Gene Therapy Causes Blind Woman To Grow New Fovea

Al writes "A woman with a rare, inherited form of blindness is now able to read, thanks to a gene therapy that caused a new fovea — the part of the retina that is most densely populated with photoreceptors — to grow in her eye. The patient suffers from Leber congenital amaurosis, meaning an abnormal protein makes her photoreceptors have a severely impaired sensitivity to light. She received the experimental treatment twelve months ago when physicians injected a gene encoding a functional copy of the protein into a small part of one eye — about eight-to-nine millimeters in diameter. Along with two other patients receiving the same treatment, her eyesight improved after just a few weeks. Now the physicians report that this patient seems to have developed a new fovea, exactly where she received the injection. Because the woman has been effectively blind since birth, the results suggest that the brain is able to adapt to new visual stimuli remarkably quickly."

Comments

Oh sure, you hail this as an achievment now...

[FlyingSquidStudios]

but when the new eyes achieve sentience and telepathically conspire to enslave humanity, don't tell me I didn't warn you against this sort of thing!

Cool

[wanax]

This is very cool stuff. But in terms of adapting 'remarkably quickly' to visual stimuli after congenital blindness, I'm slightly dubious. There's been quite a bit of recent research done on this recently through Project Prakash (which is also a very cool humanitarian mission at the same time), which finds that adults who regain vision see things very differently than we do... For example that have major problems with depth, object segmentation (think two overlapping squares -- normal observers will typically say there are two squares, overlapping, while newly seeing adults will report 1 square, where the overlap occurs), full field motion etc.

Re:Cool

[bluesatin]

But are the problems caused by the brain or just bad eyesight? I can imagine anyone 'regaining' their sight probably doesn't have the same quality eyes as someone that has never lost their vision.

Re:Cool

[wfstanle]

But who cares if she perceives most things differently than you or me? According to the article, is seems that she has learned to read. That means that she sees text and is able to get the same meaning as we do. If it was otherwise, she wouldn't be able to read. Remember, reading is getting meaning from text.

Re:Cool

[johannesg]

Bloody hell man, we have newly seeing adults now! Who cares if their vision is not quite the same as ours!

Re:Cool

[slider142]

Even with perfect eyesight, most visual cueing and a lot of filling in of detail is done by the brain, and not received by direct physical stimuli through the optic nerves. This can be seen in optical illusions meant to highlight or isolate certain aspects of visual construction.

Re:Cool

[kryptKnight]

Who cares if their vision is not quite the same as ours!

The newly seeing adults might, once they get over the shock and realize they still can't get a driver's license, engage in sports or many other everyday activities to the same extent as normally sighted people.

Just because we've made progress doesn't mean there isn't more to be done.

It was in a different area to the normal fovea

[Ant P.]

TFA says that instead of fixing what was there, they managed to make a different part of the eye more sensitive. Maybe this treatment might become commonplace one day, to give people better-than-normal eyesight where it's needed.

Re:the stuff of science fiction

[D Ninja]

an amazing achievement, hopefully a preview of better things to come and a brighter future for us all

It's already considerably brighter for the woman with the new fovea...

Re:the stuff of science fiction

[ae1294]

an amazing achievement,

indeed but the real question is can this technology be used to make a man's penis longer, harder and lets not forget thicker. Until that day comes we will always be at war with our selves...

Peripheral Vision

[Anonymous Coward]

Could this be used to grow a fovea covering the entire retinal wall, giving us peripheral vision as sharp as central vision?

Sight not developing in the brain

[spineboy]

If the brain does not receive visual stimuli as a child, then the visual centers never form properly, or at all. There is a certain time window, where the brain is plastic enough to learn the new input. After it has passed, then there are certain things the brain can not do, or do well - like learn new languages without an accent.

Re:Sight not developing in the brain

[HiThere]

That's the current theory. This result may cast questions upon the current theory. Or perhaps it won't. We'd need more details to tell. But in any case if there's a conflict, experiment trumps theory.

Actually..

[wanax]

I care quite a bit, since I study vision... and understanding the differences between a newly seeing adult and a seeing adult really help us understand a lot about brain development and theories of vision. Things like this, and Project Prakash which I've noted above have also shown that 'critical periods' in neural development, while they exist, are a lot less important in humans than say, cats (or barn owls), where most of the classic studies of critical period have been done. This leaves me optimistic that both genetic/stem cell approaches and neural prosthesis in general have a lot more promise than was thought several years ago.

The point of my comment though, was that the summary implied that she had gained essentially normal visual function, which I doubt is the case... and that while this is an amazing treatment that can probably help quite a few people, we still have a lot of work we can do to improve it -- especially on the low-tech side such as better visual displays and therapy regimens that improve final post-operative function.

Re:Actually..

[sleeponthemic]

Even on slashdot, you've got to be very careful with your language when a "wonder" story comes along. That is your only mistake. To avoid that reaction, it probably isn't enough to say "this is cool stuff... but". You must make the layman believe that you are still giving it the respect that you've probably actually given a thousand times over, studying and exploring it. That doesn't amount to anything more than being a little more praising, to offset the scientific clarification (particularly if you are introducing a caveat). It's a strange facet of human nature that those who are in their more initial stages of discovery tend to "strike out" at those who have probably "been there" and thus are more perceptably flippant.

Re:Actually..

[johannesg]

Ok, fair enough, I can understand that. But the other poster is right: you treat this as it is almost meaningless, while in reality someone who was blind can now at least read a clock. That's a better level of vision than I have without my glasses, btw.

And hey, who knows, maybe you are curing blindness every day, maybe this will _not_ lead to further enhanced cures, maybe the "real" breakthrough is just around the corner. But for now this seems to be a major step, and once in a while it is good to step back and stare in awe at what mankind has achieved thus far.

Now bring on that Mars-colony already, damnit. I was born after the first man walked on the moon, I don't want to die before the first man walks on Mars...

Adaptability of the brain.

[rew]

Because the woman has been effectively blind since birth, the results suggest that the brain is able to adapt to new visual stimuli remarkably quickly.
We knew that already. People have been equipped with a camera and an actuator that "projects" an image through the tactile nerves on a patch of skin.... Those people similarly report being able to "see" using that hardware.

This leads me to believe that our brains are not hardwired to interpret visual information only on just the optical nerve. During the first few years, we learn what nerves are connected where. And our brains are flexible, and will be able to adapt to changes in what-connects-where.

In an experiment, a long time ago(*), a person was equipped with glasses that flipped the image in his eyes upside-down. In about two weeks he didn't notice the difference anymore. Also, learned skills, like skiing, were instantly possible with the re-wired visual hardware. Adapting to the original situation (no flipping glasses) was quicker than adapting to the flipping glasses.

(*) http://wearcam.org/tetherless/node4.html I intended "a long time ago" to mean something like "in the 19-seventies", turns out the original experiment dates back to 1896!

Re:More amazing than it seems...

[fractoid]

It can be a slippery slope if you treat these kinds of operations as "fixing people", but I think if you treat it instead as enabling them to do something new (to them, at least), you don't run the risk of "fixing" people who don't feel that they are broken.

Dude, if something about me doesn't work, it's broken. If they make it so it does work, it's then fixed. That's what these words mean. "But I like it like that" doesn't change anything.

Now, if you were talking about "fixing people" who have non-functionally-impairing differences (skin/hair/eye colour, accent, etc.) then that would be different.