By Colin Lecher Posted 08.31.2012 at 2:40 pm 5 Comments

Bionic Eye Bionic Vision Australia

We've been waiting on the prospect of a bionic eye for a while now; being able to surgically give sight to the sightless would be a medical breakthrough, and we're right on the cusp. Exhibit A: In a world first, scientists have successfully implanted a prototype bionic eye that has helped a woman see shapes.

Researchers from the government-funded consortium Bionic Vision Australia made the announcement in a statement yesterday; in it the implantee said she "didn't know what to expect, but all of a sudden, I could see a little flash--it was amazing." The team is hoping they can start to "build" shapes based on what she sees, eventually creating a bionic eye that works like its organic counterpart.

The prototype device is set up in a lab. Electrodes in the implant stimulate nerve cells, and in the controlled environment scientists can get feedback from the user on the "flashes of light." That could help them adjust until the "flashes of light" reflect the actual environment enough to be helpful. It's not full vision, but it's an early step toward it.

The next stage, the scientists say, is incorporating an external camera into a device, and creating versions with more electrodes. With 98, a person could be able to see large objects; with 1,024, they could recognize faces and large print.

[Bionics Institute]

5 Comments

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adaptation
09/01/12 at 12:58 am

Restoring sight in the blind is rare but but is not unheard of.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recovery_from_blindness

If blindness is sudden the vision centers become starved for input and start inventing it causing you to hallucinate until the brain can rewire other input to take its place. You can actually play with this just by blocking out all light for a while.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed-eye_hallucination

Brains do not like to keep dormant pathways around for long, impairment has been measured at 30 days. Even people who went blind as adults often have difficulty relearning to see after a few years of blindness. Those who went blind early on or where born blind will likely never fully learn to see. It is common for those with restored vision to be come depressed, a trend that sometimes is associated with the restoration of hearing. They often start having difficulty with things they could do with out vision, such as a machinist when visual information is added, or a blind skier loosing the ability to ski with his eyes open. Some may easily understand depth perception from stereo vision and others may never learn it. Things like a shadow or a stripe on the floor may be indistinguishable from a railing or crevasse. One odd thing is that even with out consciously interpret depth perception a cognitively blind people may have the innate ability to catch a object thrown at them. I know of an instance where a man enjoyed basketball after his vision was restored but had a difficult time with colors and associated everything orange with the sport.

On a tangent there is a condition called blindsight where someone can physically see but cannot consciously access visual information from the sight. They may have emotinal reactions to what they see or have the thought of a tea cup randomly come up but have not idea there is one right in front of them.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blindsight

Restoring vision can be done with out fixing eyesight. Tactile senses can be routed to visual centers of your brain. Electrical stimulation of your tong has a particularly high resolution capacity.
http://vision.wicab.com/technology/

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Crazystoner
09/01/12 at 6:07 am

sign me up for one.
once they become better then normal eyes, since im currently a cyclops

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vt007
09/01/12 at 6:31 am

this is just argus like technic... i thought it was all bionics till the nerves... but dont get me wrong, im still exited as hell !! ^^

---
bored? lets go mine the stars... ^^

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quasi44
09/03/12 at 8:51 pm

So at our rate of development and proving I could hope to have a bionic eye if blinded sometime after maybe what? Twelve to eighteen years, probably? Good to know, which is the reason I subscribe. Thanks, PopSci.

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Silverbird
09/04/12 at 4:45 pm

What an insightful article.

I can see now that we are the origin of the Borg.

This technology definitly has never been seen before.

See y'all later.



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