretation based on just a little input. For example, take this little flash quiz.
w f
http://www.onceuponadime.com/gold/12pixelheroes.s
I think you'll be surprised at how well you'll do despite having only 12 pixels to identify a superhero's costume. However, I don't think a person who has been blind all his life can make the same interpretations a regular person can. We take for granted how much our brain fills in the gaps of what we can't (or don't) see. A person who hasn't learned to do this would probably have a great deal of difficulty doing this.
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.
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