New brain implant device restores partial vision in blind people

In an effort to cure blindness, researchers have taken a new approach by implanting a new type of device in brain that feeds images from a camera directly to the brain.

In an amazing new study, researchers have partially restored vision of six people who later in life became blind and hence their visual cortex in brain was normally undamaged. The team used a device called Orion that gives images from a camera directly to the brain.

The device contains two main parts, a brain implant and a pair of glasses. The implant further contains 60 electrodes that receive information from a camera placed on the glasses. Together, they both things deliver visual information directly to the wearer’s brain, completely removing the eyes from situation.

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“If you can imagine every spot in the visual field in the visual world, there’s a corresponding part of the brain that represents that area, that spatial location,” study leader Daniel Yoshor said. “And we know that if we stimulate someone’s brain… in a specific spot, we will produce a perception of a spot of light corresponding to that map in the visual world.”

As per Futurism, in order to test the device, the team asked entirely blind participants in an early study to look at a black computer screen while using Orion. When a white square would randomly appear on the screen, the volunteers were able to correctly point to the square most of the time.

“It is not perfect vision — it is like grainy 1980s surveillance video footage,” one of the participants Benjamin James Spencer told Daily Mail. “It may not be full vision yet, but it’s something.”

Moreover, though the device has not been proven on those people who are born blind, Yoshor believes that it might be the beginning of restoring vision to blind patients.

As per The Guardian, Yoshor said his team was ‘still a long way from what we hope to achieve’. “This is an exciting time in neuroscience and neurotechnology, and I feel that within my lifetime we can restore functional sight to the blind.”