Artificial Retinas Bring Vision Back To The Blind

Patters writes "Researchers from the University of California and the Doheny Eye Institute have successfully implanted a tiny electronic eye implant with a video camera mounted on a pair of sunglasses into 6 patients, allowing them to detect light and motion. The implant is a 4-by-4 grid of electrodes which connects to damaged photoreceptors (rods and cones) on the patient's retina. It works by stimulating the photoreceptors, transmitting signals through the optic nerve to the brain. The implant only works on patients with degenerated rods and cones, and is named after Argus, the Greek god which had 100 eyes. If the implants continue to be a success, the artificial retinas could be available to the public within the next 3 years."

Comments

4 x 4?

[blue_adept]

wow, and I thought 640 x 480 was low resolution.

Re:Wee

[wjsteele]

It's not a dupe... it's for the OTHER eye.

Bill

remember everyone

[UlfGabe]

people blind from birth will not be able to use this to see. Their brains havn't even developed the "code" to interpret the optic nerve signals.

people who have lost eyes, or through macular degeneration, will be able to regain some of their lost visual freedom.

excellent work scientists, keep it up.

Re:remember everyone

[mikael]

Not really. Human vision develops at the early stage, at the same time as we learn to crawl along as infants. There was once a case where some parents tried "accelerate" their kids development, by skipping the crawling stage, and just using a baby bouncer instead. Apparently, the kid never learnt the concepts of "perspective" and "distance". as a consequence, she couldn't understand why objects changed in size.

There was also a guy in a 3rd world country who had cataracts since he was born. Doctors managed to help him see again, but he could only see colours, but not shapes. He still had to touch the object to get the idea of its shape.

There are so many aspects of vision that we have to learn in order to avoid becoming confused: shadows, reflections, texture, shape from shadow, perspective, not forgetting spacial relationships (partially obscured, behind, inside).

Re:remember everyone

[Dachannien]

One thing that happens during early infant brain development - when the low-level brain facilities for vision are also developing - is the mass culling of synaptic connections. That is, the brain initially grows (during late prenatal development) an abundance of synapses, far more than it needs for normal operation. A large portion of these synapses are removed during early childhood (first two years or so), with learning and experience creating a "survival of the fittest" scheme of determining which synapses to keep and which to lose.

It is almost certain that the excessive culling of synapses in the visual centers of the brain that results from not having any visual stimulus during the first two years of life is irreversible. Possibly the brain could be stimulated to produce new synapses in those areas, but it is likely that the process would cause far more harm than good.

panning your head

[goombah99]

In principle one pixel would be enough, if you could pan your head and remember what you saw at each pixel. With 16 pixels this is simplified. Your 4096x1024 pixel scanner on your desktop does not have 4 mllion sensors, it has just 1/4000th of that number: 1024 and it uses them in a pushbroom fashion. Those 360 degree pan cameras also just use a narrow slit they push broom. Same with many sattelites.

the question is whether your brain is up to of synthesizing a image from a pan and deconvolving the large pixels down to high resolution. There's some evidence it might be able to synthesize the image from the pan since it already does that for your blind spot. And the ganglia in the eyeball do some deconvolution already so that might be possible too.

I guess we'll find out when the blind people tell us.

Re:Obvious transhuman consequences left out

[commodoresloat]

Transhumanism is like libertarianism

You mean it's an unworkable fantasy dreamed up by conservatives who smoke pot?

Sounds about right to me.