TECHNOLOGY

[Ms. Kathy]

08/28/07
No more darkness
Source Link: Sun-Herald.com (South Carolina) www.sun-herald.com/Newsstory.cfm?pubdate=082807&story=tp1ch6.htm&folder=NewsArchive2

Stem-cell treatments already producing changes in Port Charlotte toddler, who is legally blind


Cameron Petersen can't sit still.

The 19-month-old Port Charlotte toddler crawls toward objects with a new sense of curiosity. His legal blindness seems to be fading with each day in China, as he explores the foreign surroundings of the room.

"My son says he's like a little monkey," said Cameron's grandmother, Carol Petersen, who has been communicating with the family by phone.

Earlier this month, Cameron traveled to China with his parents, Melissa VanGorp and Zachery Petersen, as part of a case study to treat his blindness with stem cells.

Cameron was diagnosed with optic nerve hypoplasia, a leading cause of blindness in children. The condition causes underdevelopment of the optic nerve and can lead to permanent blindness.

Doctors told Cameron's parents nothing could be done.

But the family never gave up hope.

They found Stem Cells China, a research facility which has successfully infused stem cells into patients suffering from numerous disabilities and diseases.

Family members raised about $20,000 this summer to help fund the trip to China and for the treatment.

The procedure, which isn't available in America, transplanted harvested umbilical cord stem cells into Cameron.

Stem cells can transform into specialized cells with specific functions, such as repair of Cameron's optic nerves.

Treatment consisted of four total stem-cell infusions to Cameron's arm and the lumbar region of his spine. It didn't take long to notice a change.

Carol Petersen said Cameron's energy level increased following his first treatment on Aug. 10. He also seemed healthier.

Petersen said Cameron used to have a high temperature every other day.

By the third treatment, Cameron was standing on his own and crawling toward objects -- something he couldn't do before. In the past, Cameron would feel objects such as his toys by putting them against his lips and face.

"He's exploring everything," Petersen said. "I am just so overjoyed."

Cameron is one of five children to undergo stem-cell treatment for optic nerve hypoplasia. Among those treated by Stem Cells China were a child from Missouri this summer, along with a girl from Romania. Both have shown incredible progress with vision.

Cameron will return early Wednesday morning with his parents.

Peterson said she hopes to raise awareness about stem-cell research, since it remains a controversial subject in the United States.

"If it's in our power to do this to help people, why can't we?" she said.

You can e-mail Jason Witz at [e-mail].


By JASON WITZ

Staff Writer

[Ms. Kathy]

Virtual Worlds Open Up to Blind
Source Link:
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6993739.stm

By Geoff Adams-Spink, Age & disability correspondent, BBC News website.

Online virtual worlds could soon be accessible to blind people thanks to research
by students at IBM in Ireland.

Some estimates predict that 80% of active internet users will be using a virtual
world in four years' time.

The company said that it is keen to ensure that blind people are not excluded from
an environment that sighted people will take for granted.

The students have designed an audio equivalent of the virtual world using 3D sound
to create a sense of space.

They were working as part of the company's Extreme Blue research initiative which
brings groups of students together for 12 weeks to solve problem set by senior
researchers.

The project - called Accessibility In Virtual Worlds - is what the company
describes as "a proof of concept" at this stage, but it will be passed on to IBM's
Human Ability and Accessibility Centre in Texas for further development.

For their work the Irish team decided to use the Active Worlds online environment
rather than the more popular Second Life (which has almost 9.5m accounts) because
it allowed them more flexibility.

Active Worlds is a collection of user-made virtual worlds that people can visit
via a web browser plug-in. Like many other virtual spaces they let people make
many of the artefacts, including buildings, found in them.

Audible cues.

The research team exploited this ability to tinker with objects in the online
world to make it more hospitable to the blind.

"When the user comes into the world, the items are described as well as their
positions," explained Colm O'Brien, one of the team of four researchers who worked
on the project.

"There is also sound attached - for example, if there's a tree nearby you will
hear a rustling of leaves," said Mr O'Brien.

The work also developed tools which uses text to speech software that reads out
any chat from fellow avatars in the virtual world that appears in a text box.

Characters in the virtual world can have a "sonar" attached to them so that the
user gets audible cues to alert them to when they are approaching, from which
direction and how near they are.

A number of blind mentors have given advice and feedback to the team - one in
IBM's Dublin lab and two based at IBM's research centre in Texas.

The students have also liaised with the National Council for the Blind of Ireland
on their work.

