Could Bionic Eyes restore sight?

This article talks about an ongoing project being worked on in America and Britain to create an electronic eye capable of restoring vision lost by disease. In order to accomplish this, doctors are developing a single-chip made up of about 500 processors that will mimic the activity of the human eye and part of the brain. Although it may be years before neurologists fully understand how the brain receives and sends visual signals, researchers believe that they can teach the chips to act exactly like the retina.

The article also includes one Ophthalmologists rebuttal of the new project, Dr. Gislin Dagnelie, who thinks that that there is a much simpler way than the bionic eye. Dr. Dagnelie’s approach is to place an array of photoreceptors onto the retina, where it can feed optical signals into the nervous system right at the point where they normally originate.

I thought this article was interesting because if the doctors actually create and follow through with either one of these ideas, it could be a life-changing invention for people who have lost their vision to disease. However, I think that both ideas will take a few years to create because the doctors still don’t fully understand how the brain receives and sends visual signals. It also makes me question what the risks of having a bionic eye are and what the proposed success rate will be?

Author: Mimi Chakraborty

Journal: Bionic eyes could help to restore sight

Database: LexisNexisX Academic