Bionic eye restores sight to the blind

[BlackCat]

Be carefull Kuci, you might end up on VJ's ignore list

[Kuciwalker]

Horror of horrors!

And if we could do something in the future but can't now, it's newsworthy when that changes. Duh.

[BlackCat]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
Horror of horrors!

Actually, don't underestimate the blissfulness of ending there - the amount of meaningless ranting drops by 75 % and the unprovoked personal insults by 99 %

[Kuciwalker]

Actually, I thought I was on his ignore list. He must have removed me

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
And if we could do something in the future but can't now, it's newsworthy when that changes. Duh.

To take this further, every invention is something we can do but couldn't before. You've just trivialized all scientific advance.

[Sarxis]

Honestly? Why are bionics so far behind? They've been talking and testing/researching stuff like this for a while.

I mean, the $6million dollar man was showing in what year?

[Kuciwalker]

Honestly? Why are bionics so far behind?

Because it's hard. Duh.

They've been talking and testing/researching stuff like this for a while.

Same with fusion power.

[Sandman]

Originally posted by Odin
How long before certain crazies start calling curing blindness "cultural genocide of the blind culture"? I rember some identity politics nuts going batsh*t over cochlear implants for the deaf for that reason.

But braille might die out!

[Proteus_MST]

Originally posted by Sarxis
Honestly? Why are bionics so far behind? They've been talking and testing/researching stuff like this for a while.

Much of the problems involved have to do with the relatively small sizes of the structures involved. Look, we say optiv nerve, but this isn´t sa signle nerve but instead a massive strand of more than a million neural fibers packed into a tight space.
And to connect an artificial retina you have to take care that you stimulate only a few of them, without also stimulating all of the others.

Aside from this the signals from the (more than 100 million) rods and cones are already peprocessed in the retina (for example combining clusters of nerve cells into On/Off fields to enhance contrast).
Therefore you need really advanced technology, even to get a crude replacement of the human retina working.

The cochlear oimplant, for example, circumvents this, as it doesn´t communicate directly with the auditory nerve, but is just some kind of wire that is placed into the cochlea and electrically stimulates the auditory receptor cells (that aren´t able to respond to a natural stimulus anymore) at the right places within the cochlea as soon as a sound should be heard.

As Kuciwalker says, just like with Fusion. We understand the fundamental principles, but are only now slowly developing the tech to cope with the problems we encounter in practice.

And we are still far away from replacing even tiny parts of the brain, which can be consideresd to be a strongly interconnected parallel working computer (with the neurons not only sresponding tioo direct neural connections, but also to neuropeptides secreted within other parts of the brain or body)

[Sava]

I need a bionic eye in order to become the bionic man.

[The Mad Monk]

I remember that. Weird doll. Had an eyepiece in the back of his head so you could see through his bionic eye.