As well as proving that the idea is feasible, the team has made a number of
recommendations about accessibility standards for virtual worlds which should help
the developers of the future.

"IBM believes that virtual worlds are going to be the next big evolution of the
web and if this happens... it's not right for blind people to be missing out on
what the rest of us have available," said Mr O'Brien.

[Ms. Kathy]

Refractive surgery
OSN SuperSite Breaking News 9/19/2007

Presby-LASIK shows efficacy in hyperopic presbyopic patients
Source Link:OSN Supersite www.osnsupersite.com/view.asp?rID=23884

STOCKHOLM, Sweden — Performing presby-LASIK to treat hyperopic patients results in good near and distant vision, according to a surgeon speaking here at the European Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgeons meeting.

Bruce W. Jackson, MD, and colleagues evaluated the efficacy of the procedure performed on 56 eyes of 28 hyperopic patients. Surgery involved applying bilateral aspheric ablations to treat patients' presbyopia. Surgeons then performed a CustomVue (Advanced Medical Optics) hyperopic treatment with a central presbyopic ablation, creating a central near vision ablation profile, Dr. Jackson said.

The LASIK flaps were created using either the Amadeus microkeratome (AMO) or the IntraLase femtosecond laser (AMO). Patients ranged in age from 45 to 65 years.

At 6 months, 86% of patients had 20/20 binocular distance uncorrected visual acuity, and all patients had 20/40, Dr. Jackson said.

[Ms. Kathy]

Date: October 3, 2007.

Sensory Substitution and the Extendable Mind,
by Dr. Erik Myin.

What happens when a blind person is made to "see" through a sensory
substitution device that transforms visual stimuli into tactile or
acoustic signals? In the past decades a number of sensory substitution
systems have been built, with the ultimate goal to compensate for
the loss of a sensory modality, often vision. In the famous TVSS-system
of Bach-y-Rita and colleagues, images captured by a camera are
transmitted to tactile vibrators on the back of a subject. Both
tactile and auditory substitution systems for vision allow subjects
to perform a number of tasks which normally would require an intact
visual system.

Drawing on work done with Malika Auvray (Paris), I will address the
question of which modality perception with a sensory substitution
system belongs to. The common positions are either that perception
remains in the novel modality the device relies on, or that experience
becomes like experience in the substituted-for modality. I will
propose and defend an alternative conception of sensory substitution,
according to which it is rather a matter of sensorimotor transformation.
Rather than being reducible to existing perceptual capacities
or modalities, sensory substitution provides for a new form of
sensorimotor coupling with the environment.

Erik Myin studied philosophy in Brussels (PhD at the Vrije Universiteit
Brussel), computational linguistics in Antwerp (Universitaire Instelling
Antwerpen), and was a visiting scholar at the department of philosophy
at the University of California, San Diego. From 2004 on, he has his
main appointment at the Centre for Philosophical Psychology of the
University of Antwerp (UA). His research and publications are mainly
in the philosophy of cognitive science. He frequently collaborates with
nonphilosophers, among those J. Kevin O'Regan on sensorimotor perception
and Malika Auvray on sensory substitution. With philosopher Dan Hutto
(University of Hertfordshire), he is preparing a book Enactivism Explicated.

Homepage: www.ua.ac.be/erik.myin

Source URL:
www.rug.nl/filosofie/nieuws/agenda/20071003

[Ms. Kathy]

Graphic breakthrough for the blind developed in Israel
Source Link: ISRAEL21c www.israel21c.org/bin/en.jsp?enDispWho=Articles%5El682&enSearchQueryID=116&enPage=BlankPage&enDisplay=view&enDispWhat=object&enVersion=0&enZone=Technology&
By ISRAEL21c staff May 09, 2004

Amazing advancements for the visually impaired have taken place over the last few years. Today, blind people can do many of the same things sighted people can.

The primary reason: the power of the personal computer.

Arnold Roth, the CEO of VirTouch - an Israeli company which specializes in computer technology for the blind and visually-challenged - explains that today's PCs and the Internet let blind people read just about any text they want, but that there are still challenges ahead.

"Text and numbers are pretty largely accessible to blind people who know Braille and are capable of working with computers. They can also hear it spoken by software," Roth told ISRAEL21c. "But when you look beyond the text, that's when you run into problems - things like images, photographs, maps, charts and tables. There is no solution for those elements other than printing them out using some very expensive embossing equipment. It's not very conducive to interactivity."

