Slashdot Mirror
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.
http://CryoLANparty.com/ A lan I'm staff on!
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.
this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. -- Lincoln, Gettysburg Address
His physical and technological distinctiveness will be added to our own. Resistance is Futile.
This game will waste your life. Don't clicky!
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.
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.
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.
Congratulations, he's a human cockroach. :P
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
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.
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
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
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
It's my Sig and you can't have it. Mine! All Mine!
You might want to read the article and find out how much vision has been restored.
You also might want to realize that at this stage ANY chance to do this experiment on anybody benefits the knowledge for all future research in this are, thus helping everyone.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
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.
The advancement isn't in the attachment to the eye, but rather the machinerie of the device. The one that you're thinking of would have had a resolution of 4x4, meaning 16 pixels which where either black or white. If I understand corectly, this device has 60 pixels (about 7x7, it can't be square though) and produces some sort of grey scale (ether 16 or 256 both of wich beat 2). The thing is that they both interface into the optic nerve in the same way.
Read my blog you know you want to
22 electrodes in a cochlear implant would correspond roughly to a 22-bar spectrum analyzer. If each electrode gives a weaker or stronger signal in relation to audio intensity and only responds to a certain frequency range due to it's location in the cochlea then that is going have a bigger payoff than the same number of electrodes on an artifical retina where each electrode corresponds roughly to a grayscale pixel and said pixels aren't necessarily arranged in a neat grid.
It doesn't surprise me that 22 electrodes suffices for a workable sense of hearing but only provides a very rudimentary sight.
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.
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.
I'll be 57 next year, you insensitive clod, and yes, I've lived a full life and have fewer years ahead than behind. I've contributed to YOUR welfare all that time, kid.
I had cataract surgery in 2006 and a Vitrectomy last April. You're saying that I should have just gone blind in my left eye?
What an asshat. My "foes" list is empty but sometimes I'm sorely tempted, this is one of those times.
Free Martian Whores!