This summer, scientists used camera-mounted glasses and arrays of electrodes to send visual data directly into the brains of blind patients. A company called Second Sight makes a similar implant that it claims is being used by 350 patients around the world. But those experiments have failed to provide patients with anything like regular vision.

“None of the patients gave up their white cane or guide dog,” visual prostheses expert from Stanford University Daniel Palanker told Science. “It’s a very low bar.”

But now, researchers are working on a new generation of devices that they say could give the blind much of their vision back.

Palanker and his team created a retinal implant with 400 photodiodes — think of them as “pixels” — that gave participants who had the device implanted a year ago the ability to recognize objects on a table and read letters on a screen, according to Science.

Palanter and his team presented videos of their findings at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in Chicago last week.

Read More...