Message-ID: <[log in to unmask]>

budd,
You're quite correct about the brain needing to be able to
interpret visual stuff.  This only can hapen in people who had
sight early in life.   the usual figure is that you need to see
before the age of three years to develop the necessary visual
memory and the interpretive abilities you need to use vision.

so, and this was actually there in the original article, it is
not impossible that some technology may restore some usable
vision in  people who lost sight later in life.  They have the
basics of visual memory in tact.

It is unlikely in the extreme that folks who have been blind
since birth will ever be able to see no matter what the
technology.

the possibility of regenerating or somehow implanting visual
memory is so far from current understanding of how brains work
that speculation about that isn't even good science fiction, it
is fantasy.

Even if you have visual memory, new signals from some
technological eye replacement are not likely to provide an exact,
or even close,equivelent image to what you learned as  a kid.  so,
in the best of cases a person with a new implant or whatever will
still have a huge and difficult job of re learning to interpret
vision.

You simply won't wake up and see with some gizmo.  Just as you
simply won't wake up and be able to play the violin if you
couldn't do it before.

In Mike's case, I believe he had a fair amount of vision in early
life, thus his eyes were surgically repaired and so the vision he
regained was somewhat similar to what he originally had.

Hope this clarifies things a bit.

Note, although I am not a vision expert, i work with a bunch of
them, and keep up somewhat on the realities of all this.
It ain't time to invest or hold your breaths yet.

tom Fowle


Net-Tamer V 1.12.0 - Registered


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