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Bionic Eye Gives Blind Man Sight
AmigaMMC writes "A man who lost his sight 30 years ago says he can now see flashes of light after being fitted with a bionic eye. Ron, 73, had the experimental surgery seven months ago at London's Moorfield's eye hospital. He says he can now follow white lines on the road, and even sort socks using the bionic eye, known as Argus II. I wouldn't go as far as claiming he regained his sight, but this certainly is a biotechnological breakthrough."
He only got the starter package -- Due to the economy he couldn't afford his first choice with the laser.
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I would have imagined they would want a subject that would live for longer (average) so that they could continue to have studies about long-term use and wear on the eye socket. That being said, I'm glad progress is being made, and look forward to my own cybor...er replacement eye.
It's all fun and games till someone divides by 0. Then it's hilarious.
so a man gets his sight back after being blind for 30 years, and the very first thing he does ISN'T download porn? This is some kind of hoax.
I wish the scientists would provide a picture that represents what the person can see so we can see for ourselves just how much of a breakthrough it is. Obviously if the guy can perform daily tasks it is great and I'm happy for the guy but I'd like to see the qualify of the images he is seeing for my own curiousity.
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His physical and technological distinctiveness will be added to our own. Resistance is Futile.
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He says he can now follow white lines on the road
Here in California, that'd be good enough to issue him a driver license.
I wonder how much better the eye would work on someone with a younger brain, that can recalibrate itself better to the new signals coming from the new eye.
--
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Since they've gotten the eye-brain interface worked out, how long can it really take before artificial eyes are better than human ones? Technology increases exponentially, as a general rule.
Myself, I'm looking forward to open source eyes.
How much did this experiment cost? I don't wish to sound callous, but we waste too many health care dollars on people who have already lived a full life. The same money could be better spent on younger people where the return on investment is much greater.
I love the title of the post is "Bionic Eye Gives Blind Man Sight" and the quote in the last sentence on the post is "I wouldn't go as far as claiming he regained his sight." WTG /.!
From this press release this appears to have only 60 electrodes (and I assume only grayscale). This is definitely remarkable progress, but still nowhere close to achieving a bionic eye that can come even close to rivaling the real human eye.
The question they're also answering (besides how well does this work) is how well can the brain interpret simple images into more complex images that would allow someone to get by in life. That may be as interesting, if not more interesting, than the actual experiment with the device.
He can see more than flashes. It can see through clothing too. He's just not going to tell anyone about that affect so that the women who are looking in curiosity won't think anything of him looking... 'down'...
Defective Logic
he lost his sight the same year the Six Million Dollar Man went off the air. Coincidence?
why yes.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Congratulations, he's a human cockroach. :P
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Finally, I can remove all those "Don't stare into the laser with your remaining eye" stickers. Yay!
just so that those slashdotters who didn't RTFA(i.e. everyone except those who read it earlier today off BBC's news feed) don't get confused, the parent post is a lie.
They attached a microelectrode array to the retina of his eye, which stimulates based on a black and white visual input from a camera attached to some glasses.
Does it come with a life time warranty?
He'd better be careful about when they come to reposess when he can't make the payments.
Because I believe the EU has rules against rampant deficit spending. We'd never qualify for admission.
Making fun of dumb people since 2009
It's a long ways off but I wounder how long till bionic eyes have better sight then our biological ones. Should we have restrictions on which spectrum's of light were allowed to view or does it not matter. I'm sure it would even be (by then) easily able to interface with software.
In humans, the optic pathways form around birth, up until 1 year of age or so. If the baby can't see at all in that time, then the brain never "forms" those pathways, and so the vision part of the brain never develops properly.
..........FULL STOP.
What sound does it make when it zooms? I hope it's a good one.
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I hope you were trying to be funny, because that isn't even remotely true. The motor cortex isn't involved at all.
From TFA:
"the receiver passes on the data via a tiny cable to an array of electrodes which sit on the retina ...When these electrodes are stimulated they send messages along the optic nerve to the brain, which is able to perceive patterns of light and dark spots corresponding to which electrodes have been stimulated."
