Eye say

KEEP YOUR EYE ON THE PRIZE (PHOTO: ANCA-PUI)
I can't imagine life without my eyesight. I know that plenty of amazing people manage without their eyes and do as much if not more than those of us who can see, but if those people were offered an opportunity to see again, I bet they'd grab it. If the visual pathways in their brain work perfectly, but they're let down by their actual optical hardwear (namely their eyes), this might be possible. They'd have to walk around with specially adapted glasses fitted with tiny digital cameras that were attached to their brains with electrodes, but they'd be able to see.

Eyes are fiendishly complicated structures. They're often quoted as evidence against evolution, as if a process as blunt as natural selection could produce such a thing of beauty and efficiency. In fact, it's evolution itself that has helped the eye to achieve it's amazing capabilities (see Wikipedia). Once one creature developed sight, the arms race was on for everyone to catch up or be left in the dark. Which is why a bionic eye is that much more advanced than many other replacement organs, and has to be hardwired into the brain. At the moment, the researchers have only tested this out on monkeys, and have only used a very few electrodes to connect the bionic eye to the visual cortex. The number of electrodes they'd need to help a human see again is daunting. But the technology seems to work and that's at least some of the battle won of helping the blind to see again.

Via BBC News.

Comments

[Alicia]

My mother has been blind since she was 8 years old, but when I brought this up with her, asking if she'd do it she didn't hesitate to say "definitely". She added that so long as it was financially possible, she'd do it just to see her children and grandchildren other than with her hands.

[Katie]

Wow