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Underground > Laboratory >

Blind no more?

07:43 / 02.05.04

Very intersting program on Discovery Science last night; it seems there are at least a few people working in the development stages of a 'cure' for blindness. The program obviously didn't go into much more than layman's detail, but it essentially involved the insertion of electrodes into the visual cortex of the brain which were then run to a camera in front of the eyes.

At this stage, the most the patients were able to see was points of light (it was absolutely great to see this one guy talking about how he could have just sat there and stared at those points of light for hours), and one gentleman was able to make out vague shapes... absolutely no detail (he could tell if there was a table, for example, but not what was on it.)

They are still working on fine-tuning the electrodes, methods of insertion into the brain, amount of current, etc., but it's very exciting stuff, even to someone who's been able to see just fine their entire life.

19:15 / 02.05.04

I've seen some stuff around this too, and yeah - it is tremendously exciting, if a little gross (if you've seen any of the operations that they've performed or what the people look like with what appears to be chunks of machinery rather grotesquely wired into their heads). I suppose the eventual aim would be to embed this stuff inside the eye itself - somewhere near the retina, which of course makes us think about the time when the granularity of the visual experience is better for the cyborgs than for the rest of us (or if the information density is too much, perhaps being able to switch between different views at will).

Charlie's Horse

03:51 / 03.05.04

I suppose the eventual aim would be to embed this stuff inside the eye itself - somewhere near the retina... TC

Actually, right on the button. Check out this one

Retinal Prosthesis For Real

Of course the cure depends on the kind of blindness, but yeah - minimally invasive cyborging for the Twenty-First Century. Woot!

I also recall a Wired article about somebody with the external, through-the-skull neural ports who regained a large degree of sight after twenty years of blindness - there was a picture of him driving his doctor's Mustang around the parking lot (one camera on the rig = no depth perception, but he could still handle a parking lot). Can't seem to find it in their site, thought.