Electronic Sight

[Master Vigil]

I was just watching ripley's believe it or not. And they had this guy, who was completely blind, and they did a surgery on him where they drilled a hole through his skull, attached electrodes to his brain which were attached to a portable computer. He then has a wireless video camera attached to his sunglasses that fed the video directly to the computer and into his brain. The man could see!!!!!! Of course the resolution wasn't too good. It was like a nagative of a picture, but he could tell light from dark and the outlines of objects and things. But he was actually able to drive a car (on an enclosed parking lot mind you, but he still missed the obstacles). How cool is that!!!!

 

[Linus]

That is pretty awesome. The human body is an amazing thing. The brain operates on mainly on electronic impulses doesn't it? It's cool that scientists have learned to manipulate them is so many ways. Yet they have only scractched the surface...

 

[Quoth The Raven]

Was he able to see when he was younger, or has he always been blind?

 

[michel]

Amazing ! How wonderful. I saw a case of a deaf from birth child having a similar operation to be able to hear; that was a success too.

I wonder if 'they' can 'swich on' the intelligence part of my brain !!!:jiggy:

 

[Quoth The Raven]

It's different doing that sort of thing in a child to an adult, though. That's why I asked if the man had been blind from birth, though the fact he could drive would suggest not. When they first started doing cataract operations, they discovered that if they removed the cataracts from an adult who had had them from birth, the persons sight was restored, but they still effectively couldn't see because they hadn't developed the synapses for it. They had no way of identifying what they were looking at. They would look at things and not be able to identify them until they held or felt the object and enabled their brain to make the correct linkages to be able to say,'This is a ball.'

 

[No*s]

That is a very nifty advancement. It's one more step towards integrating circuits and biological tissue .

 

[Master Vigil]

The operation only works for those who went blind after the age of 7. But it is still a breakthrough.

 

[Pah]

Ah, the miracle of modern science