Doctors
have restored sight to the blind by sending video images directly to the brain.
In a world-first that offers hope to
millions of patients, five men and one woman have regained vision after years
of ‘living in the dark’.
They had electrode chips planted in the
visual cortex at the back of their skulls that picked up images from a tiny
video camera mounted in a pair of glasses. Their eyes were bypassed completely.
One
of the participants, Benjamin James Spencer, who went blind aged nine,
described his joy at seeing his wife and three daughters for the first time.
‘It is awe inspiring to see so much beauty,’ the 35-year-old told the Daily
Mail last night. ‘I could see the roundness of my wife’s face, the shape of her
body.
‘I could see my kids running up to give
me a hug. It is not perfect vision – it is like grainy 1980s surveillance video
footage. It may not be full vision yet, but it’s something.’
Mr. Spencer described how, when he was
nine years old, his world went black.
‘It was September 18, 1992, a week
after my birthday,’ he said. ‘I was at school leaving a class and in the time
it took me to walk 50ft everything disappeared.
‘At first it started to go foggy and
then a few paces later it was just dark.
‘I panicked and started screaming and
kind of went into shock. Everything after that is pretty vague.’
In the coming days, specialists at a
hospital near his home in Texas broke the news that he would never see again.
‘I was told this was going to be my future.
I was classed as lacking 100 percent light perception. I was blind,’ he said.
Mr. Spencer had pediatric glaucoma, a
rare condition caused by a defect in the eye’s drainage system.
·
Ben Spencer, 35, with his wife and daughters
(left to right: Melissa, 13, Jeanette, 42, Jane, 10, and Abigail, 15)
It had been incurable but scientists
have now managed to bypass the broken link by sending images directly to the
visual cortex, the part of the brain responsible for sight.
Mr. Spencer lives in the city of
Pearland, near Houston, with his wife Jeanette, 42, and daughters Abigail, 15,
Melissa, 13, and Jane, ten. In April 2018, he became one of just six people to
have a 60-electrode panel implanted in the back of his brain.
Surgeons at Baylor Medical College in
Houston spent two hours cutting a window in his skull, placing the electrode
array on the surface of the brain, and stitching it up again. They then spent
six months ‘mapping’ his visual field.
This involved sending computer signals
to the stimulation panel in his head to synchronize his brain to the real world
– in effect teaching his visual cortex to process images again.
Eventually, in October, the device was
wirelessly connected to a tiny video camera, mounted in a pair of glasses, and
switched on. He saw his wife and three children for the very first time.
‘It was an incredible moment,’ he told
the Daily Mail. ‘It was very humbling.’
Describing
catching a glimpse of the sun through the window, he said: ‘Such a tiny thing
is normal for people who have vision. But I had not seen the sun since I was
nine years old. I had felt its heat, but actually seeing it was incredible.
After 25 and a half years of living in the dark, it is awe-inspiring to see so
much beauty.’
In January, after months of hospital
testing, he was allowed to take the device home. The terms of the clinical
trial mean he can only switch it on for three hours a day, but he makes the
most of it. ‘I usually use it for 45 minutes at a time and space it out,’ he
said. ‘If I want to go to the store or if one of my kids has a performance.
‘It is not perfect vision – it is like
grainy 1980s surveillance video footage,’ he said.
‘I can see silhouettes, I can see light
and shade, I can guess at colors. It may not be full vision yet, but it’s
something.
‘I can go to the store, I can walk
without my cane, I can sort my dark laundry from the whites, I can see a crack
in the sidewalk coming up. I could see a sign sticking out – but I couldn’t
read what it said.’
Even when completely blind, Mr. Spencer
learned to thrive independently.
He finished school, went to college and
earned a masters in business, focusing on international trade. He worked for a
few years in import-export and then set up his own tax business.
‘I was determined to be an independent
person,’ he said. ‘There is always a way around whatever the world throws at
you.
‘Luckily I had people around me who
said you can allow this to define you, or you can define life. But that being
said, everything was a stepping stone. I learned that life was about
adaptation.’
British experts described the
breakthrough in the United States as a ‘paradigm shift’ in the treatment
of the blind.
Patients who have benefited from the
Orion wireless technology include those who have lost their sight due to
glaucoma, trauma, infections, autoimmune diseases, and nerve problems.
But the surgeons – from Baylor Medical
College in Texas and the University of California Los Angeles – believe they
can eventually help anyone who has lost their sight. They are unsure, however,
whether it could help people born blind – because the visual cortex would never
have learned to process images.
They plan to implant 30 more devices
over the next few months and if the results continue to be positive expect the
technology to become widely available within three years.
Alex Shortt, a University College
London lecturer and surgeon at Optegra Eye Hospital in the capital said:
‘This, to my mind, is a massive breakthrough, an amazing advance and it is very
exciting.