Last year, VirTouch launched a mouse-like device called the VTPlayer that is novel, unique and patented - as well as interactive, which opened the door to PC-based entertainment and learning for blind and visually impaired computer users. Now, building on the success of the original device, VirTouch is launching a new class of software for blind accessibility in the area of non-text computer images that, according to Roth, will become as revolutionary to the millions of blind Americans as Braille was.

"What our new technology does is allow the blind to see through their fingertips elements like pictures, even photographs, maps, charts and tables, and flow charts - everyday things that are today off-limits for the blind," said Roth

It's quite a jump for a company that has focused until now on software and games for blind children. Founded in the mid-'90s, Virtouch is the brainchild of Dr. Roman Gouzman, a cognitive psychologist from the former Soviet Union. Gouzman assembled a team of software and hardware developers and actively sought input from the blind, including many children.

"In VirTouch's early days, we came along with technology that aimed to fill an entirely empty niche - entertainment for blind children. After some missteps, we've developed a device that addresses that need and does it very well," said Roth, adding that as the father of a blind child, he feels a special affinity for VirTouch's products.

VTPlayer originated as the combination hardware/software product Virtouch developed as an excellent and unique way for blind children to learn Braille and to have fun while acquiring important cognitive skills like orientation and spatial relationships. Among its many highlights is the fact that it allows a blind child to play side-by-side and at the same time on the same PC with a child (friend, sibling, parent, teacher) who is sighted.


VirTouch introduced the child-oriented product at the ATIA accessibility technologies expo in Orlando, FL in January 2003, and a European version with support for multiple languages at the SightCity exhibition in Frankfurt during May 2003. Bundled with five software applications and several utilities, it retails for $695.

"When we displayed the VTPlayer at a show in California, Stevie Wonder came by and sat down. And he wouldn't leave. He was so taken with the product that he ended up buying the display model," said Roth.

"Our breakthrough is partly engineering and partly psychology. The hardware - the mouse-like VTPlayer - gives blind adults and children a tactile sense of what's happening on the computer screen by stimulating their finger tips. At the same time, smart software we have created for Windows lets their sense of hearing as well as their cognitive abilities fill in the gaps caused by the limits of their vision," Roth said.

VirTouch's tactile solution is silver-colored and a little larger than a regular computer mouse. It incorporates all the functions of a regular Windows mouse in addition to its unique capabilities as a tactical, immersive, multimedia device. It has an optical sensor, four thumb-operated buttons and two embedded tactile pads where the user's fingers rest. Each tactile pad consists of 16 small vibrating pins. A standard USB (Universal Serial Bus) plug enables a fuss-free connection to any PC.

The first generation of VTPlayer software consists of a growing family of software applications for Windows, all very graphical and attractively designed, all with a spoken (using actors) and musical sound track and all with inbuilt features that reflect the cognitive psychological focus which VirTouch brings to the development of all its products.

Using the same basic hardware and software, Virtouch in the last year has focused on extending its capabilities to make it a productivity tool that according to Roth "will be no less important than a Braille display used by blind people."

"The launch last year of the VTPlayer gave us a great platform for experimenting. During the past nine months, we have tried to think outside the box and come up with tactile ways of giving blind people access to information that has been useless to them until now - using a product that people thought was only for games," said Roth.

"For instance, on the day Saddam Hussein was captured, I happened to be in the Pacific Northwest, meeting there with a blind entrepreneur. I wanted to show him what our technology could do. Our R&D team in Jerusalem worked through their morning (the overnight hours for us out west), creating web-pages that incorporated news-agency stories, photos and maps of the capture and made them tactile. They posted these to a private location on our website. By the time I sat down with the blind gentleman in the morning, I was able to say 'Let's first sit together and view something new.' He 'saw' tactile pictures of the Iraqi leader before and after his shave, along with spoken and Braille text reports. His fingers explored a schematic diagram of the spider hole where the Iraqi leader was found, with spoken commentary being heard at the right moments. His surprise and undisguised excitement turned the meeting into a great success."

Besides the enjoyment blind people will get from being able to 'see' photographs and maps, there are very practical aspects to the VTPlayer's new capabilities. According to Roth, personal mobility and navigation are key issues for many blind people, and VirTouch is about to launch a tactile interface for digital map information, or geographical information systems (GIS).

"Blind people can go to the same sites you or I visit on the web and they will be able to use general-purpose maps which were created for sighted people with no allowances made for the special needs of blind people. The blind can feel what's there and experience it in a tactile fashion," said Roth. "That's just what accessibility technology is ideally supposed to do."

