Scientists bypass blindness by delivering visual information directly to the brain



A blind participant drawing letters based on dynamic stimulation to the visual cortex (Credits: Beauchamp et al./Cell / SWNS.COM) A groundbreaking solution to blindness bypasses damaged eyes and delivers visual information directly to the brain allowing people to ‘see’.

For most adults who lose their vision, blindness results from damage to the eyes or optic nerve – while the brain remains intact.

Researchers have long proposed a workaround involving the development of a device that would pass images from a camera straight to the brain, skipping the eyes in the process.

In a new paper, published in journal Cell, a team of investigators from Baylor College of Medicine in Houston revealed that they are one step closer to that goal.

The researchers describe an approach in which implanted electrodes are stimulated in a dynamic sequence, essentially ‘tracing’ shapes on the surface of the visual cortex that participants were able to ‘see’.

Senior author Dr Daniel Yoshor, a Professor of neurosurgery at Baylor, said: ‘When we used electrical stimulation to dynamically trace letters directly on patients’ brains, they were able to ‘see’ the intended letter shapes and could correctly identify different letters.

This figure illustrates how dynamic stimulation to the visual cortex enables participants to ‘see’ shapes (Credits: Beauchamp et al./Cell / SWNS.COM) ‘They described seeing glowing spots or lines forming the letters, like skywriting.’

Previous attempts to stimulate the visual cortex have proven far less successful.

Earlier methods treated each electrode like a pixel in a visual display, stimulating many of them simultaneously. Participants could detect spots of light but found it hard to discern visual objects or forms.

Study first author Professor Michael Beauchamp said: ‘Rather than trying to build shapes from multiple spots of light, we traced outlines.

‘Our inspiration for this was the idea of tracing a letter in the palm of someone’s hand.’

The investigators tested the approach in four sighted people who had electrodes implanted in their brains to monitor epilepsy, and two blind people who had electrodes implanted over their visual cortex.

Stimulation of multiple electrodes in sequences produced perceptions of shapes that subjects were able to correctly identify as specific letters.

Subjects were able to correctly identify shapes as specific letters (Credits: Beauchamp et al./Cell / SWNS.COM) Researchers believe that the new approach demonstrates that it could be possible for blind people to regain the ability to detect and recognise forms – though many obstacles remain.

Dr Beauchamp added: ‘The primary visual cortex, where the electrodes were implanted, contains half a billion neurons. In this study we stimulated only a small fraction of these neurons with a handful of electrodes....

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