‘Previously all attempts to create a
“bionic eye” focused on implanting into the eye itself. It required you to have
a working eye, a working optic nerve.
‘By bypassing the eye completely you
open the potential up to many, many more people.
‘This is a complete paradigm shift for
treating people with complete blindness. It is a real message of hope.’
Sibling
pals: Mr. Spencer, as a young boy aged 7 with his sister Tiffany
He said the quality of the images would
only improve.
Second Sight, the small American firm
which makes the device, already has links in the UK thanks to another visual
gadget trialed by the NHS. It plans to try to make Orion available here as
soon as it is fully approved in the US.
Two million Britons have sight loss –
360,000 of whom are registered as blind. These figures are set to double by 2050.
Another patient in the trial was able
to tell apart the different balls on a pool table, picking out the cue ball
from the striped balls and even picking out the blue ball. Others can walk
around a block unaided, avoiding cars and pedestrians, and tell the curb from
the road.
Scientists hope to radically improve
the quality of the device.
The current prototype has 60
electrodes. The version they hope to use in their next trial will have 150 –
and in time this will go up.
Daniel Yoshor, the neurosurgeon at
Baylor who implanted the device in Mr. Spencer’s brain, said: ‘When you think of
vision, you think of the eyes, but most of the work is being done in the brain.
The impulses of light that are projected onto the retina are converted into
neural signals that are transmitted along the optic nerve to parts of the
brain.’
The Orion device works by replicating
that process with a video camera. The electrodes stimulate spots in the visual
field – the ‘mind’s eye’ – which when working together create a black and white
image that replicates the real world. Professor Yoshor said: ‘If you imagine
every spot in the visual field, the visual world, there’s a corresponding part
of the brain that represents that area, that spatial location.
‘If we stimulate someone’s brain in a
specific spot we will produce a perception of a spot of light corresponding to
that map in the visual world.
‘The idea is if we cleverly stimulate
the individual spots in the brain with electrodes we can actually reproduce
visual form, like pixels on an LCD screen.’
He added: ‘I tell these patients
they’re like astronauts flying to the Moon, they’re taking bold steps to see
not only if the device can help them as individuals, but if it can help the
community of blind patients across the world.’
The results from the first six
patients, presented at the World Society for Stereotactic and Functional
Neurosurgery conference in New York a fortnight ago, revealed each patient had
regained at least some degree of vision.
Second Sight is in negotiations with
the FDA, the US health regulator, to launch another study in the coming months
involving 30 patients.
Will McGuire, head of the firm, said:
‘We expect at least two to three years until it is going to be available
commercially. That will be down to negotiations with the FDA. Then we will
start discussions with regulatory bodies outside the US.’
The Orion system is built on the
success of an earlier device called the Argus II, which uses a similar camera
to send images to an implant at the back of the eye, restoring sight to people
who have started to lose their vision to common conditions such as age-related
macular degeneration – or AMD.
It hit the headlines when it was
unveiled at Manchester Royal Eye Hospital five years ago.
But it relied on a patient having at
least some working retinal cells, stimulating them with the video images and
sending the signal through the optic nerve to the brain.
The new system takes the concept a step
further – bypassing the eye completely and sending the images directly to the
brain.
This means anyone could benefit, even
if their eyes are irreversibly damaged or missing altogether – such as those
who have lost an eye in an accident or on the battlefield, or those who have
become blinded by cancer, meningitis or sepsis.
Helen Lee, of the Royal National
Institute of Blind People, said: ‘We welcome this innovative technology which
appears to have the potential to improve visual experience for people who are
blind.
‘It could be life-changing for many
people, but it is very early days.
‘Robust trials are needed to assess
both the benefits and the adverse effects.’ And Professor Glen Jeffery, a
visual scientist at University College London, said he doubted the new device
would ever be able to restore more than very crude vision.
‘You may be able to see large objects,
or large letters, and move around the world. Technology has moved on massively
in this area. But people are not going to be able to read a newspaper with
this.’
He said the retina was an extremely
sophisticated part of the body – and simply bypassing it would not produce the
kind of vision people expect.
‘It is also going to be extremely
expensive to do this on many people,’ Professor Jeffery added.
End of article. Excellent article for reactivating eyesight in adult men. But if you want to keep your vision for a very long time, then you'll want to see what Bill Sardi recommends to fight off macular degeneration.
The currently recommended dietary
supplement (AREDS formula) formulated by the National Eye Institute for macular
degeneration doesn’t appear to have any influence in preventing or slowing this
disease as measured by the dark adaptation test. [Retina April 27, 2017]
The only hope for therapy or
prevention comes from a pilot study that showed a nutraceutical (Longevinex)
reversed the progression of retinal aging as measured by the dark adaptation
test. [British Journal Medicine &Medical Research June, 2017; 8 NEWSNOW KLAS-TV/CBS Affiliate, June 15, 2017J.
