Public Relations, John A. Moran Eye Center, John A. Moran Eye Center

Scientists Enable Blind Woman To See Simple Shapes Using Brain Implant

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2021-10-27 20:30:13

Public Relations, John A. Moran Eye Center, John A. Moran Eye Center Email: Elizabeth.Neff@hsc.utah.edu Phone: 801-585-3730

Newly published research details how a team of scientists from the John A. Moran Eye Center at the University of Utah and Spain’s Miguel Hernández University successfully created a form of artificial vision for a blind woman using a prosthesis hardwired into her brain.

Publishing “Visual percepts evoked with an Intracortical 96-channel Microelectrode Array inserted in human occipital cortex” in The Journal of Clinical Investigation, Moran researcher Richard A. Normann, PhD, and Spanish collaborator Eduardo Fernández, MD, PhD, detail how the Moran|Cortivis Prosthesis produced a simple form of vision for 60-year old Berna Gómez. The team conducted a series of experiments with Gómez for six months in Elche, Spain, that represent a leap forward for scientists hoping to create a visual prosthesis that could increase independence for the blind.

A neurosurgeon implanted a microelectrode array invented by Normann, the Utah Electrode Array (UEA), into the visual cortex of Gómez to both record and stimulate the electrical activities of neurons. Gómez wore eyeglasses equipped with a miniature video camera; specialized software encoded the visual data collected by the camera and sent it to the UEA. The array then stimulated neurons to produce phosphenes, perceived by Gómez as white points of light, to create an image.