Another graphic challenge the VTPlayer tackles in the field of art, where blind users can see the classic with the help of Virtouch's tactile technology.

"While it's early to say we have commercial relations, we've been invited to consult to some important museums and galleries and the feedback is strong and positive. Unfortunately, many people regard the enjoyment of visual arts as 'nice to have' rather than 'must have'. But art is emblematic of a larger class of things that we are enabling - making image content accessible to the blind. That's something we can feel proud about," said Roth.

Roth estimates that the repackaged VTPlayer with its graphic technology will be available to U.S. consumers during the summer.

"Today we sell a product that's entertainment. Tomorrow - which is really almost today - we are extending the same techniques and technology and making important and useful things accessible that are not currently accessible to blind people. There's nothing else out there that lets you do this."

[Ms. Kathy]

Tiny third-eye cameras will let blind people "see".

The bionic eye is one step closer to reality, thanks in part
to important research undertaken at Queensland University of
Technology.

QUT School of Electrical Engineering researcher Dr Jason
Dowling is part of an international team of researchers
working to turn vision recorded by miniscule cameras into
information the brain can use to restore vision to blind
people.

Dr Dowling said a tiny camera could be placed in the centre of
a pair of glasses and connected to a palm-sized computer,
which in turn would relay information to electrodes implanted
in a person's eye or brain.

"The system captures images from a video camera and stimulates
the implanted electrodes in an organised way, when these
electrodes are stimulated a blind person can perceive spots of
light," Dr Dowling said.

"This produces a reduced resolution 'spot' image for the
person, enabling them to negotiate obstacles and doorways.

"My role in the research was to investigate different ways to
process the information recorded by the camera before it is
sent to the electrodes."

Dr Dowling said the system could restore partial vision to
people who had lost their eyesight through sickness or
accident.

"These prosthesis systems promise to provide useful
information to a blind person for mobility, reading and face
recognition," he said.

"They would suit people who have lost their vision but would
not work for people who were born blind because the neural
connections between the eyes and brain do not develop if they
are not used in early childhood."

Dr Dowling said visual prosthetics was a field undergoing
great growth but there was still a long way to go before
perfect vision could be created by a bionic eye.

"Visual prosthetics are still in the developmental phase and
currently there are greater benefits for a person learning to
walk with a cane or using an electronic mobility device," he
said.

"People who have become blind shouldn't put off talking to an
orientation and mobility specialist, such as Guide Dogs
Australia."

Dr Dowling was supervised by Dr Anthony Maeder from the CSIRO
e-Health Research Centre and QUT's Associate Professor Wageeh Boles, and received funding from Cochlear Ltd and the
Australian Research Council.

Media contact: Rachael Wilson, QUT media officer, 07 3138 4494
or [e-mail]

Date: 28 November 2007.

Source URL:
www.news.qut.edu.au/cgi-bin/WebObjects/News.woa/wa/goNewsPage?newsEventID=14963

[Ms. Kathy]

Former student Otis sent this to me:
Hey,



Check out the below links. Pretty cool stuff in a strange way for us blind folks.



www.pbs.org/kcet/wiredscience/video/286-mixed_feelings_.html

Otis



<html><embed><object width="425" height="265"> <param name="movie" value="http://www.pbs.org/kcet/wiredscience/video/embed/286"></param> <param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param> <embed src="http://www.pbs.org/kcet/wiredscience/video/embed/286" quality="high" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="265" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"></embed> </object></html>

[Ms. Kathy]

Sight-saving scanner
Saturday, 09 February 2008200802091106
Source Link: Manawatu Standardwww.stuff.co.nz/stuff/eveningstandard/4394945a6502.html

Patients at risk of blindness caused by macular degeneration will soon have a less harrowing time going through the process of treatment and monitoring at Palmerston North Hospital to help save their sight.

The ophthalmology department has the green light from MidCentral's hospital advisory committee to order an optical coherent tomography (OCT) scanner worth $130,000 that will save patients from the regular risk and discomfort of fluorescein injections necessary to monitor their condition.

Medical head Richard Holmes says the new technology will be cheaper to run, more effective, more accurate and, in the long run, will cut down on the number of people going blind or suffering complications.

It will most often be used for patients with age-related macular degeneration. Dr Holmes describes it as "a devastating disease" that in the past has been untreatable and a leading cause of blindness.

The condition can now be managed with injections, with a 95 percent chance of stopping further degeneration, and a 30-40 percent chance of reversing some of the damage.

