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Scientists Reverse Engineer Animal Brains To Create Bionic Prosthetic Eyes
MrSeb writes "Utilizing neuroscience, gene therapy, and optogenetics, a pair of researchers from Cornell University have created a bionic prosthetic eye that can restore almost-normal vision to animals blinded by destroyed retinas. Prosthetic eyes have been created before, but for the most part these have been dumb prosthetics — chips that wire themselves into the ganglion cells behind the retina, which are the interface between the retina and optic nerve. These chips receive optical stimuli (via a CMOS sensor, for example), which they transmit as electrical signals to the ganglion cells. These prosthetic eyes can produce a low-resolution grayscale field that the brain can then interpret — which is probably better than being completely blind — but they don't actually restore sight. The Cornell prosthetic eye however, developed by Sheila Nirenberg and Chethan Pandarinath, is a much closer analog to a real eye, almost completely restoring sight in mice — and within 1 or 2 years, humans (PDF)."
I would like mine with a HUD, infrared/night vision, and 50x zoom.
sudo make me a sandwich
Yes, I think they said he had "Optical PlotDeviceocis".
Now tell me how we could have simulated this and tested it in a computer model, PETA guys.
*crosses arms and taps foot*
--
BMO
My jaw dropped in amazement. The fact the technique is extensible to other sensory and brain malfunctions seems to be just icing on the cake.
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
Obligitory XKCD
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
"If only you could see what I've seen with your eyes!"
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
That was my first thought.
Okay. These researchers figured out the coding sequence for the retina/nerve interface. Basically they figured out TCP/IP for your eyes. And they designed an "honest" retina that mimics a regular retina.
I'll stop there for a moment and say WOW. Nicely done, absolutely thoroughly amazing.
But then let's up the ante and have the circuitry they are using employ infrared detection. Not too difficult to do, we've been making these kinds of devices for many decades. And the same goes for a x50 zoom. Easy peasy.
A HUD display would be possible too. Watch the TED lecture at the bottom of the article. This lady KNOWS THE ENCODING that your eyes use! She can actually take the pulses transmitted to the brain and solve them backwards to see what you were looking at! With that kind of knowledge making something that transmits a generated image would be simple.
This is a *gigantic* breakthrough.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Now you can see what I mean!
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
What are you talking about? She was given three rescued and sightless mice to work with, who's tails had been cruelly shortened by their previous caretaker (the bitter spouse of a guy working at a meat processing facility). Now she was able to restore sight to them, and you should see how they run now! See how they run!
While I'm not eager to incorporate bioengineering into my person, I also am not a position where my quality of life would be marginally improved by such.
The last half of that sentence is insightful. Would I get invasive eye surgery to get an internet-enabled HUD? Hell no. But I was severely nearsighted all my life, legally blind without my glassses. After my CrystaLens implant (an artificial lens implanted in the eye that focuses naturally, like a young person's eyes) I no longer need corrective lenses, not even reading glasses, and I turned 60 this year.
If your retina was deteriorated to the point that you were blind, you would indeed be assimilated, just like I was. This is excellent news for a woman I know who used to tend bar at Felbers. Her diabetes and resultant retinal degeneration finally made her unable to work, even as a bartender. This would help her immensely.
However, I didn't read TFA but I did read about this a day or two ago, and the summary is a lot more optomistic than the FA I read. Of course, it may be the one Google News served up was a stinker and the one linked here is a good one... that happens, sometimes.
This is the stuff of science fiction... and science.
At my age, stuff you have been familiar with all your life is science fiction to me. Cell phones, flat screen computers, space shuttles, manned space stations, robots on Mars, space telescopes, even my implant were all science fiction when Star Trek came out. Now, McCoy would be jealous of a modern hospital, Star Trek IV notwithstanding; I mean McCoy on TV, not the movies that came two decades later. And even then, in Star Trek II McCoy gave Kirk reading glasses, when he could have simply transported Kirk's lenses out of his eyes and implanted (via the transporter of course) a pair of CrystaLens. My implant was beyond science fiction in 1982, but approved by the FDA in 2003.
You young people are going to be amazed at the technology that will be here when you're my age. You will see the impossible happen. You will see stuff that costs millions of dollars today for a couple hundred, and better -- when I was 12 I saw my first computer, a huge building sized thing. Nobody ever imagined that there would be notebook computers far more powerful than anything that existed then in most people's homes and cost a few hundred bucks. Not in a million years did I ever think I'd not only not need glasses, but have better than 20/20 vision.
Free Martian Whores!
A lot of flowers have UV markings that insects can see. He'll be able to determine which blooms have the best nectar reserves.
In WWII, UV lights were used to signal to boats offshore - they made sure to take someone who'd had their cataracts removed along, because it's the lens that filters out the UV light. In a similar vein, bomber crews liked to carry someone with red/green colour blindness, because they could see right through common forms of camouflage.
Who knows what UV light could show you... well, apart from bees.
The monkey used was also a rescue who has two siblings, one who cannot hear, and one who cannot make vocal noise.
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
I like your signature. How did you come up with it??