Chip Allows Blind People To See

crabel writes "3 blind people have been implanted with a retinal chip that allowed them to see shapes and objects within days of the procedure. From the article: 'One of the patients surprised researchers by identifying and locating objects on a table; he was also able to walk around a room unaided, approach specific people, tell the time from a clock face, and describe seven different shades of gray in front of him.'"

Comments

Not a cure (for blindness)

[Manip]

Just to clarify in case you didn't RTFA this isn't a cure for all forms of blindness. Unfortunately we still aren't at the point of being able to clip a camera on to people and having their brains understand that input directly. But it does somewhat mitigate forms of blindness which are directly associated with the eye (as opposed to the image processing centre which is a common form of blindness). But that being said, this is HUGE. We can cure several kinds of blindness or at least mitigate it. The quality of life increase to the people who receive this new medical technology will simply be like night and day.

Re:Not a cure (for blindness)

[janek78]

Could you supply a source on the "[...]image processing centre which is a common form of blindness"? As far as I know, and yes IAAMD, eye-related conditions are by far the most common cause of blindness, whereas cortical blindness represents only a small fraction of the total blind population (significant, no doubt).

This is actually pretty cool

[kurokame]

Firstly, it's probably going to be 50 years before this turns into an actual medical procedure rather than a proof-of-concept experiment. Let's just get that out of the way.

So what they're doing is taking people with a defective retina, and adding a synthetic one. The retina normally receives photons and sends a signal along the optic nerve. What they're doing is implanting a silicon photoreceptor behind the retina of people whose retinas aren't doing the job. The chip receives the photons and sends an electrical signal, serving the same function as a "healthy" retina to some fidelity. The results are sort of low-fi since (a) it's just a proof of concept trial, and (b) the retina is a horrendously complex photodetector so it will take a lot of work to approach that in an implantable device. But dude, blind people. Seeing. Go, science!

What is it, exactly?

[Nirvelli]

The Abstract has more technical details, such as the fact that this chip is externally-powered, and has a "38 × 40 pixels" resolution.

People that 'went blind'

[splutty]

One caveat that seems to be missing in the summary, is that this was done with people that used to have normal eyesight, which degenerated into blindness.

Obviously the fact that the brain already recognizes shaped, forms, and knows how to 'see' makes a huge difference.

For people having been born blind, this sort of research might eventually help, but this would take all the visual stimulation and training that a small child gets as well, with brains that are not that of a small child, so will take a long time to adapt, unfortunately.

Re:People that 'went blind'

[delinear]

Earlier than that - George Stratton was doing this one-hundred and twenty years ago. His experiment involved covering one eye and inverting the image in the other (the apparatus he used at the time was too heavy to do both eyes 24 hours a day). He found after 4-5 days everything looked the right way around, but if he concentrated on objects they would reverse. Other than that he could move around and operate as normal. Upon removing the device it was only a few hours until his sight returned to normal.

Re:Yeah, yeah

[Toze]

iirc, the experiment 5 years ago had a 2X2 pixel resolution that allowed the patient to distinguish between light and dark. This is a considerable improvement. So yes, it will make it into clinical practice. Eventually.