Chip Allows Blind People To See 231
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.'"
First Wu-Tang (Score:4, Interesting)
Light is provided through sparks of energy
from the mind that travels in rhyme form
Givin sight to the blind
we did see it coming, no? (Score:0, Interesting)
but what I'm waiting for is the answer to the Molyneux problem [stanford.edu]...
Wild. (Score:3, Interesting)
Not much of a step from here to arbitrary, computer generated input.
how soon to working Tleilaxu Eyes? (Score:3, Interesting)
http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=74 [technovelgy.com]
Ears? (Score:2, Interesting)
Quick! Close the analog hole! (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:People that 'went blind' (Score:4, Interesting)
I remember seeing a documentary of a study that did exactly that about twenty years ago... That person wore glasses 24/7 that flipped the image upside down. It took a while, but he adapted to it just fine. The problem was that when he took them off afterwards, the image was flipped again, so he had to go through all of it again :)
Re:In the land of the blind... (Score:5, Interesting)
Once again reality has trumped Star Trek with an eye implant -- there's now no reason for La Forge to wear that visor.
Reality trumped Star Trek with an eye implant before. McCoy gave Kirk reading glasses for his age-related presbyopia because he was allergic to the eye drops that soften the lens (they don't have those... yet). But they've been implanting mechanical lenses since 2003; I have one in my left eye. McCoy could have just beamed Kirk's biological lenses out and beamed the mechanical lenses in. I went from being extremely nearsighted and farsighted at the same time (age related presbyopia), wearing both contacts and reading glasses, to better than 20/20. Of course, since we don't have transporters, invasive surgery is required. This retinal implant would require even more invasive surgery.
Of all the nerdy devices I have and have had, the implanted lens is my favorite.
Give them time and this retinal implant may surpass normal vision like the lens implant does.
Oh yeah -- you will be assimilated! Resistance is futile!
Re:This is actually pretty cool (Score:1, Interesting)
A friend of my parents has that. She apparently now has her entire skull wired up in electrodes (I believe they're just below the skin, but they're wired through her chest to a battery pack she has to carry or something. She had something similiar with migraines although I don't remember the details.
Anyhow it's been working great for her, although there's a pretty decent risk of infection due to the nature of the implants (thankfully she's had it going on a year now without incident.)
Re:This is actually pretty cool (Score:5, Interesting)
I can only assume no one's that excited by huge sight-replacing devices with 512 "taxel" resolution*, except as a step toward better things.
*I've tried to imagine this and even asked Google to come up with an image that showed what this might 'look' like and come up with nothing
What I found indicated that the 512 taxels are arranged in a 32x16 grid (a 4x2 arrangement of 8x8 separate electrode grids).
Obviously it’s tactile, not visual, but I took an image off google images, reduced it to 32x16, grayscaled it, and scaled it back up using the Sinc (Lanczos3) method. This was the result [ompldr.org].
Re:Yeah, yeah (Score:3, Interesting)
They got it to the point where these folks are no longer blind, so I would expect it to happen in five years or less.
Note, however, that this isn't a panacea that will cure all blindness, just one form of blindness that only hits 200,000 out of the world's seven billion people.
What's really amazing is a CrystaLens implant. It's an artificial, mechanical lens that replaces the eye's natural lens, and it cures myopia (nearsightedness), presbyopia (farsightedness), astigmatism, and cataracts. Millions could benefit from that innovation, which was approved by the FDA in 2003.
Re:What is it, exactly? (Score:3, Interesting)
Why not simply use a small fuel cell and generate power from glucose and oxygen from bloodstream?
Re:This is actually pretty cool (Score:4, Interesting)
Here's an animated gif using the same technique.
http://yfrog.com/fxlowresmuybridgeracehorsg [yfrog.com]