Ophthalmologists, Physicists Design Bionic Eye

InfallibleLies writes "For the first time ever, those who have been blind since birth will have a chance to see the world. It's still in the early stages, but this is a giant leap forward in medical science." From the linked BBC article: "U.S scientists have designed a bionic eye to allow blind people to see again. It comprises a computer chip that sits in the back of the individual's eye, linked up to a mini video camera built into glasses that they wear. Images captured by the camera are beamed to the chip, which translates them into impulses that the brain can interpret."

Not exactly true . . .

[gcauthon]

It may help people that were blinded later in life through an accident or cataracts. However, if someone is blind from birth then their visual cortex never develops and vision would be impossible even with an artificial eye. Many studies have been done. Click here [harvard.edu] here [tmc.edu] and here [facsnet.org] for more info.

Related

[FiReaNGeL]

Some related recent press releases about this kind of technology :

- Emory Eye Center Implants Its First Retinal Chips In Patients With Retinitis Pigmentosa [biologynews.net]

- Ophthalmologists Use Artificial Silicon Retina Microchip To Treat Vision Loss [biologynews.net]

Something similar

[MHobbit]

I recall during my 4th grade year (about 4 years ago), scientists devised a method for an Indiana man who was blind to see again. What they did, IIRC, was create a pair of glasses that fed the digitized data through a wire to a processor worn around his waist, which in turn transferred the data as electrical signals into his brain directly (as you can guess, they had to drill a hole in his head; a small one though). This method allowed the once-blind man to see about 20 feet in front.

Soon after, they ended up innovating that even more.

Not really close to the bionic eye idea, but close; earlier in the generations.

Didn't Wired report this in 2002?

[wskellenger]

They did [wired.com]. I remember the cover vividly -- the guy wearing sunglasses with the camera as a lens.

They were stimulating nerves in the eye with tiny electrodes, although they had to ask the patient where in his field of vision he saw the phosphene as they stimulated him. From this they created a "mapping" of sorts.

This sort of research was frowned upon on the US, and so it had to be carried out overseas. Check out the article -- more info than the linked BBC one.

Re:From birth?

[Lux]

I don't think so, either, and the actual article doesn't make any such claims. Just the /. summary.

There is actually a similar (in concept) device that has already been tested in humans. IIRC, the guy walks around with a hefty wearable computer/power source.

One drawback to the this approach (plugging into the eye) is that by interfacing with the optical system so close to the surface, you preclude the possibility of helping people who have damage to their optic nerve. But there's a lot to be said for the reduced invasiveness, too.

Re:Not for those who have been blind since birth..

[RFC959]

Yes, this jibes with what I've heard too. Google for "Parmelee Sigman kitten" and you find references to a study in which kittens were blindfolded from birth to adulthood; when the blindfolds were removed, they were unable to see and never gained the ability to see, despite the fact that their eyes were physically normal - their brains simply weren't wired for it. Still, we've discovered that the adult brain is more plastic than we used to think, so I wouldn't totally rule out the possibility. They mention macular degeneration in the article, and this is a big one, since it's a major cause of blindness in the elderly (my grandmother and great-aunt were both legally blind in their old age because of it). Something that can fix that would help make living longer better, instead of just longer.

Re:Not for those who have been blind since birth..

[Clod9]

True. The article summary is just wrong, based on the incorrect assumption that the brains of people blind from birth are identical to those who have lost their sight.

The development of the visual cortext that supports sight occurs considerably before age 3. If one were to develop a prosthesis for those born without sight, it would have to be introduced very early.

You're right that the research mentioned in the article will help those who have had sight and then lost it through disease or injury, a huge group of people who I'm sure will welcome it when it becomes available. And I have hopes that future research might help those blind since birth to "see" in some way as well, though it will be a lot more difficult.

Re:Not for those who have been blind since birth..

[leob]

Masturbation can only possibly cause night blindness if your diet does not have enough zinc or vitamin A. Zinc is needed to transport vit. A to the retina, where it is needed for the rods that provide black-and-white night vision, but it is excreted in relatively high amount with the semen.

I don't know if the summary was edited...

[NarrMaster]

...but it does say, "U.S scientists have designed a bionic eye to allow blind people to see again.", implying that said blind people had seen once before.

It's possible that the summary said differently, but there's no "edited" note.

Re:From birth?

[Lux]

Thanks. :) I went out and tracked down some linkage on this:

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/10.09/vision_pr .html [wired.com]

It's a really fun read.