Patients undergoing treatment need to be closely monitored and at the moment that means the use of fluorescein injections locally. The nearest OCT scanner is privately run in Wellington.

[Ms. Kathy]

Seeing the light
People who suffer from the most common causes of blindness
could one day see again with glasses that use an imaging chip
and a high-density LED array.

The glasses would detect light, process the information and
project visual signals on to genetically altered neurons
inside the sufferer's eyes. These neurons, called retinal
ganglion cells, receive and transmit visual information from
the retina to visual areas of the brain.

The technique could enable sufferers of retinitis pigmentosa,
age-related macular degeneration and diabetic retinopathy to
see. In the advanced stages, retinas with these disorders can
no longer detect light, which means they no longer have usable
rods and cones, but all their remaining neurons, such as the
ganglion cells, survive. This raises the possibility that a
retinal prosthetic could bypass the diseased tissue and
stimulate the remaining healthy cells.

A lead investigator in the project, Mark Hankins, Professor
of visual and neuroscience at Oxford University, said that
without rods and cones, ganglion cells receive no information
to output to the visual areas of the brain.

However, scientists have proved that a small percentage of
these cells cells are light sensitive. With gene therapy, a
patient's entire population of ganglion cells could be turned
into light-sensitive neurons.

A discreet prosthetic in front of the patient's eyes would
capture images with a camera and process the information.
It would then stimulate ganglion cells by outputting a series
of bright, intense light spots to them.

Even though the patient's ganglion cells will be altered so
that they can detect light on their own, their retina will
still need an external prosthetic. The cells will require a
certain wavelength and intensity of light that needs to be
controlled. The prosthetic will also use retinal algorithms
to replace the visual processing lost in the diseased retinal
tissue.

'So essentially we've put all the engineering outside the eye,
and the device will attempt to talk to the retinal ganglion
cells through optical communication,' said Hankins.

Until now, researchers have tried to develop retinal
prosthetics that would be implanted inside patients' eyes,
but this technique has encountered many technical challenges.

The implanted devices would be designed to electrically
stimulate the ganglion cells, but it is difficult to provide
the amount of power needed to do this effectively.

'Devices in the eye with eight electrodes would provide some
visual sensation but not real vision,' said Hankins. 'You'd
need hundreds of electrodes to provide real vision, and it
would be difficult to incorporate that amount of electrodes
in an implanted device.'

The power-consumption issue is easier to handle outside the
eye. Hankins suggested that the vision glasses could be
connected to a battery pack the size of an iPod that could
be charged overnight.

Power consumption is not the only concern, said Hankins — the
idea of implanting a silicon chip inside a person's eye is
also problematic.

The only invasive part of Hankins' technique is the gene
therapy required to change a patient's ganglion cells into
light-sensitive neurons. The approach here is likely to use a
vector (energy carrier) to inject genetic information into the
eye.

'Gene therapy has been used successfully to make cells express
proteins that they don't normally express,' he said.

Hankins cautions that human trials for this technique are
still many years away. First, the researchers will test their
devices with ganglion cells grown in a Petri dish.

But it is likely Hankins' external retinal prosthetic device
will be a reality sooner than other implantable retinal
prosthetics being developed. 'With implantable devices, there
are intractable engineering problems,' he said. 'The kind of
engineering we're talking about with our device is not science
fiction. We can build that device relatively quickly. The
problem now is with the biology — can we make the neurons
light-sensitive?'

Hankins said he is encouraged by the progress of technology in
that area. 'At the same time our project is moving along, the
light simulation technology is advancing,' he said. 'We want
to use the advances in generating light-sensitive neurons
together with the prosthetic approaches. Then we will be able
to bring this whole thing together at an appropriate stage.'

The opto-bionic approach to restore vision is being assisted
by the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics and a £350,000
EPSRC grant.

Source URL:
www.theengineer.co.uk/Articles/304195/Seeing+the+light.htm

[Ms. Kathy]

Whiskers help rodents 'see' in the dark
Source link: www.iol.co.za:80/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=31&art_id=nw20080229004455764C770148&newslett=1&em=169772a1a20080229ah
By Julie Steenhuysen

Chicago - Tiny twitches of their whiskers allow rats to "see" in the dark, helping them to find their way home or back to a particularly savory garbage pile.

Now, after years of trying, United States researchers said on Wednesday they have caught the whole thing on film, allowing them finally to understand what the rat whiskers are telling the brain.

