The device, implanted under the skull of a completely blind patient, partially restored his visual perception.
At the time of the car accident, Jason Esterhuizen was 23 years old and was studying to be a pilot. The man who dreamed of flying airplanes ended up sharing the fate of 39 million people who were officially declared blind.
These people live in a special world. As the famous neurologist Oliver Sachs testified in his book "Anthropologist on Mars", blindness gradually takes away visual memory from a person, and sometimes even the very idea of the purpose of the eyes (and sometimes several years are enough for this).
However, many of them do not lose hope and dream of at least a partial return of sight. Fortunately, new technologies provide such an opportunity.
Esterhuisen's case is the Orion device made by Second Sight Medical Products. It consists of a miniature camera attached to dark glasses and a device implanted in the brain.
The data collected by the camera is transmitted wirelessly to the implant. The device has 60 electrodes implanted directly into the visual cortex of the brain. Therefore, it is suitable not only for patients with eye damage, but also for those whose optic nerve is not functioning.
Of course, we are not talking about complete restoration of vision. The camera is not as good as the human eye, and an implant with dozens of electrodes cannot fully reproduce the processing of visual information in the human nervous system. However, the system returns to the subject some part of the visual sensations, from which information about the surrounding world can be extracted.
Thus, the patient regains the ability to distinguish between light and darkness, perceive moving objects and navigate in space.
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The new system is capable of working in two modes: highlight dark objects against a light background (for example, objects on a sunny day) or vice versa (lights in the dark, including car headlights). The user switches between these modes by pressing a small button.
At the moment, "Orion" is experimentally transplanted into six volunteers who were previously completely blind.
The researchers are going to improve their brainchild. Thus, in its current form, the device stimulates the visual cortex only in the left hemisphere, providing the patient with the right side of the visual field. Over time, scientists plan to use the right hemisphere.
It is also obvious that the "picture quality" is also difficult to call perfect. Although Esterhuisen is happy with what is.
However, experiments to partially restore the ability to see do not always end well. As Sachs stated in the aforementioned book, a person who has partially recovered his sight after long-term blindness often falls into depression. He is thrown into confusion by the complex and incomprehensible world shown to him by his imperfect vision. The brain, even unaccustomed to normal visual perception, with great difficulty assimilates the strange signals sent to it by a partially functioning sensory system.
Most of these patients do not fully use their new capabilities, some completely return to the lifestyle of the blind, and others completely commit suicide. This shows that specialists have yet to learn how to reliably and safely improve the quality of life of a patient to whom they have partially restored vision. And not only neuroscientists and engineers should play an important role in this, but also psychologists and rehabilitation experts.
Anatoly Glyantsev