This is from "USA TODAY"
 Wednesday, 12/22/99


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
WONDER IS ONE OF MANY LOOKING INTO VISION CHIPS
By Aimee Phan and Dan Vergano of USA Today

Years of creativity brought singer/songwriter Stevie Wonder a Kennedy
center Honor on Sunday.  But part of the attention he earned came from
an
announcement he made last week in Detroit.
Wonder Said he's considering surgery to restore his vision with a highly
experimental procedure that would implant electronic chips into his
eyes.

Although Wonder has down played the idea since that announcement, he
wouldn't be the only one interested in such a procedure.
"Vision loss has truly become a massive epidemic with the aging of the
baby
boomers," says Gerald Chader of the Foundation Fighting Blindness in
Hunt
Valley, Md.
The foundation estimates that 6 million people nation-wide suffer from
genetically inherited diseases that affect the retinal cells.
The new hope for vision repair is the use of retinal chips, a high-tech
approach to replacing damaged eye cells with computer chips.  In the
works
for 10 years, this "bionic eye" has become the focus of intense research
by
groups in Germany, Japan and the USA.  "People once thought this was pie
in
the sky, but it's looking much better now," Chader says.
Surgically implanted on the retina's surface, the chip would imitate the
function of deteriorated photoreceptor cells, which would normally
accept
light stimuli and convert them into electrical responses.
The camera, perched on a pair of glasses, would transmit visual
information
to the chip via radio signals.  Inside the chip, those radio waves would
be
converted into an electrical signal and transmitted to nerve cells
behind
the retina.  From there, the electrical signal would travel along the
optic
nerve to the brain, in theory, creating sight.
It was a tough sell.  "It was a crazy idea," says Eugene de Juan, an
iphthalmology professor at Baltimore's Johns Hopkins University.  "Some
thought it sounded like science fiction, but others were hopeful."
A colleague of his, Mark Jumayun, has consulted with Wonder about his
sight.  "After a lifetime of blindness, the singer's brain might not be
able to process a signal from the optic nerve, regardless of the chip's
capabilities," Chader says.
One of the biggest experimental concerns remains the risk of damaging
the
retina's delicate tissue.
"The retina is like a wet piece of Kleenex," Chader says.  "Just imagine
putting a little plastic conductor with a piece of metal tacked onto it.
The retina could shred to pieces."
For the last year, the de Juan group has tested the safety and efficacy
of
the chip on  human patients affected with a retinal degenerative
disease.
Researchers inserted a chip into the retinas of 15 people for 15
minutes.
The subjects reported they were able to perceive basic visual images of
shapes, color and light.
"It was very encouraging," de Juan says.  "We now know that the retina
could tolerate the implantation of the devices and that the patients
could
have primitive forms of vision."
Two weeks ago, researchers at Harvard reported tentative success with
their
own chips implanted temporarily in people suffering severe vision loss.
People in those trials were shown a series of circles transmitted to the
chips.
"We're talking about seeing rough forms and outlines, door and couches,"
Chader says.  While he hopes the chips continue to make progress, he
cautions against overexuberance.  "This is at the stage well before
human
clinical trials."

Picture which accompanies article:

"Bionic Eyesight"
Picture shows a pair of glasses with a tiny round thing right in the
middle
of the lens.  A wire goes from the round thing to a very small antenna
(
appears to be about an inch long, and thin as a straight pin with a
round
ball also very small on top) sticking out from the top of the glasses'
frame, from which radio waves are radiating outward.  Caption reads: "
1.
Miniature cameras mounted on glasses capture images and send them out on
radio waves."
Next picture shows a cutaway of the eye, with the square chip sitting
right
on the retina and with waves radiating to the optic nerve. Caption
reads:
"2. Embedded in the eye, just atop the retina, the chip picks up the
radio
waves."
Last picture is just a close up of the chip which is square like an
ordinary silicon chip. Caption reads: "3. Converting the radio waves to
electrical impulses, the chip passes the signal along to the optic
nerve.
The optic nerve transmits the electrical signal to vision centers in the
brain, where, in theory, the brain interprets the camera pictures as
sight."


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