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Brandon Keim writes in Wired that scientists are getting closer to reconstructing images that duplicate what the brain actually sees through visual input. Though it’s not actually brain-reading, it’s a small step in that direction:
To construct their model, the researchers used an fMRI machine, which measures blood flow through the brain, to track neural activity in three people as they looked at pictures of everyday settings and objects.
As in the earlier study, they looked at parts of the brain linked to the shape of objects. Unlike before, they looked at regions whose activity correlates with general classifications, such as “buildings” or “small groups of people.”
Once the model was calibrated, the test subjects looked at another set of pictures. After interpreting the resulting neural patterns, the researchers’ program plucked corresponding pictures from a database of 6 million images.
Image: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
Priya Ganapati writes in Wired that researchers at MIT are developing an eye implant that can feed visual imput past damaged cells and directly into the brain. Patients will wear a camera that downloads images into the implant:
It won’t entirely restore normal vision, say the researchers, but it will offer just enough sight to help a blind person navigate a room.[...]
Here’s how the implant works. The glasses that patients wear contains a coil that can wirelessly transmit power to receiving coils surrounding the eyeball. The eyeball holds a microchip encased in a sealed titanium case to avoid damage from water seepage. The chip receives visual information and activates electrodes that in turn fire the nerve cells that carry visual input to the brain.
Image: flickr user Orange Acid, used under Creative Commons license.
Katherine Harmon writes in Scientific American that a Mississippi woman blind for the past nine years can see 20/70 after one of her own teeth was surgically implanted in one of her eyes:
To begin the months-long process, doctors removed one of Thornton’s canine teeth—aka an eyetooth—along with part of the jaw and cut it all down to a shape small enough to replace the cornea. The doctors then drilled a hole into it to insert a lens. In order for the tooth to bind to the lens sufficiently, the implant spent a couple months in the patient’s body. In Thornton’s case, it was implanted near her shoulder.
To prep the eye to receive the tooth and lens, the doctors placed a cheek graft over the eye to promote moisture. The final tooth-lens product was removed from Thornton’s shoulder and placed in the center of the eye, in line with the retina.
The MOOKP procedure was developed in Italy in 1963, and has been more common in Europe and Asia, but only about 600 operations have been undertaken. Given the small number of treatments, its safety remains unconfirmed, and other doctors have their reservations. “It requires a sizable team and several operations,” Ivan Schwab, of the American Academy of Ophthalmology, told CNN. “It’s just an extreme variation on techniques we’re already doing.”
Image: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
Babak A. Parviz, a bionanotechnologist at the University of Washington, writes that in the future, biotech innovations could lead to display screens inside contact lenses:
These visions (if I may) might seem far-fetched, but a contact lens with simple built-in electronics is already within reach; in fact, my students and I are already producing such devices in small numbers in my laboratory at the University of Washington, in Seattle [see sidebar, "A Twinkle in the Eye"]. These lenses don’t give us the vision of an eagle or the benefit of running subtitles on our surroundings yet. But we have built a lens with one LED, which we’ve powered wirelessly with RF. What we’ve done so far barely hints at what will soon be possible with this technology.
Conventional contact lenses are polymers formed in specific shapes to correct faulty vision. To turn such a lens into a functional system, we integrate control circuits, communication circuits, and miniature antennas into the lens using custom-built optoelectronic components. Those components will eventually include hundreds of LEDs, which will form images in front of the eye, such as words, charts, and photographs. Much of the hardware is semitransparent so that wearers can navigate their surroundings without crashing into them or becoming disoriented. In all likelihood, a separate, portable device will relay displayable information to the lens’s control circuit, which will operate the optoelectronics in the lens.
Link via CrunchGear
VisionCare Ophthalmic Technologies, a biotech start-up, has developed a tiny telescope that has can implanted into the eyes of people suffering from macular degeration:
Last week, an advisory panel for the Food and Drug Administration unanimously recommended that the agency approve the implant. Clinical trials of the device, which is about the size of a pencil eraser, suggest it can improve vision by about three and a half lines on an eye chart…Once inside the eye, it works like a fixed telephoto lens, acting in conjunction with the cornea to project a magnified image of whatever the wearer is looking at over a large part of the retina. Because only the central parts of the retina are damaged in the disease, magnifying the image on the eye allows the retinal cells outside the macula to detect the object and send that information to the brain.
Link via The Presurfer
