First Bionic Eye Gets FDA Blessing 42
coondoggie writes "The U.S. Food and Drug Administration today approved what it says is the first bionic eye, or retinal prosthesis, that can partially restore the sight of blind individuals after surgical implantation. The Argus II Retinal Prosthesis System includes a small video camera, transmitter mounted on a pair of eyeglasses, video processing unit (VPU) and an implanted artificial retina. The VPU transforms images from the video camera into electronic data that is wirelessly transmitted to the retinal prosthesis."
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Just your standard issue Rick-Roll
Just make sure he doesn't go to McDonalds (Score:1, Interesting)
Seeing as how some McDonalds employees physically assaulted Professor Steve Mann in an attempt to rip off his prosthetically-mounted digital eye glass, I take it they may also feel threatened by bionic eyes and may ban or even attempt to remove them. Sound far-fetched? Read what McDonalds did to Dr. Mann [blogspot.jp], and decide for yourself.
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Not really a problem, here. This is a retinal implant, not a hunk of plastic and metal attached to your face.
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Are you seeing the same photos of users of this implant as I am?
Or did you read the informative article where it states: "Specifically the Argus II Retinal Prosthesis System includes a small video camera, transmitter mounted on a pair of eyeglasses, video processing unit (VPU) and an implanted artificial retina."?
Brain Interface (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Brain Interface (Score:5, Interesting)
I saw a University of Washington (I get the TV channels) lecture on a study of natural vision coding
They basically hooked a monkey's optic nerve into a ton of monitoring electrodes, then showed the monkey a set of images while recording. They then programmed a Neural network to replicate the exact same output as the monkey with the same input, and hooked it into blind monkeys testing against the calibration we use today in humans.
The standard calibration method is the squares test. They send a pulse to each electrode and have the subject point at the relative location on an easel where they see a flash from the activation. So for a 64 electrode system, the subject sees 64 flashes. They're then tested on shapes and sizes of objects (object recognition)
The blind monkeys were trained this method using the standard equipment and coding, (testing for grapes and dice). But when they split them into two groups, the monkeys with the neural net coding did much better after a couple of weeks after they got their coding replaced with the neuralnet input from a human.
I don't think there was a stellar control in the study, but the results are intriguing, and I think it merits further research. Perhaps with MRI mapping of how the optic nerve connects to the visual processing area, and how it changes during blindness.
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A far more intriguing experiment was that of a mouse I recently read about. Basically, its artificially severed optic nerves were 'guided' to heal again (this can be done with humans too, to a certain degree). Afterwards the mouse's vision was totally garbled, though, as the wires were all crossed, as it were.
Here, however, nature applied a brilliant trick to solve the cross-wiring, fully automagically! The idea is based in a simple physics. When one of the retna's photoreceptor cells 'fires', it does not f
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This actually happens in everybody. The lens of the human eye inverts the image that comes through it. Human newborns haven't yet learned to correct for this, and their ability to follow motions with their eyes is thus impaired. By a month or so of age*, their brains have corrected and see things as we do. This is part of why it's important for babies to have moving objects to watch; it gives them things to learn eye-tracking with*.
* I'm no expert in the development of babies; this is stuff I read about yea
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These kind of solutions would only work if blindness is not related to the nerves carrying information to brain. So still some of the blind would be out of luck with these.
Re:Brain Interface (Score:4, Insightful)
Figure out the coding and feeding directly into the primary visual cortex is feasible. Tricky part is making an implant that can continue to function for many years without needing replacement.
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But eventually, the bionic eyes will be able to do things a natural eye cannot.
I, for one, welcome our new cyborg Overlords.
Better yet, I may be one of your new Cyborg Overlords. Start sucking up to me now, and beat the Christmas rush!
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Steve Austin's one was better in the 70's (Score:2)
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and his right arm moved when you pressed the big red button on his back!
Thats Awesome! (Score:3, Funny)
But, does it look like a women's hair clip painted gold?
Epic Fail (Score:1)
Was approved in Europe nearly 2 years ago.
Try again.
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IRL Syndicate, who's in?!
How much longer . . . (Score:1)
Geordi is going to be pissed (Score:2)
All those years wearing a stupid-looking visor that looks like he swiped it from a cylon, and it turns out that the eye implants already existed!
Re:Geordi is going to be pissed (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, the series did address that (or it might have been in one of the novels, ask a real trekkie). In the TNG timeframe, medical tech would have been easily up to the task of growing replacement biological eyes and reconnecting them. Geordie could have had that done any time he wished. He took the visor out of choice, because it provided him with vision in some ways superior to natural which he considered made him a better engineer. Most usefully, it could image in the thermal infra-red, allowing him to see at a glance patterns of heat dissipation that others would need hand-held instrumentation to observe, and because he saw these every time he looked at any component he gained a far greater understanding of what 'normal' looked like and how to spot slight deviations from it - allowing him to recognise a near-failure component that any normally-sighted engineer wouldn't notice until it failed completly.
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He took the visor out of choice, because it provided him with vision in some ways superior to natural which he considered made him a better engineer.
And nothing to do with the fact that he could switch to millimeter waves whenever Ensign Lefler [memory-alpha.org] walked by.
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No, the inclusion of "articles intended for use in the diagnosis, cure, mitigation, treatment, or prevention of disease in man or other animals" in the original act creating the FDA (the FFDCA, the C is "Cosmetics", btw) has been more or less uncontroversial for longer than you or I have likely been alive.
Moreover, I have really have no desire to return to the era of Mrs. Moffat's Shoo-Fly Powders for Drunkenness [wikipedia.org], or the bionic equivalent thereof.
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Meh. Wrong link, to the WP article history rather than the article. Sorry about that.
The eyes are not enough (Score:1)