Severed Optical Nerves Can Be Made To Grow Again

Anonymous Coward writes: "It is being hailed as one of the most significant advances in nerve regeneration in a decade. After severing an optic nerve in rats, neurologists have found a way to reconnect it to the brain so that it once again transmits normal electrical signals. As reported in the New Scientist this achievement is a first in mammals, and may hint at ways of reversing some types of blindness in people. Scientists also hope to use a version of the technique to treat people with spinal cord injuries.

What if...?

[BigBir3d]

Ok, they can get severed optic nerves back together, and working, that have been cut with a laser scalpel or some such thing. What if they are fixing naturally degraded optic nerves where there is not enough length (damn cat5 cable is just too short...) left? Is there a way of extending the nerves? Are we talking about splicing in "new" nerves that were "grown" in a lab or something else?

Still a very cool development!

Re:I thought 'optic nerves' were actually brain ce

[Bradee-oh!]

That's not neccesarily true... the processing power of the brian lies in its parallelism. Comparing switching speed of neurons to typical network bandwidth and thouroughput of a string of neurons to that of a typical network pipe embarrasses the biological contender.

HOWEVER, on the note of parallelism, it a networking system could somehow be developed that was parallel in nature, this may lead somewhere. :)

Re:Pointless article

[gazuga]

Wrong. I happen to be one of those weird cases -- I've only been able to see out of my right eye since I was born. To me, this is a very exciting development. I've often hoped that it would one day be possible to restore sight in my left eye, and this looks like something that just might do it.

The people most interested in this article can't read it.

That may be true, but there are plenty here who (I'm sure) have full eyesight that seem find this to be an amazing advance.

There's a reason that nerves don't grow back

[Saturn49]

A theory explaining why some nerves don't grow back is touched on in the article: it can cause more damage than good. They even noted that connections may have been a bit scrambled.

Think about waking up after such a surgery and seeing only (the biological equivalent of) TV snow. Splendid. You may be able to tell when there is light in front of you (as you can tell when a TV that only displays snow is on), but I don't think the human brain is capable of forming a pattern out of gibberish.

The same thing would happen in the case of a spinal cord injury - the density of nerves there is far too dense to guarantee they reconnect themselves properly. Think of waking up after spinal-cord reconstruction surgery to feel a large, shooting pain in your left leg. But in actuality, someone is tickling your right toe.

For you computer people, think of severing a large bundle of wires or fiber optics with a backhoe. Instead of splicing each wire or fiber back together by hand, you decide it would work just as well if you just pushed it back together and hope each one connected to the one it was connected to before. Heh. Not likely.

This is great!

[Thaidog]

I have a point in the middle of my vision in both eyes where I can't see... similar to macular degeneration... perhaps this will lead to the growth of cones and rods transplants... I want my vision back!!!