"There is a huge amount of work but nobody really has understood what it is they are actually seeing with their whiskers," said Christopher Moore, a neuroscientist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston, whose study appears in the journal Neuron.

"For a rodent, this is the Mercedes-Benz of high-performance sensory pathways," Moore said in a telephone interview. "They can detect things with their whiskers that we can't see."

Because these tiny whisker flicks are so rapid, researchers have been unable to isolate the micro-motions that allow rats to find their way in the dark.

Jason Ritt, a researcher in Moore's lab, has been working on the problem since 2003. He painstakingly developed a high-speed video system that captures whisker movements at a rate of 3 200 frames per second, or about 100 times faster than a home video.

Ritt and colleagues then had to figure out how to get the rats to perform on camera. Some of the rats were trained to sweep their whiskers against a smooth surface. Others went to a rough surface. They got a sip of chocolate milk if they hit their mark.

When the researchers slowed down the video and analyzed it, they were astonished at just how finely tuned these whisker motions were. "We had no idea," Moore said.

He said the motions rats make when they touch something are up to 10 times faster than researchers had assumed. "The richness of what they are perceiving with their whiskers is far more complex than we ever would have thought."

Moore said the rat whisker system works much like the visual system in humans. "It has more kinship with the human visual system than it does with the rodent visual system," he said.

Moore said this new understanding should help guide researchers studying the brain, who often use the rat for studies that cannot be done on humans.

For example, Moore hopes to study a type of brain cell called the interneuron, which he said is fundamental to the rat's whisker system. "That same type of interneuron is exactly the one thing that is damaged in schizophrenia," he said.

Knowing how this neuron works may help researchers understand what is missing in the schizophrenic brain, he said.



Published on the Web by IOL on 2008-02-29 00:44:55

[Ms. Kathy]

Robotic Pen Guides the Hand of the Blind.

4 April 2008, NewScientist.com news service,
by Duncan Graham-Rowe.

Most people take signing their name for granted, but for
the visually impaired it can be a difficult task to
master. Now a "force-feedback" pen has been developed to
help blind and visually impaired children write clearly
and consistently by gently guiding their hand.

The system uses an off-the-shelf "haptic" device called
the Phantom Omni - a stylus mounted at the end of a
motorised arm capable of moving, and resisting movement,
in three dimensions.

Stephen Brewster at the University of Glasgow and
colleagues tested the system - dubbed McSig - on eight
visually impaired children, three partially sighted, and
five completely blind, under the guidance of a teacher.

In the experiments, a teacher first wrote a letter on a
touch-sensitive computer screen using a normal pen. The
motion required to produce this letter was then re-
enacted by the Phantom while the pupil held the stylus,
giving them a sense of how to move a pen to produce the
letter.

In addition to haptic feedback, the system offers audio
cues, with stereo sound panning to the left and right as
the pen moved horizontally and the pitch increasing and
decreasing with forward and backwards movement.

3D stencils.

Pupils practiced writing, moving the pen and feeling
resistance whenever their movement steered off course.
Finally they tried writing with a regular pen on a
plastic film known as Dutch drawing paper, which creates
an imprint that can be felt after writing.

Many of the students involved were unable to write at all
before the training, but after 20-minute practice
sessions on the haptic device they were able to write
recognisable letters. The plan now is to carry out longer
term trials.

"Even though we don't write cheques any more, it is
surprising how often you are asked to sign and date a
form," says Sile O'Modhrain a haptics expert at Queen's
University Belfast in Ireland, who was not involved with
the work and is herself visually impaired .

"Besides, there is something quite demeaning about having
to ask someone to sign something on your behalf and
thereby become a proxy for you," she adds.

"The nice thing about our tool is the teacher can create
stencils so the kids can practice any time," says
Brewster. Although the Phantom device is quite costly,
the same software could work with cheaper models costing
about £100 ($200).

The results were presented at the 26th Computer and Human
Interaction conference in Florence, Italy, in April.

Source URL:
technology.newscientist.com/article/dn13594-robotic-pen-guides-the-hand-of-the-blind.html

[Ms. Kathy]

Funds alone holding us back: bionic eye team.

Richard Macey, April 23, 2008.

ONLY a lack of money has kept Australia from leading the
world in the race to develop a bionic eye, researchers
say.

Surgeons in Britain had fitted "bionic eyes" to two men
to partially restore their eyesight, it was announced
yesterday.