So was it the really good Swiss lenses, or the Japanese biotech ones that need to be replaced before your optic nerve rots?
Bill Stewart
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Yes, but see what his wife has planned?
From the article: "I've taught him how to use the washing machine and away he goes. It's just the ironing next."
Almost better to let the wife believe that the eye doesn't work as advertised.
Windows + electronic eyes = true Blue Screens Of Death.
...'you mean that wasn't your boobs I grabbed?? Damn eyes must be malfunctioning again"
I am open source, and Linux baby!
A few years ago, I dated a person that was friends with a person who was blind from birth. Apparently, he was also fitted with a device very similar to that in the article. However, he said (to her) that it wasn't much use because it only detected light patterns, not a full spectral field.
So is this new tech, or any different from what's available now?
Seriously... from being *blind* (no vision at all, whatsoever, etc.) to not just having say a single signal (dark/light), or 3 signals (enough to determine some direction), but 60??
That's enough not just to make out direction, but also movement.
The only problem I see is that it's not quite like a photo in that it isn't a regular grid.
The last I read about this, it went a little something liek this...
They stick all N electrodes into the visual cortex and then activate them, one by one, and ask the user "is this point more left or more right than this one? Is it higher or lower?" The reason for this is...
1. they don't know exactly -what- the user is in fact seeing.. they don't even know what 'direction' an electrode is actually giving a signal.
2. the implantee was blind before. Giving them a single signal and asking them to point roughly into the direction of the illuminated blob they can 'see' is futile - they have no reference.
Once done, they have a map of where the electrodes roughly are in relationship to eachother, as well as a map of which electrodes are weak, which don't work at all, etc. Only -then- can they hook it up to an imaging processor's output, and weeks of training the user begins. I.e. put a lightbulb right in front of them - what they might 'see' is an illuminated blob nearer to the lower-right of their 'vision', seen from our viewpoint. On the up side, if they have always been blind, they can easily be told that the illumination is coming from directly in front of them. If the implantee had lost his sight later in life, however, they're going to have to re-learn their visual processing.
Regardless of all of these 'issues', it remains VERY impressive indeed that we can make some deaf people hear and some blind people see.. even if it's nowhere near the acuity of most people, -any- hearing/vision is an immeasurable improvement over -no- hearing/vision.
Alan Alda did a show several years ago on Scientific American Frontiers called "Cybersenses" where he featured a guy who also had an "artificial eye" implanted. It used 64 electrodes (if I remember correctly) and they were working on one that used 1024.
He was able to actually get enough information out of his that he could read letters printed on the wall of the building they were in. He also saw a "bright spot" when they went outside that turned out to be Alan's forehead.
Bill
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An in-sight-ful article on /.
Don't forget to tip your watchful waiters...
I wouldn't go as far as claiming he regained his sight...
But, Slashdot editors would.
Cochlear implants have 22 electrodes or so, and the people I know who have them can generally understand reasonably clear speech with the implant. Obviously vision is in two dimensions and will take more signals to reach that level of utility, but 60 is well on the way.
Instead of an "Holy Crap! The Blind Can See!" as a summary, is it too much to ask that you add half a sentence describing the specific condition that this procedure is capable of treating? "A man who lost his sight 30 years ago from retinitis pigmentosa, a group of genetic diseases causing retina degeneration, ..." would have been fine.
Sure, I can click over and read the original source, but it's not so convenient sifting through paragraphs on the BBC's website when I'm reading this on my Pocket PC while sitting on the can.
I believe I saw a special on this on Sci Am, they were using a 4x4 or 16 bit matrix.
Looking at the how it works vid, I think I counted and 8x8 or 64 bit array. It's climbing up there.
RTFA. He is blind because of problems in his retina, not in his brain.
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Didn't the California Assembly require his artificial sight be blurry, so that he couldn't use Google Earth?
Bionic Eye Gives Blind Man Sight.
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just so that those slashdotters who didn't RTFA(i.e. everyone except those who read it earlier today off BBC's news feed) don't get confused, the parent post is a lie.
It's a joke, dumbass. A failed joke, apparently, since nobody thought it was funny (that's fine, I can deal with the occasional joke failing outright...) - but I thought it was abundantly ridiculous that it would be clear that it was in no way connected with reality!
