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

Implants for healthy people

[Harmonious Botch]

I imagine that in the not too distant future some perfectly healthy geek will have one of these implanted. I'd seriously consider it when resolution gets to about 24 bit SVGA ( It will have to have fast PGP on the wireless connection so that I control what I am seeing. I do not want my optical nerve spammed directly ).
I hope there is a 'turn-off-and-see-through' option that lets you use the original organic hardware when you want.

It works even better if it is implanted in an infant, so that the brain can adapt to it as it grows. This will, of course, be considered child abuse when it is first done. In a century or two it will be considered abuse NOT to have it done for your kid.

Re:Implants for healthy people

[timeOday]

I imagine that in the not too distant future some perfectly healthy geek will have one of these implanted.

Sure, but not instead of a perfectly good eyeball. Triclops, anyone?

Actually, I hope implants aren't the only way. Just give me the wearable version. Our brains are highly evolved to make use of our eyes, so I doubt there's much to be gained by cutting open healthy people for direct access to nerves.

Re:Implants for healthy people

[badboy_tw2002]

Mods are on crack - this is actual interesting discussion.

There's too much we don't know aobut infant vision to mess with the brains early development - although who knows what stuff like television is already doing to us. However, I think it would be better to have these for overlays and such - where it mixes both the incoming light and anything being fed in from the connection. SVGA seems a little low resolution wise - don't forget this is your whole field of vision. You'd want probably 4-5 times that at least to resolve floating screens and such in front of you.

Don't forget to add those aural implants for Dolby 600 channel sound!

Re:Implants for healthy people

[ArcherB]

Just give me the wearable version.

Only if it looks like a banana clip!

Re:Implants for healthy people

[monopole]

This must be stopped until HDCP is implemented for the visual cortex. Otherwise people will be able to see protected content without DRM! Of course once reliable HDCP is implemented it should then be mandatory, plugging the analog hole once and for all!

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

[skoaldipper]

One of the real challenges (I would imagine) such as this chip implant on the retina is keeping it in place. Retina surgery alone isn't guaranteed. The fluid pushing against that lining can vary with age or even something like cabin pressure from an airplane ride. The synergy between medicine and engineering here really is a marvel example of our body's design and function. It's a testament to both. Personally, I prefer non evasive enhancements for what you mention; like a disposable super contact lens.

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.)

Re:Implants for healthy people

[blank axolotl]

I imagine that in the not too distant future some perfectly healthy geek will have one of these implanted.

The problem is, the signal is sent to the optic nerve according to the article -- which is already being used by your eyes if they are healthy. The signal from the camera would interfere the signal from your eye, effectively blinding it (probably). Therefore the current system is only useful to blind people who aren't using their optic nerve.

Re:Implants for healthy people

[KlaymenDK]

You might want to think that over once more -- if you can see UV and especially IR, you definitely *would* need to wear sunglasses more often ... or be blinded by remote controls, garage door openers, people beaming Palm data, and what have you.

Re:Implants for healthy people

[TheRaven64]

Martin Turner from Manchester Computing gives a very interesting talk on this subject periodically at visualisation conferences. I don't have my notes to hand, but I'll see what I can remember...

The optic nerve is actually a lot lower bandwidth than you would expect it to be; it has nothing like the capacity to send the amount of visual data you think you see. One of the biggest tricks your eye does is something a lot like run length encoding. It sends differences in light levels between adjacent cones, rather than absolute light levels (this is why many optical illusions work, by the way).

You are right to say that a composite image is used. If you turn your head quickly, you will notice it takes around a second for you to build up an image of the new area. A more scientific test involves anaesthetising the mussels around the eye and locking the head in place. From this, you can discover non-invasively that humans don't see exactly in the middle of their field of view (the blind spot; dissect an eye to see why you have one, but it's basically bad connector design) or around the edges. Another experiment involved tracking eye movements and getting people to press a button when they moved their eyes; around 90% (I think) of eye movements were completely unconscious, and didn't relate to a change of attention.

