A brain implant has given a blind patient a primitive kind of vision, a researcher says. William Dobelle of the Dobelle Institute, a medical device company in New York, says he has perfected an artificial vision device involving a TV camera mounted on glasses.
Actual images emerge in an unevenb pattern of dots, like the words on a stadium scoreboard.
W hether the device will work with patients blind from birth, who may lack a fully developed visual cortex, remains a question, Dobelle says. I t has taken that long for computers to fulfill those hopes, Dobelle says. After getting the TV signal, more powerful computers now can trigger the brain electrodes in a regulated pattern in real time. A ccording to the study, a carbon plug in the patient's skull connects wires to the brain implant. No infections have developed, chiefly because of heavy blood flow throughout the scalp, which constantly brings immune cells near the plug connected to the implant.