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Implants Allow the Blind to See
gihan_ripper writes "Neurosurgeon Kenneth Smith has performed a revolutionary operation on St Louis resident Cheri Robertson, connecting a camera directly to her optic nerve. The rig is in principle similar to Geordi La Forge's visor, albeit in very rudimentary form. At present, the 'image' consists of a number of white dots, as on an LED display. There are also governmental restrictions on this research, forcing Kenneth and his team to fly to Portugal to carry out the operation. If this technology takes off, the future will be bright for the sight-impaired."
Camera tech is pretty well-known. Adding IR, UV, magnification, auto-adjusting for sunlight/night vision is all fairly trivial once you have the optic connection.
Imagine switching to sepia tone whenever you want that "wild west" feel.
The hard part, of course, is the resolution. Stimulating specific optic nerves is tricky, but fortunately your brain is good at dealing with odd input even if you don't get the connection quite right. It reminds me of the experiment where someone wore mirror glasses that flipped the world upside-down. After a week or so, everything seemed normal.
Last I heard -- several years ago -- they had enough resolution to see a a black/white machine just about comperable to a single ASCII character rendered on a 1985 era CRT. That would mean an "image" would have about as much clarity as, say, one of the falling mushrooms from an original Centipeded game. Not exactly high res, but a positive step.
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
If they're not already, DARPA will be all over this like stink on a monkey. They'd love to have soldiers will what will amount to wallhacks.
On an unrelated note, if they could make it so that they didn't need to cut open my head to do it, I'd love to have infrared/ultraviolet/telescopic/ultrasonic vision.
Article states that electrodes are implated into the back of the brain. If it really were the optic nerve it would be more significant, less danger = wider adoption.
True genius is grasping a situation like a peice of fruit, and peircing it just right so that it drains dry.