Re:Implants for healthy people

[jamesshuang]

Speaking as a neuroscience major with some eye tracking-related research experience, eye movements have two components of control - top down, and bottom up. Top down control basically means your consciousness controls where your eyes are looking, and bottom up basically means sensory input drives a "saccade", an unconscious but fast movement of the eyes, normally to a surprising, quickly moving, or dangerous stimuli. Your top-down control is actually very powerful, and if the given stimuli are not too powerful, you can almost completely suppress saccadic movements and focus on one point.

You are correct in the low-bandwidth optic nerve. Your optic nerve is carrying already heavily processed and compressed information. Only about a million ganglia are connected to the photoreceptors in your eye. The fovea has a one to one correspondence with ganglia, which gives you the high acuity in the center of your vision. Out toward the periphery, more and more photoreceptors connect to each ganglia, which means any particular ganglia is active for a very large spatial area of stimulation. This is why your peripheral vision is not as acute as the center.

Also, to the person suggesting that the optic nerve was a bad connector design, it's not. It's possibly the best connector for the situation, as with most of mother nature's designs. The sclera (outside of the eyeball) is extremely tough, and having each individual ganglia poke through its surface would be foolhardy, and very dangerous. In fact, if that were the case, evolution would make sure you couldn't move your eyes, because if you do, you'd most likely sever a pretty nice batch of the axons heading to your brain. Also, having it near the center of vision is a pretty good idea too, in order to reduce signal latency from any one portion of the retina. A much more valid criticism, however, is why your retina is inverted. The photoreceptors are on the bottom, so light reaching them have already passed through multiple layers of cells and stuff layered on top. Admittedly, having the photoreceptors at the bottom means the opsin disks are more easily cleaned up by the pigmented epithelium after they're used, but why not have macrophage-like structures on top that could scrub the opsins?

Re:Implants for healthy people

[toriver]

Modding any post in this thread as insightful is like a pun, that's probably the reason. Must be.

Interesting

[scoot80]

So the image is recieved wirelesly into the brain basically. I wonder if they get any interference.. or can they maybe pick up TV channels?... that would be a bonus.

Re:Interesting

[LiquidCoooled]

I thought more about the shock from some prankster 'toothing goatse images around to unsuspecting phones.

I am looking forward to this

[abradsn]

Literally, this will definately benefit my eye condition. I hope that this research turns out to be helpful. From what I understand so far though, it is just prolonging the inevitable... but hey, that's better than nothing.

Procedure shown on Apple Ad

[andy314159pi]

The procedure was shown on the Apple computer commercial.

Review

[Quzak]

+3 For the technology +2 For it actually working (would like to see more results data from a reputable source) +2 For bridging the gap between biological and technological distinctiveness (Resistance is futile) -2 For it being Wireless (prone to interference and hacking to the Nth degree, assuming this prototype has no security subsystems installed)

Re:On the "wireless" point...

[Original Replica]

True, but the alternative would be to have a cable protruding from the user's head

If the eye is already defunct, why not remove the eye and implant the camera? It could probably be incorperated into an artifical eye with out much problem. Circuits and cameras are already tiny and the power requirements can't be very high. (nerves deal in microvolts?) A wearable inductive recharger and you are good to go. Reattach the muscle and you could even look around. I can understand the external camera for the early R&D, but I hope the final product is fully implanted.

Re:Yeah, but does it

[QRDeNameland]

You mean this?

Nice glasses

[wellingj]

Doesn't make jordy laforge look so silly now does it?
http://www.newscientisttech.com/data/images/ns/cms /dn11198/dn11198-1_600.jpg
http://www.newscientisttech.com/data/images/ns/cms /dn11198/dn11198-2_650.jpg

By the looks of things the signals going to be pretty small so I don't imagine it
would send much interference. But it might recieve a buch though if it has to be ulra
sensitive though. Oh well it's not like you need more than 30-40fps.

On the other hand what if you woke up, switched on your recievers so you could find
where your glasses were by looking at what was infront of them...wonder if they can
do this with car keys?

And one more idea, what about the aplication of remote sensing. You have the recievers
implanted into your head and use cameras around your house. Guess you would need to be
pretty paranoid to do that....

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

[Dunbal]

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.


      Cool! Next time I have kittens I know what I'm going to do....(evil laugh) heeeere kitty kitty kitty

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.