DailyDirt: That The Blind May See

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Most of us take vision for granted, but about 21.5 million adult Americans have trouble seeing, even with glasses or other vision aids. The leading causes of blindness or low vision in the US are age-related eye diseases, and many of the treatments are in fairly early stages of research and development. It's not easy to replicate the functions of a retina, but here are just a few projects that are working on ways to restore vision with some interesting technologies. If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post.
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Filed Under: bionics institute, blind, eye, ganglion, implant, low vision, photoreceptors, retina, retinitis pigmentosa, sight
Companies: retina implant, retrosense therapeutics


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  1. icon
    Wally (profile), 5 Sep 2012 @ 8:49pm

    *pulls out Geordy La Forge visor*

    Problem solved :-)

    link to this | view in thread ]

  2. identicon
    Pixelation, 5 Sep 2012 @ 9:45pm

    "Retrosense Therapeutics is working on a gene therapy that will allow ganglion cells (instead of rod and cone cells) to respond to light and send visual information to the brain."

    Once they can do that with pain receptor cells, it will be like the 4th of July...

    link to this | view in thread ]

  3. icon
    Ninja (profile), 6 Sep 2012 @ 4:33am

    How big is your Malaria Project, Masnick? /troll

    Ahem, good to see these developments. (no pun intended)

    link to this | view in thread ]

  4. icon
    Josh in CharlotteNC (profile), 6 Sep 2012 @ 6:42am

    These are awesome.

    I have a younger sister about to undergo her 2nd eye surgery - she has a detached retina and has lost most of the sight in one eye as a complication from diabetes. In a few years maybe some of these techniques will be able to help her - assuming they don't get patented and do no one any good.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  5. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 6 Sep 2012 @ 2:12pm

    Re:

    And yet, in the 24th century, they still haven't found a cure for baldness. Or maybe Picard just prefers the bare look.

    link to this | view in thread ]


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