There’s a new breakthrough device implant from Neuralink to benefit blind people all over the world, in other words, finally here is a big hope for blind people to make use of their sights once more.
The United States of America Food and Drug Administration, FDA, had on Tuesday September 10, 2024, granted “breakthrough device” status to Elon Musk’s Neuralink’s experimental vision-restoring implant, Blindsight.
Meanwhile, this designation aims to speed up the development and review of innovative medical devices that address severe conditions, according to reports. This is said to have the capacity that will even enable people who have been blind from birth to see for the first time in their lives.
According to the statement released on this great innovation, the Blindsight device from Neuralink will enable even those who have lost both eyes and their optic nerve to fully regain their sights. But this is possible provided the visual cortex is still intact.
According to a statement released by Elon Musk via his official X account, “to set expectations correctly, the vision will be at first be low resolution, like Atari graphics, but eventually it has the potential be better than natural vision and enable you to see in infrared, ultraviolet or even radar wavelengths, like Geordi La Forge. Much appreciated, @US_FDA“.
Meanwhile, Elon Musk further described the initial vision quality “as being akin to early video game graphics, but suggested that future advancements could lead to vision that surpasses natural sight, including the ability to perceive infrared, ultraviolet, or radar wavelengths“.
But the device has not been given a greenlight for it to be tested on humans, while the company has equally not provided a tine frame for when the human trials will begin, and expectedly, it is still subject to approval from FDA.
Worthy of mentioning is that the vision-restoring implant, Neuralink is equally carrying out a test of another device aimed at helping paralyzed individuals control digital devices using only their thoughts. Meanwhile, the device has reportedly been implanted in a patient earlier this year, and the patient has since used it to play video games and design 3D objects.
