Blind Luck
In case anyone is unfamiliar with certain parts of my life which they probably have little to no business knowing about, my girlfriend suffers from a terrible condition that prohibits her of having the ability to see. Most people call this blindness, so it is only natural that I feel kinda excited about hearing this news:
Dr. Keith Mathieson from the University of Glasgow’s department of physics is all set out to combat the two common forms of blindness. And what he uses is a technology very similar to the digital cameras that we’re all familiar with.
Dr Mathieson said, “By implanting a device into the eye, we hope we will be able to fool the brain into believing the retina is still in working order.”
I’m sure this is something that many of us have thought of. But the difficult lies in wiring the device to the optic nerves. Now that the scientists have done it, this is great news for the many unfortunates around the world.
The current prototype implant has only 100 pixels, not enough for patients to recognize faces just yet. But looking at how technology is progressing, Dr. Mathieson is confident that achieving the 500 pixels necessary for facial recognition is very attainable.
“Beyond where we are today it might be possible to make smart chips which have memory in them which would allow action replay and slow motion”, said Dr. Mathieson.
With “action replay” and “slow motion”, I shudder at the thought that even the non-disabled might just want to be a part of this as well.
Sadly, her condition is more extreme than the common form of blindness and thus this would not be very helpful to her, I’m afraid. But It’s always good to see the different kinds of progress made here.
Dr. Keith Mathieson from the University of Glasgow’s department of physics is all set out to combat the two common forms of blindness. And what he uses is a technology very similar to the digital cameras that we’re all familiar with.
Dr Mathieson said, “By implanting a device into the eye, we hope we will be able to fool the brain into believing the retina is still in working order.”
I’m sure this is something that many of us have thought of. But the difficult lies in wiring the device to the optic nerves. Now that the scientists have done it, this is great news for the many unfortunates around the world.
The current prototype implant has only 100 pixels, not enough for patients to recognize faces just yet. But looking at how technology is progressing, Dr. Mathieson is confident that achieving the 500 pixels necessary for facial recognition is very attainable.
“Beyond where we are today it might be possible to make smart chips which have memory in them which would allow action replay and slow motion”, said Dr. Mathieson.
With “action replay” and “slow motion”, I shudder at the thought that even the non-disabled might just want to be a part of this as well.
Sadly, her condition is more extreme than the common form of blindness and thus this would not be very helpful to her, I’m afraid. But It’s always good to see the different kinds of progress made here.
posted by Jaimetud at 11:44 PM
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