Neuron News

If you suffer from a specific form blindness called “retinitis pigmentosa” [ learn more, and more], which affects night and peripheral visions, then researchers from the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California have a deal for you!

Dr. James Weiland and his team have devised a successful electrical implant that stimulates healthy nerve cells in the retina of the eye in a calculated way to give the patient the sensation that light. The research device was designed to solve the specific vision problem of retinitis pigmentosa, a degenerative condition that causes a person to gradually loose eye sight over time.

A video camera is directly connected to a 16 electrode chip that is interfaced directly into the retina. A special mini-computer analyzes the images from the camera, churns out some calculations, and controls a specific pattern of electrical stimulation to the neurons in the retina.

This implementation of a “bionic eye” does not actually reproduce the image of the surroundings onto the patient’s retina, but fills in some of the dark gaps of vision by stimulating nerve cells to fool the brain into believing there is actual light coming from a specific location.

[ Read the article from EE Times ]

[ Visit the academic website heading up this research. ]

NOTE: This is an update on a previous Neuron News article.

The Potter research group in the Laboratory for Neuroengineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology is making grand strides with their work in building a “simple” moving robot that is controlled by living brain cells.

The group has successfully demonstrated the direct connection of rat neurons to a robotic device, which is then controlled by the electrical activity of the neurons. The robot used in this important study was built by K-Team S.A., a Swiss company that manufactures mobile minirobots for use in advanced education and research.

Brain cells extracted from a rat brain are dropped into a glass dish that is covered with metal electrodes. The cells settle in an uncontrolled way onto the contacts, and are kept alive (not a simple task!) so that the resulting electrical activity from the living cells may be detected and transmitted to the wiring of the robot.

A primary goal of this work is to figure out how these networks result in some physical activity, which then might lead to more clear understandings about how our brain works when we think, remember, and move our bodies.

The result? “It’s alive! Alive!” Although, you’ll have to believe the still picture on the linked website article, as no movies seem to be available at the time of this posting. This development seems quite exciting. On the other hand, the wife of this editor certainly doesnot like mice, and she might not appreciate minirobots controlled by mice brains. Well, with some advancements in science there inevitably come some downsides.

[ Read the article from EurekAlert! ]

05.14.2003 UPDATE:
[ Read the article from The New York Times ]

06.11.2003 UPDATE:
[ Read an article from e4Engineering.com ]

[ Learn more about Prof. Potter’s work ]