Will bionic people dream of electronic sheep?
No one knows. But now, the "bionic sheep" may see the "cyborg".
Scientists in Australia spent 3 months surgically implanting a bionic eye on the retina of a small group of sheep, which has since gained "exceptionally sharp vision" beyond what they can see.
Image credit: Getty Images/futurism
The new study was published in Biomaterials, and importantly, the bionic eyes did not cause any adverse reactions, which means that it can be implanted for a long time, safely and stably.
So, teams from the University of Sydney and the University of New South Wales quickly submitted documents ready to officially begin human trials.
It's not the glass eyeball that the action movie villain wears, it really makes the blind person shine again.
Open your bionic eyes and see a new world
This bionic eye, which is about to enter the human body, is called Phoenix 99.
First, see how it works.
The Phoenix 99 consists mainly of two parts: a stimulator and a communication module.
The stimulator will be implanted into the retina of the eye, the communication module will be inserted under the skin behind the ear, and people will wear a pair of glasses equipped with a miniature camera, and the equipment will be complete.
They are connected wirelessly, the miniature camera captures the picture, and then transmits it to the communication module in the form of an electrical signal, which decodes the signal into an electrical pulse mode, which is then transmitted to a stimulation module implanted on the retina, and finally transmitted to the brain along the optic nerve.
In this way, the visually impaired see the picture.
Originally, under normal vision, the picture can be directly transmitted to the retina, and the light will be converted into electrical signals, which will be sent to the brain through neurons.
However, some patients with retinal disease have disrupted ganglion cells, resulting in the inability to transmit in the middle of the way, resulting in visual impairment.
The innovation of Phoenix 99 is that it bypasses these damaged cells and directly stimulates the underlying retinal ganglion cells that are still functioning, tricking the brain into feeling light.
Studies in sheep have also found that the device has very little effect on the body.
Samuel Eggenberger, a biomedical engineer at the University of Sydney, said:
There are no unexpected reactions to the tissues around the device, so we expect it to remain in humans for years.
At present, it mainly works in patients with degenerative blindness (such as retinitis pigmentosa), that is, the retina is damaged, but the optic nerve can still work, and this disease can also be called one of the "world problems" in the ophthalmology community.
In the end, the visually impaired people may see a picture that is very different from the normal vision that people imagine, but it is a rudimentary form of vision that can perceive light, shadow, and shape.
But if it is popularized, this is already a great progress.
Although similar retinal stimulation concepts have been tested all over the world, the results are not stable, and in Samuel Eggenberger's view, it needs to be done step by step.
This bionic eye provides simple information about the visually impaired person's surroundings, such as detecting obstacles, and then can help them navigate, locate, and even read large characters.
In front of Phoenix 99, there are already many technology companies eyeing the bionic eye.
In the next few years, they are likely to become commonplace in the lives of the visually impaired friends around us.
Image courtesy of Bionic Vision Technologies
The world's coolest bionic eyes
We placed a thin wire close to the retina, and with a little bit of current, the patient saw a bright spot.
Then, when we put in two wires, the patient saw two bright spots.
Greenberg says he's ceo of Second Sight, a well-known eyeball technology company.
Although the Phoenix 99 is not yet commercially available, Second Sight's bionic eye was installed on patients as early as 2011, and in 2013, their argus II was launched, which is also the world's first visual recovery system approved by the FDA for severe retinal degeneration and blindness.
Today, more than 350 people around the world have Argus II installed.
It works the same way as the Phoenix 99, and is a combination of retinal implants and in vitro wearable devices, and the imaging effect is blurry and limited to black and white.
But its significance for the visually impaired may be more significant than its technology.
User Ross Doerr recalls that he will never forget seeing the glittering lights on the Christmas tree on a holiday; the 68-year-old who put on his equipment and saw his wife for the first time and cried out in excitement; and someone who could wear the Argus II to travel, ski, shoot archery in just a few years...
Many technology companies around the world are studying the bionic eye system, because there are various reasons for visual impairment problems, and different companies are trying to find their own direction.
Monash Vision Group, an Australian company, has solved the problem of optic nerve damage.
Many people who are clinically blind suffer from optic nerve damage, and monash Vision Group has built a revolutionary cortical vision device, Gennaris, which is a custom head device with a camera, wireless transmitter, vision processor and its software, and a set of 9×9mm chips implanted in the brain.
Gennaris had been conducting human clinical trials in Melbourne the year before, and the technology is expected to provide new cures for neurological diseases that cannot be cured, such as limb paralysis.
Macular degeneration (AMD) is also an eye disease that plagues many elderly people.
When the macula slowly erodes the human eye, the patient's vision becomes blurred, or there are black spots in front of the eyes that cannot be shaken off, and AR contact lens company Innovega has treated this problem with its intraocular lens iOptik. However, another French company called Pixium Vision has landed.
Back in 2018, their small wireless photovoltaic subretinal implant PRIMA was approved by the FDA for clinical study.
It is a "bionic eye" composed of a combination of wireless subretinal implants and augmented reality glasses.
What's more, it's smaller, simpler, cheaper than the Argus II, and it doesn't require brain surgery.
In 2019, 12-month data from 5 patients with advanced dry AMD in France who had PRIMA implanted suggested that the central retinal region of all people successfully triggered the sense of light.