The artificial retinas were fitted at a London hospital.
Both men had been completely blind, but will now be able
to walk unaided and identify simple objects. If the trial
is successful, the retinas could be approved for general
use within three years.

The men are among 15 patients given the artificial
retinas, designed by the US company Second Sight, as part
of a three-year trial in the US, Mexico and Europe.

Australian researchers, working for a decade on
shoestring budgets, have already successfully implanted
locally developed bionic eyes into animals.

Nigel Lovell, a biomedical engineering professor at the
University of NSW, said that although the first
experimental implants in humans were still two years
away, the Australian technology was significantly more
advanced than the overseas competition.

"We have everything in place [for human trials],"
Professor Lovell said. However, the timing was "totally
dependent on funding".

Professor Lovell said the Australian team had received
just $1 million in research funding over the past decade.

The US and Australian designs use tiny cameras mounted on
glasses to beam images to arrays of electrodes implanted
at the back of the eye. The electrodes stimulate retina
tissue, sending signals down the optic nerve, allowing
patients to see light.

Limited by funding, the Australian team has focused on
advancing the science, rather than developing a
commercial device. While Second Sight's latest device
employs 60 electrodes, the Australian technology has 98.
"It has the potential for more resolution," Professor
Lovell said.

Source URL:
www.smh.com.au/news/science/funds-alone-holding-us-back-bionic-eye-team/2008/04/22/1208742940215.html

[Ms. Kathy]

The Blind Can See
By William Comeau
Source Link: dalnews.dal.ca/2008/04/28/blind.html

They may just have to update the famous nursery rhyme,
"Three blind mice."

When Gautam Awatramani took time off to visit friend
Botond Roska at his newly established lab in Switzerland,
he never thought he’d be part of a scientific
breakthrough: restoring sight in mice with ever-worsening
eye diseases.

A year later, the work of Dr. Awatramani and his
colleagues has been published in the prestigious science
journal Nature Neuroscience. Dr. Awatramani and other
neuroscientists developed a strategy to restore visual
functions in mice with retinal degenerative diseases, a
major advancement in retinal disease research.

Dr. Awatramani, assistant professor in the Department of
Anatomy and Neurobiology at Dalhousie University, says
the opportunity caught him by surprise: “I had been doing
brain research at UBC and was going to take a year off
before coming to Dalhousie,” he says. “When I arrived at
Botond’s lab, I realized we could do something really
important. It was fascinating.”

Retinal degeneration is a leading cause of blindness in
humans and this research is a major step in visual
function restoration. The disease results in the complete
loss of photoreceptors that enable vision, thus causing
blindness.

Dr. Awatramani, Pamela Lagali and David Balya worked with
teams of researchers led by Dr. Roska at the Friedrich
Miescher Institute in Switzerland and Constance Cepko of
Harvard Medical School.

“It was an international collaborative effort between
scientists with a range of expertise,” says Dr.
Awatramani. The researchers successfully restored visual
functions in mice with retinal degeneration disease, and
while not as good as normal mice, the blind mice
responded to light whereas before treatment, they didn’t.

“It’s the first time a rescue of visual function with
this strategy has been accomplished.”
The process uses two types of bipolar cells in the
retina, ON bipolar and OFF bipolar cells. ON cells are
affected by illumination and OFF cells by dimming. Their
strategy expresses Channelrhodopsin, a novel, light-
activated molecule found in green algae, into targeted ON
cells creating artificial photoreceptors. This approach
differs from current methods being developed in the US
and Germany, that non-selectively stimulate output
ganglion cells with miniature electrode implants, in
attempts to mimic effects of light.

“The retina isn’t a simple screen that detects visual
images and sends them to the brain. It’s a complex
multiprocessing unit and visual information is largely
decomposed into different features when it reaches the
ganglion cells,” says Dr. Awatramani. “We developed a
strategy expressing the molecule channelrhodopsin in
bipolar cells that normally lie downstream from
photoreceptors, thus allowing the remnant retinal
circuits to perform their normal extractions.”

The breakthrough has created a buzz in the neuroscience
and ophthalmology community. “This may be the technology
that brings the breakthrough for prosthetic devices for
restoration of vision,” says Steve Barnes, director of
the Dalhousie Neuroscience Institute. “It may be possible
to duplicate what the complex circuitry of the retina
does for our vision, but without photoreceptors.”

“That one can target a specific cell type in the retina
and make it light sensitive is a marvelous achievement,”
says John Dowling, professor of Neuroscience at Harvard.
“Nature Neuroscience is a top journal and there will be
much interest from the vision and ophthalmic research
community.”

