The Technology That Could Make Blind People See Again

April 5 -- Neuroscientist Sheila Nirenberg received a MacArthur Genius Award for figuring out, for the first time ever, how our retinas take images from the outside world and turn them into a neural “code” that the brain can understand. It started as a pure research project, but now she’s building the code into a device that could bring sight to the blind. (Video by Alan Jeffries)

[eashley_lasagnae]

Imagine how happy would blind people be
It would make me happy to see them happy

[luHD]

Why can't this be on the news. It's so amazing and this is from a person that is partially sighted blind. I hope in the future someone can crack it and help a lot of people. If not the sooner

[anupkumar]

I have started developing hearing loss at raw age of 19. Don't know why I am watching nthis but it's a pure blessing. Hope every disabled person be accepted by society in the same way it entertains normal person.

[Zerpentile]

Brings me hope. If I met that researcher I'd thank her and tell her she's one of my heroes.

[gaius_enceladus]

I saw a detailed article on this in (I think) "MIT Tech Review"magazine. This woman is just **amazing!**
I reckon she will have a Nobel Prize in Medicine for this research some time in the next few years.

[FinancialEducation]

The way my vision is going... I think I will need this soon!!!

[gabrield.h]

This is so brilliant! I had this eye accident when I was around 5 years old and now I’m on one side totally blind. I wish something like this would ever work for those who needed it. But I’m glad that they are people like you working on this ❤️ Thank you.

[JamesColeman]

look how popular this video is. for 4 years only 51k views. this shows how much our society cares about scientific breakthroughs n improvements.

[michaeld]

if this is true then this is one step closer to true VR as you could feed a virtual world into someone's brain

[benw]

Interesting, maybe it has possibilities, but it's too early to get overly excited yet. I'm legally blind. Anything that could make my vision near normal would help, and that's exciting. But the human eye and the nerves that send the images and the brain that processes them? That's hugely complex. The retina has this enormous array of tiny cells to pick up an image finer than any camera or computer screen. How your eyes, nerves, and brain manage that huge amount of information in real-time to create a visual, meaningful image is a tough task to figure out. What are the tricks the eye, nerves, and brain use to gather the raw information from the real world and then send it and then process it? If we can get even a simple, basic idea of how our vision works, that would help towards restoring sight, either biologically (transplants or cell/tissue/organ repair) or with prosthetics (implants and/or external devices like artificial eyes). I would love for something to work. The research looks very early and just a rough approximation, but that is fine. I sure hope the research can continue and will help somehow.

[rufoeeg]

I wanna study this is my interest in life imagine just restoring peoples visions who have gone blind and get so happy i know so many people who would be grateful to be able to see again

[djprogramer]

6:25
As scientists, we all accept that fate. Thank you for your service

[andrearojas]

I pray that the blind people will see someday

[Lunk]

Then hit that thing up with red, green, and blue in each pixel. Now you can see color too. They need to start working on bioengineered eyes for completely blind and legally blind people too.

[shekhargupta]

I pray for this neuroscientist and for her success.🙏

[xomy]

Супер! Браво исследователям, бросающим вызов таким трудным проблемам человечества!

[ThankYouESM]

So blessed to still be able to somewhat see... rather than so blessed meaning to see perfectly fine?

[andreaknowles]

Why can't eye hospitals even suggest this? You'd have an inexhaustible supply of willing volunteers 🙋🏾‍♀️

[Brineytoes]

Even better is an implantable patch of genetically engineered cells to restore the macula, which is where central vision is performed by the eye. They are using it in England, and UC Berkeley is working on it, but not available for us yet. Anything electronic will always be second best.

[InamUllah-dcbh]

i want to research on this because my brother is blind i wanna do some thing for him .. i wanna start research for my Ms computer science degree Research but i m looking for a professor like you .