After 12 months, most patients can recognize letters, have a certain sequence of letters, and have no equipment-related adverse reactions, and now they are conducting feasibility trials in Europe and the United States.
PRIMA has created a world of bionic vision for the elderly who have lost their sight.
However, I believe that the bionic eye that most people imagine or expect is a real eyeball like in Black Mirror.
In the third episode of the first season of Black Mirror, "The Entire History of You", the contact lenses worn by the protagonist are like brain-computer interfaces, capable of recording, storing and playing back what the wearer sees and hears
It has no external equipment attached, no thick spectacle frames, looks like a real human eye, and has a lot of cool features.
In 2020, Nature published an amazing result.
Researchers in Hong Kong and the United States have built a special device called EC-EYE, which is hailed as the world's first 3D artificial eyeball.
This time, it looks more like a real bionic eye – various miniature sensors can create images, the sensor forms a hemispherical shape that resembles a human eyeball with a diameter of more than 2 cm, can detect countless photoreceptor cells, the bionic eye cavity is also filled with ionic liquids, and the thin and soft wires made of liquid metal are like nerve fibers...
It will be clearer than the real human eye vision, and the density of the nanosensor can be increased to more than 10 times the density of the photosensitive in the real human eye.
The researchers say that when its biocompatibility, stability, and performance are further improved, it will become practical within 5 years.
These powerful properties are not only used for visually impaired people, but also in the field of humanoid robots to solve jobs that people cannot reach.
At present, the cutting-edge bionic eye technology sounds very beautiful, but the reality of landing, in fact, there are more or less various problems: technical limitations, interactive security, high price, limited service life...
This is also why the bionic eye seems to look a lot, but in fact, the people who actually use it are actually quite few.
Wait for a bionic eye to popularize the future
As Barbara camperll walked past the New York City subway station during peak crowds, her world suddenly went completely dark.
She is a visually impaired person, completely blind in her 30s due to genetic diseases, using the Argus II bionic eye device for 4 years, the bionic eye allowed her to see light and shadow again, but she did not expect that the bionic eye would suddenly fail.
I was about to go downstairs when I suddenly heard beeps, beeps, beeps, beeps, and then all the light and dark patches in front of me disappeared.
Image credit: Beatrice De Gea/New York Times/REDUX
She wasn't the only one who had experienced the problem, but there was nothing these visually impaired people could do in the face of equipment failures.
As soon as there is a small problem in a small place, their world is like being turned off for a second in the long dark night.
That's because Second Sight, the company behind argus II, is no longer offering equipment upgrades and is nearing closure in 2020, though they later said they were working on a new product called Orion that would treat almost all forms of severe blindness and were already in the early clinical stages.
Early feasibility studies for Orion implants
But just recently, Second Sight merged with an early-stage biopharmaceutical company called Nano Precision Medica, saying it would focus on developing implants for new drug delivery.
After technological innovation, regulatory success, healthcare and financial setbacks, and executive departures, the company is on the brink of collapse and the future of vision devices has become incomparably blurred.
For users, they face complications associated with visually failed devices, interference with brain activity, and the risks, pains, and high costs of removing it.
You know, it costs $150,000 (about $950,000) to buy a Argus II, which is not affordable for every ordinary family, and this does not include surgery and post-maintenance costs.
Image courtesy of RINGO CHIU/ZUMA PRESS/ALAMY
The price is too high, and it is also a problem with other bionic eye devices.
What's more, the current bionic eye has not really been able to restore the vision that a healthy human eye can have, which is simply put, it is not cost-effective.
Of course, in the early stages of development, what is more important is the technology itself.
For example, the bionic eye also has to experience the problem of restoring the real color, improving the resolution to see the distance (the current bionic eye can be said to be "myopic eyes") and so on.
Clinical research, safety testing, and dependency, autonomy, user dignity, and accountability around the ethics of technology will take some time to develop.
Ross Doerr was unable to test for brain tumors with MRI because his doctors could not obtain information about his implants from Second Sight. Image credit: Spectrum.IEEE/Bob O'Connor
But don't be pessimistic, Bhavin Shah, a London-based optometrist interviewed by the BBC, cites cameras as an example, saying that the digital camera invented in 1975 also took decades to become widely used.
When the technology reaches a certain level, vision reduction and healthy human eyes are quite or even stronger, I believe that it is the time for bionic eyelids to become popular.
Now, the bionic eye is still developing in a good direction.
New visual technologies are emerging, and rapid progress can be seen every year, and a 2021 market research report released by the BBC shows that the value of the industry will reach US$426 million by 2028.
Image credit: Usc.edu/ Mike McQuaid
Even Meta, which is applying for a patent for the mechanical bionic eye, claims that in the future, the bionic eye will be placed in the body of the bionic person, so that every ordinary person will be able to contact the bionic eye and experience the enhanced and virtual visual world in the metaverse.
According to the World Health Organization, at least 2.2 billion people worldwide suffer from some form of visual impairment, ranging from mild visual impairment to complete blindness.
There are more than 17 million visually impaired people on the mainland, that is, one in every 100 people.
Visually impaired Pontz often says to his wife:
I don't know when and how we'll see you again, but you have to believe that one day, we'll be able to see you again.
Believe and wait, on the barrier-free road, the more people walk, the road will be bright.
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