While the solution for complete recovery of vision hasn’t
been discovered, Dr. Awatramani believes this work will
lead to a breakthrough. Human clinical trials, headed by
leading European ophthalmologist Jose Sahel, will take
place in Paris with the hope of restoring visual function
in human retinal degenerative diseases.

Dr. Awatramani will continue research at Dalhousie’s
Retina and Optic Nerve Research laboratory and
collaborate with Dr. Roska in Switzerland. He’ll also
work with pioneering genetic engineer Raj Awatramani at
Northwestern University in Chicago.

The next steps include targeting OFF bipolar cells to
restore greater visual function in both the brightening
and dimming circuits: “We’re only at the beginning.
There’s still much research to be done,” he notes.

[Ms. Kathy]

Neuropsychology: The blind can walk thanks to an eye on the tongue
Source Link: nouvelles.umontreal.ca/content/view/768/260/

'The only limits with this device are the ones set by the researcher': Daniel Chebat
“It’s the first time I make my way across a cluttered course of several meters without the help of my cane,” explains 35-year-old M.L. who has been blind since birth. He accomplished this thanks to a device mounted on his tongue, which creates a mental image of the space around him.

In a video recorded by Daniel Chebat, PhD student in experimental neuropsychology at the Université de Montréal School of Optometry, M.L. is seen making his way down a hallway while avoiding a block on his left, a pipe on his right and the low wall by his feet. This is possible thanks to a camera mounted on his glasses which transmits images to a 144-pixel unit on his tongue.

The Tongue Display Unit (TDU) was tested for the first time in the summer of 2006 on a 14-meter course in Montreal. It proved to be remarkably efficient. “The 15 blind people from birth we tested showed extraordinary ability after just a few hours of training,” explains the 28-year-old Chebat. M.L., an engineer himself, said he looked forward to having a similar device, while other test subjects added that such a device could eventually replace their white cane.

Chebat explains that this is not about making the blind see. The vision of the blind is not modified by the TDU and remains at approximately 1/90. But the TDU allows them to recognize simple shapes in their surrounding environment thanks to the electrical charges transmitted on their taste buds.

“We are doing basic research and our experiment confirms what we intended to demonstrate regarding the activation of the visual cortex. It’s fascinating: the brain of the blind processes the data coming from the TDU as if it were visual data,” explains Chebat who works under the supervision of Professor Maurice Ptito who is well known for his work on neuronal plasticity.

The device used for this experiment was developed by Professor Paul Bach-y Rita of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and it quickly interested Professor Ptito. The success Ptito obtained won him international acclaim as well as substantial funding.

Ptito is the recipient of the Colonel Harland Sanders Chair in Vision Sciences. The funding allowed him to set up research labs and to build testing courses at the School of Optometry in Montreal and at the Hvidovre University Hospital in Denmark where teams of four people work under his supervision.

Chebat is currently leading three research projects in Canada and Denmark, which will eventually be the focus of scientific articles. The project in which M.L. participated is about to be published while the two other projects are still at the experimental stage.

In the second project, he wants to explore the sensory acuity of the blind within the confines of a complex course made up of five corridors. The third project, intends to immerse users of the TDU in a video game. The test subject will be asked to maneuver inside a virtual environment transmitted onto his taste buds while a scanner observes his brain.

The observation of the brain during use of the TDU has yet to be done. “The only limits with this device are the ones set by the researcher,” says Chebat who is thrilled by the development of his research.

Researcher:
Daniel Chebat

E-mail:
[e-mail]

Telephone:
514 343-6111, extension 4532

[Ms. Kathy]

Blindness gene cure
Updated: 07:24, Monday May 12, 2008
Source Link: www.skynews.com.au/health/article.aspx?id=233691
There has been a major breakthrough in gene technology, after the vision of blind patients was partially restored.

Husband and wife doctors, Jean Bennett and Al Maguire have found that by repairing the bad gene that causes blindness, eyesight was able to be repaired.

It works by inserting a good gene into the back of the eye and allowing it to find its own root.

The couple have successfully corrected the blindness of dogs and are now starting to begin their testing on humans.

They have performed two operations which, so far, appear to be successful.

'We were worried that there would be too much scar tissue in the retina to deliver the material to the correct spot,' said Jean Bennett about her concerns over the operations.

However, scientists say the breakthrough in gene therapy may open the door for other treatments for over 140 forms of genetic blindness.