7 ms·

This is a really cool approach - I covered it yesterday and here's the EPFL news post as well. https://techcrunch.com/2021/03/18/quest-for-prosthetic-retinas-p

This is a really cool approach - I covered it yesterday and here's the EPFL news post as well. https://techcrunch.com/2021/03/18/quest-for-prosthetic-retinas-progresses-towards-human-trials-with-a-vr-assist/ https://techcrunch.com/2021/03/18/quest-for-prosthetic-retin... https://actu.epfl.ch/news/retinal-implants-can-give-artificial-vision-to-the/ https://actu.epfl.ch/news/retinal-implants-can-give-artifici... Still lots and lots of work to do but it obviates the issues with previous retinal implants that you basically needed to run a cable into the eye. In retrospect photovoltaics are obvious because that's more or less how the eye works in the first place.

elric 6y ago
This is one of those great ideas that seems obvious in retrospect. I hope it pans out. I was wondering how this stimulated the optic nerve, but it seems like it doesn't do so directly, but rather it interacts with the existing retina?
- devindotcom 6y ago
  Yeah, this would be for blindness that's upstream from the nerve, for instance an opsin deficiency or something that makes the light-sensitive cells in the retina not work. The underlying (actually overlying since the retina is kind of inside-out) nervous network might still function fine, it just doesn't have an input. The photovoltaic dots would create a very small localized charge that would stimulate the higher-level cells rather than the rods and cones.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
dundercoder 6y ago
Well done.