Is this just more hype again?

[DumbSwede]

They have been making brain implant vision systems since 1978 [www.cbc.ca]

In late 2002 this method was up to 68 implanted electrodes (which would be about equal to an 8x8 matrix)

HOWEVER, you need more than 1000 (say 32x32 or 1028) or above for any really useful vision [seeingwithsound.com] With 8x8 you might recognize one or two ASCII characters. A Face??? Only if it's an emoticon.

Now granted these are implants in the retina and not the visual cortex, but I have seen other claims for retinal implants over the last five years.

Why is this research taking so long to bear fruit? In 1978 progress was limited by the available CPU horsepower to translate images into usable grid stimulation patterns. Now it seems we are stalled out with our ability to put electrodes in organic systems.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying this is easy, but why doesn't this stuff scale like Moore's Law with integrated circuits? Given the state of research over a decade ago we should be up to VGA quality arrays of 640x480 by now.

In general prosthetics systems always seem to be on the verge of some "Steve Austin" "Million Dollar Man" arrival and then never makes it. I assure you when we watched Lee Majors in the early '70s wha-na-na-na-na'ing all over the place we assumed such feats would be common place by the year 2000. What the hell happened? Is this just hard like AI, or under-funded and poorly organized?

Re:From birth?

[poopdeville]

There was an episode of Scientific American Frontier where a test subject was blindfolded and asked to interpret symbols (braille) by touch. The sight-area of the brain took on the task of interpreting the symbols (since it's used often for reading, etc') only after a few days without sight.

You're right, but she had to give up the ability to see to do that. Her visual cortex adapted to not recieving any visual stimulus by making her tactile sensation stronger through a lot of braille exercises. Now, the obvious issue is that a blind person's visual cortex would be doing the person some other work. Wiping that away could be bad news, especially since it's not clear that the visual cortex only adapts by allowing stronger tactile experience. Or even that the brain would re-arrange the visual cortex and not some other region(s).

Re:Nonvisible wavelenghts?

[Brianwa]

Infrared covers a large range of EM frequencies. Thermal infrared, which is given off by heated objects, has a longer wavelegnth than what your camera can detect. What you can see in your camera is called near infrared, and is right below visible light.

Re:Nonvisible wavelenghts?

[Joe Random]

What would infrared look like to someone using this chip? Well, that would be like describing what red looks like to someone who is blind.

Not really. It appears that this chip stimulates the layer of nerves below the retina. Thus, it can only stimulate what you can normally see: Red, green, and blue (and light/dark with the rods). No chip that stimulates the nerves under the retina can make us see anything that our eye can't normally see. There's no undocumented "infrared nerve" that would allow us to see something unique from our normal vision if it were stimulated.

Blind Vision

[macaroo]

Interesting comments on the development of vision from birth. Obviously, most of the readers did not see the movie " Terminator" with the cyborg's damaged eye. Another thought came to mind upon reading the comments. It is called blind vision. I saw on TV several years ago a segment on people who's Optic Nerve had stopped functioning and the normal pathways to the brain had cease to function. But, a primitive secondary path developed in the brain that allowed the detection of movement without visualization. This is what allowed the Dinosaurs to capture prey while not being able to real see. They just detected the motion of their prey. I learned that in the movie '" Jurassic Park ". See going to the movies and watching TV is educational!

Re:Nonvisible wavelenghts?

[Drooling Iguana]

How would you describe what red looks like to someone who is sighted?

FF0000

Re:Not for those who have been blind since birth..

[Anonymous Coward]

Hearing aids don't stimulate nerves. They simply amplify sound. They are basically a microphone and speaker system possibly with a computer preprocessing the sound. They depend on your eardrum, middle ear, and inner ear to convert the sound waves to nerve impulses.

Cochlear Implants(CI) on the other hand, do stimulate the auditory nerve. There's a lot of research going on with respect to CIs and people born deaf vs people who lost their hearing. The results go both ways, it really seems to depend on the individual as to how well it works and how different the sound is. In any case the hearing delivered by the CIs is nowhere near as good as the real thing, which is what the article states about these eye implants.

I don't really think this is all that close to a CI though because all it is doing is shifting what cells in the retina are being stimulated by the incoming light. It's not directly stimulating the optic nerve but is using the remaining working cells in the eye. I think that this would have the effect of scrambling the image around. I think it would take a lot of work for someone to learn to see much with it, other that general things such as lights on/off, something directly in front of you etc.