Bionic Eye Could Restore Vision

MattSparkes writes "A new bionic eye could restore vision to the profoundly blind. A prototype was tested on six patients and 'within a few weeks all could detect light, identify objects and even perceive motion again. For one patient, this was the first time he had seen anything in half a century.' The user wears a pair of glasses that contain a miniature camera and that wirelessly transmits video to a cellphone-sized computer in the wearer's pocket. This computer processes the image information and wirelessly transmits it to a tiny electronic receiver implanted in the wearer's head."

Comments

Re:Implants for healthy people

[indigest]

The possibilities here are very intriguing. The study that the article mentioned used a pair of glasses with a camera. But there's no reason why those glasses/cameras would need to be on your face. You could literally set up eyes in the back of your head, a security camera monitored by yourself, or expand your field of vision to be much larger. Also, you could set up a virtual reality sim just by playing back a recorded stream of visual data into your implant.

Of course, the possibilities for mischief with such an implant are also endless. These things would be in high demand for poker games and high school locker rooms and about a billion other things that criminals and perverts will think up.

Re:Implants for healthy people

[Dachannien]

There's too much we don't know aobut infant vision to mess with the brains early development

An interesting tidbit on this topic: Scientists have done experiments in cats where they've blocked all incoming light to the cat's eyes during early kittenhood. A portion of the visual cortex does not organize properly without this input, causing the cats to have permanent non-functional vision. A similar effect is seen in human children who are born with cataracts or develop them very shortly after birth.

(Hubel and Wiesel received part of the 1981 Nobel Prize in Physiology/Medicine for this work done through the 1960s and 70s.)

More experiments on kittens

[Harmonious Botch]

Another kitten experiment involved raising them in environments with either only horizontal or only vertical lines. As adults, they simply could not see objects of the 'wrong' orientation. A cat who had been raised in a horizontal-only world could hop up on the seat of a chair, but would bump into the legs if he tried to walk under it.

Re:More experiments on kittens

[Trillian_1138]

A cat who had been raised in a horizontal-only world could hop up on the seat of a chair, but would bump into the legs if he tried to walk under it.

I had heard that the kittens could indeed not see vertical lines (or horizontal, depending on the environment in which they were raised) but that as soon as they were put in normal situations they learned to compensate almost instantly by tilting their heads. The way I heard it, if you put kittens raised without horizontal input and tested them, they couldn't see horizontal lines but that if you put them in a normal environment with a bunch of normal kittens, you couldn't tell the difference because the ones with the vision impairment were compensating.

I never did see the study, and have no background in vision research, so I couldn't tell you which version is true, but I'd be willing to guess that the kittens learned to compensate by tilting their heads. It just seems unlikely they wouldn't learn how to compensate.

Trillian

PS - sorry for using the word 'compensate' so much. I guess I'm compensating for something.

Cadmium sulfide

[Weaselmancer]

Once this thing gets working well, use cadmium sulfide in the receptors and you'd be able to see in a wider visual band than normal eyes. Infrared and ultraviolet would become "visible". You would see heat signatures in the dark, and have nightvision among other things.