A Blind Man Sees His Birthday Candles Again, Thanks To a Bionic Eye and a Brain Implant (medium.com) 13
peterthegreat321 shares this story from Medium's new tech site, OneZero about Second Sight's experimental brain implant that offers a kind of artificial vision:
From the outside, the Orion looks like a pair of sunglasses with a small camera and video processing unit attached to it. Implanted in the brain, however, is a postage stamp-sized chip containing 60 electrodes that sits on the visual cortex, the part of the brain that processes visual information. When the device is switched on, the camera captures a person's surroundings, and the wireless video processing unit converts those images into electrical pulses using an algorithm. Those pulses are transmitted to the electrodes on the brain, which interprets them as visual clues... [T]he Orion, which shares much of its technology with the Argus II, bypasses the eye and optic nerve completely. "With the current system we're testing, you don't even need to have eyes for the device to work," says Dr. Nader Pouratian, the neurosurgeon at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center who implanted Jason Esterhuizen's device. As the primary investigator of the trial at UCLA, he has outfitted four patients with the device. The other two study participants received the implant from Dr. Daniel Yoshor at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas...
Esterhuizen and the other participants have regained a limited amount of vision after being completely blind for years or decades. While they don't see color, shapes, or clear edges and can't yet read text, they are able to distinguish light from dark, they can recognize moving objects, and they have some degree of depth perception. People and objects appear as dots of light corresponding to where they're located, and as they get closer, more dots appear. "It's like learning a new language," Esterhuizen says. "You learn how to interpret what's going on...."
Electrodes in the brain also cause scar tissue to form over time, making them stop working, so it isn't clear how long these implants will last. Jessy Dorn, vice president of clinical and scientific affairs at Second Sight, says the electrodes used in the Orion device should work for at least five years. That means patients will probably eventually lose what little vision they acquire with the devices. Another major limitation of the Orion is that it's only useful for those who were born sighted and later lost their vision. In people who are born blind, the parts of the brain that are responsible for sight are not fully developed, and visual information cannot be effectively transmitted to the brain. A device that could help all people with blindness is still a long way off... Esterhuizen though is hopeful about the future of assistive technologies for the blind and visually impaired. "It's just baby steps for now," he says. "But eventually I think this technology will change the lives of millions of people."
Esterhuizen and the other participants have regained a limited amount of vision after being completely blind for years or decades. While they don't see color, shapes, or clear edges and can't yet read text, they are able to distinguish light from dark, they can recognize moving objects, and they have some degree of depth perception. People and objects appear as dots of light corresponding to where they're located, and as they get closer, more dots appear. "It's like learning a new language," Esterhuizen says. "You learn how to interpret what's going on...."
Electrodes in the brain also cause scar tissue to form over time, making them stop working, so it isn't clear how long these implants will last. Jessy Dorn, vice president of clinical and scientific affairs at Second Sight, says the electrodes used in the Orion device should work for at least five years. That means patients will probably eventually lose what little vision they acquire with the devices. Another major limitation of the Orion is that it's only useful for those who were born sighted and later lost their vision. In people who are born blind, the parts of the brain that are responsible for sight are not fully developed, and visual information cannot be effectively transmitted to the brain. A device that could help all people with blindness is still a long way off... Esterhuizen though is hopeful about the future of assistive technologies for the blind and visually impaired. "It's just baby steps for now," he says. "But eventually I think this technology will change the lives of millions of people."
"you don't even need to have eyes" (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
My first thought was about Geordi La Forge, but then I also thought about this guy [youtube.com].
Okay, he does have eyes... sorta.
Neuralink (Score:2)
The listed, quite big drawbacks - low resolution with a grid less than 8 x 8 pixels, and scar tissue - are the very reason Neuralink tries to use a novel approach. Hoping it'll work out
How big are these fucking candles? (Score:4, Funny)
Has he been sitting in front of these candles the whole time? How long have these candles been burning? How frigging huge are these things? This story raises more questions than it answers.
Re: (Score:1)
That's such a sad image.
Most of us get new candles for each birthday we have. Imaging you having to reuse your old candles paints a bleak childhood picture indeed.
"My childhood was so bad, we weren't even allowed to light our birthday candles, so we could reuse them next year. I was the youngest child too so they were even hand-me-down candles.
I was far more lucky than my older brother, since our neighbor had a birthday the same month as mine, so we got to go and sit in the snow looking through their wind
My Brain Implant for Bionic Vision (Score:1)
This has been around for at least 5 years now (Score:2)
Totally blind people can see through their tongue. And from what I can tell, the quality of vision seems similar:
https://youtu.be/48evjcN73rw [youtu.be]
Re: (Score:1)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZ1xigijrxQ [youtube.com]
(Russian blind man wearing The vOICe vision glasses, learning to reach for multiple objects cast on a table top)