Blind people can ‘see’ letters traced directly onto their brains
Scientists have developed a new way to create “sights” for blind people. It’s like skywriting, but instead of blue sky, the letters are written on the brain itself. The new approach, described May 14 in Cell, bypasses the eyes and delivers a sequence of electrical signals to the brain, creating the perception of a glowing light that traces a shape. With further refinements, the method might one day restore aspects of vision to people with damaged eyes or optic nerves. Scientist have been able to create artificial visions by manipulating the brains of mice, but advances for people have been slower (SN: 7/18/19). Tiny jolts of electricity to the visual cortex, a span of neural tissue at the back of the brain, can make a person “see” small bursts of light called phosphenes. Previous attempts to restore vision involved creating multiple phosphenes at the same time, like light bulbs on movie marquees. But those signals were hard to interpret, forming smatterings of...