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In older retinal prosthesis work it was a microelectrode array, basically dozens or hundreds of tiny electrodes piercing the retina and running a current. In th
by devindotcom 6y ago
In older retinal prosthesis work it was a microelectrode array, basically dozens or hundreds of tiny electrodes piercing the retina and running a current. In this case the dots turn light into current so when you shine a light on them they activate the retinal cells near them.
- tandr 6y agoOk, it goes to existing retina, not substituting but adding some input signal gain, am I correct? So there is still no "interface" to connect to an optical nerve directly for people who do not have functional retina...
- devindotcom 6y agoNo, no direct optic nerve interface. That isn't feasible with any technology we know of. The nerve bundle, like the spinal cord, is incredibly dense withe fibers. There's also pre-processing and network stuff that goes on in the retinal layers that you don't want to skip. Fortunately (though I may be wrong here) I believe a lot of blindness upstream from the optic nerve is capable of being addressed by artificial lenses, corneas, replacement fluid, retina augmentation etc. The nerve and central nervous system really represents where it starts getting beyond our depth.