Please note that this approach is geared towards those "...who go
blind from a degeneration or trauma that involves the inner retinal cell
layer (the ganglion cells) and/or the optic nerve.  For these people,
this is the first sign of real progress in 20 years."

Gislin Dagnelie, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Ophthalmology
Lions Vision Research & Rehab Center
Johns Hopkins Univ. Sch. of Medicine
550 N. Broadway, 6th floor
Baltimore, MD 21205-2020      USA



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
January 17, 2000

Blind Man Perceives Objects With Camera Wired to Brain

      By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

      A blind man can read large letters and navigate around big objects
     by using a tiny camera wired directly to his brain, the first
     artificial eye to provide useful vision, a researcher reports.

     The 62-year-old man doesn't see an image. He perceives up to 100
     specks of light that appear and disappear, like stars that come and
     go behind passing clouds, as his field of vision shifts.

     But as he showed a reporter last week, that's enough to let him
find
     a mannequin in a room, walk to a black stocking cap hanging on a
     white wall, and then return to the mannequin to plop the cap on its
     head. He also can recognize a 2-inch-tall letter from five feet
     away, said researcher William Dobelle.

     "He can do remarkably well" with the limited visual signal, said
     Dobelle, who is developing the artificial vision system.

     The man, who asked to be identified only as Jerry, has been blind
     since the age of 36. He volunteered for the study and got the brain
     implant in 1978; scientists have been working since then to improve
     the software.

     Dobelle is chairman of the Dobelle Institute, a medical device
     company in New York. He describes the device and its performance in
     this month's issue of the ASAIO Journal, a publication of the
     American Society of Artificial Internal Organs.

     Richard Normann, who studies artificial vision at the University of
     Utah, said he's encouraged by how much Jerry can do. He said
     Dobelle's report suggests that, someday, even limited signals to
the
     brain will let blind people do relatively complicated visual tasks.

     It's the first demonstration of useful artificial vision, he said,
     but he stressed the device is "a very limited navigational aid, and
     it's a far cry from the visual experience that normal people
enjoy."


     Still, an implant that helps blind people navigate would be a major
     step forward, said Dr. Bill Heetderks, who directs a National
     Institutes of Health program to develop electronic implants that
     work with the brain.

     "When Dr. Dobelle provides additional details on his methodology
     that establishes this result, we may be there," Heetderks said
after
     reading Dobelle's report.

     While Dobelle's device uses a brain implant, some other scientists
     are studying implants in the retina, the light-sensing tissue at
the
     back of the eye. The retina strategy made news recently when blind
     musician Stevie Wonder expressed interest.

     To use the device, Jerry wears sunglasses with a tiny pinhole
camera
     mounted on one lens and an ultrasonic range finder on the other.
     Both devices communicate with a small computer carried on his hip,
     which highlights the edges between light and dark areas in the
     camera image. It then tells an adjacent computer to send
appropriate
     signals to an array of small electrodes on the surface of Jerry's
     brain, through wires entering his skull behind his right ear.

     The electrodes stimulate certain brain cells, making Jerry perceive
     the specks of light. The shifting patterns as Jerry scans across a
     scene tells him where light areas meet dark ones, letting him find
     the black cap on the white wall, for example.

     The device provides a sort of tunnel vision, reading an area about
     the size of a card 2 inches wide and 8 inches tall, held at arm's
     length.

     Jerry uses the device only two or three days a week at Dobelle's
     lab, as researchers tinker with it. One question is how best to
     provide depth perception, using signals from the range finder.
     During the demonstration, Jerry had to walk cautiously as he
     approached the mannequin and the wall, holding an arm out to
prevent
     collisions.

     Dobelle said an improved version of the device should go on sale
     overseas, in limited numbers, later this year. He said Sunday it
was
     not yet clear when it might be available in the United States.


.


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