I just thought it was funny the headline was "Bionic Eye Gives Blind Man Sight" - and then it's like, actually, it lets him match socks and follow lines in the road. It just reminded me of those line-following robot kits.
Bow-ties are cool.
No, he's wearing the IBM designed body armor.
I'm not even blind and these stories make me crazy. Honest to Dog, I think I've read stories about this being tried once every decade since the '70s. so _WHEN_ will it be ready for prime time?
Either that, or just give up on running a story on it every decade. Geez.
will go way up due to demand.
Does it make this really cool sound?
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They've tried something like this in the past, but never heard anything more about it. This new version is considerably less intrusive - in the old article from 2002, they had to implant electrodes in the guy's head through a port. And the old way actually bypassed the eye, whereas this new one actually uses what is still useful in the eye.
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Bionic, Bionic Six, uhuh uhuh
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Bionic, Bionic Six, uhuh uhuh
Bionic-1/Ron Bennett - Father > Enhanced senses
wow...this documentary was Discovery a little over 8 weeks ago and it only just made it here? For shame /.
Sweet! How long before I can ditch my meat eyes and spend my hard-earned ¥ on some Zeiss models with integrated lowlight, thermographic and flare compensation? I got Essence to burn!!
Palaces, barricades, threats, meet promises
No. He's been blind a while. Even with people with transplants to completely restore vision take a while to be able to see. Just as cochlear implants take some time to make use of. The point you should take to heart is that eyes don't see, the brain sees. The device restores the sense triggering in his eye. That's a requirement for sight but none of the work. It's like fixing a camera lens and ignoring the fact that that camera itself doesn't have any firmware.
He won't instantly have his vision restored. This is why people are supposing his vision will continue to improve. It isn't because the device is going to start working better but because his brain is going to keep wiring up better and better.
Which brings us to Prozac which has actually shown itself to help with the plasticity of the visual centers of the brain. This is also why the original post noted that you should have a younger brain (more plasticity).
It is no longer uncommon to be uncommon.
So finally we have a living human who can confirm that having the ability to see just some spots of light is better than not seeing at all. Hopefully this will get the people who can't understand how an eye could have evolved to change their mind.
I think it just hit a bit too close to reality to be honest. They've done very similar things with animals, as a sibling post said(cockroaches). And in humans, similar things have been done for remote control: Remote-controlled humans.
That's why it's not actually that obvious that you were joking.
So, we are now in the age where bionics is a reality for things like eye replacement.
I am very glad, however, I believe the next cool thing should be exoskeletons, too many people have lost abilities to being able to do many things (either old age, MS, parkinsons etc...)
An exoskeleton would offer more power to be able to move around freely by thinking about it, and have the proper strength to carry out that action. Lifting a box (not one of 100lbs, but one of 20lbs.)
would be easier for that older 70 year old lady.
As well, crippled people in the case of Christopher Reeves, would have been able to walk.
I hope there are more things out there we will be able to do for the good of mankind, this is definitely one of them though.
I would have modded you troll but I'm out of mod points. I guess I'll just settle for getting modded -1 Troll.
They've been working on artificial sight for a while. UC Santa Cruz and other schools/research institutions have been doing trials since as early as 2002. Here's a release from 2004 discussing similar results: http://www.soe.ucsc.edu/news/article?ID=1102
Oddly, his glasses keep turning up in women's locker rooms.
I think it just hit a bit too close to reality to be honest. They've done very similar things with animals, as a sibling post said(cockroaches). And in humans, similar things have been done for remote control: Remote-controlled humans.
And Spock's Brain - don't forget that!
That's why it's not actually that obvious that you were joking.
Bow-ties are cool.
The way I see it, I, the Anonymous Coward, godd mooded twice as troll and once as flamebait. I also decided, in one of y posts, that I was a troll and modded myself as such. Holy crap! Crazy stuff, heh?
52 Minutes into this National Geographic Invisible World video I first saw in the late 1970s or early 1980s. The brain to camera interface connector looks remarkably like the connector on a TV Picture Tube of that era.