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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.'"
I didn't see that one coming.
Hearing Implants?
Nope never heard of them
La Forge is king!
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.
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!
Light is provided through sparks of energy
from the mind that travels in rhyme form
Givin sight to the blind
The Abstract has more technical details, such as the fact that this chip is externally-powered, and has a "38 × 40 pixels" resolution.
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.
Coz eternity my friend, is a long *ing time.
So is it wrong to goatse someone within a day of the operation?
Cemil.
Stories like these always make me think of how science, technology and development delivers so many of the things promised but undelivered by religion. This story, healing the sick and making the blind see again, is an actual, real miracle, and an awesome one at that. Religion, in contrast, offers only false hope and perhaps some comfort for unfulfilled promises and a harsh reality. And yet so many millions pin their hopes on imagined gods, not human spirit and ingenuity. It continues to baffle me.
Even the most extreme things promised by religion, eternal life and/or an immortal soul, might be deliverable in some form by science one day. We can certainly create a paradise for ourselves. Compared to how the people who first imagined today's religions lived, one could argue that many of us are already living in paradise (or some beta version of it at least) and it's within reach for every human on earth, regardless of religion, if we continue to produce our own miracles.
I assume pre-tests were done on 3 blind mice? /ducks...
Not much of a step from here to arbitrary, computer generated input.
POKE 36879,8
http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=74
In all honesty, This amazes me, the fact that we have reached a point where we understand enough about both the brain, and computer hardware, that we are able to use hardware to correct problems of this detail and magnitude. Going from totally blind to being able to read a clock has to be an amazing experience.
I've decided to Diversify my Holdings. I've divided my cash between my left and right pockets, instead of all in one.
As someone who is partially color blind, and has taken the "paint pots" test, I can tell you that it effectively only affects shades of brown. In other words, colors that we don't normally have names for.
The paint pots test is where they put 30 or so 1 inch round thingies on the table with a color sample on top, and you have to arrange them in order of slightly changing color. There are two points around the circle where brownish colors will be the same for those with partial (protanomaly or deuteranomaly) color blindness, or at least that's how it went for whatever form I have. Two of them seemed identical to me, so I think I ended up making a lopsided figure eight.
And someone who has been blind all their life will have had that part of their brain repurposed to increase the other senses, and have no experience with eyesight, so they probably won't even be able to process the visual cues that let you easily identify depth in a photograph.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
Now, how long do you think that it'll be until someone at the various copyright lobbies wants to force a macrovision-like drm technology in there just because someone might someday include video recording capability into artificial eyes?
It seems like one researcher or another has been twiddling with technologies like this now and then as one-off's for literally DECADES now. Will it ever make it into an on-going clinic?
I got an "insightful" for my jaded disillusionment the last time /. reported on one of these experiments, what, maybe five years ago. Can I get another "insightful" for still being disillusioned that these "cool hacks" will ever see production?
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.
Right. Kids who receive cochlear implants at very young ages (best before 5, preferably around 1) and are enrolled in schools mostly focused on speech and hearing (rather than sign) tend to show dramatic results. Most of these kids are mainstreamed into their local school districts in the kindergarten/first/second grades with limited (if any) instructional support. Using the phone with no assistance is pretty typical.
People, like my wife, who are pre-lingually deaf and receive cochlear implants later in life don't fare nearly as well. The language centers of the brain have developed and you've missed the window for dramatic gains. They still help, but she'll always need captions and alternatives to the phone.
Way to go, Chip! I always liked that guy...