Visual Prostheses and the Retinal Implant Project :: Biology Essays Research Papers

Visual Prostheses and the Retinal Implant depictVisual percepts are the final harvest-time of a rich interplay of stimulant drug processing that occurs without the intervention of ones consciousness. While this is a fascinating issue to consider, peculiarly as it pertains to the philosophical and practical definitions of ideas like the self, the converse is equally fire to me. In this modern era of exploding technological ingenuity, the sum of which is a product of the conscious brain, increasingly more opportunities exist for the brain to design the commentary it receives. One method by which this occurs is observable in the treatment of optic pathologies. A development of particular interest to me is the use of visual prosthetic guiles in the treatment of some forms of progressive blindness. Research in this realm raises numerous conflicts within the realm of bioengineering, but promises, at least, to challenge the boundaries of electric current microtechnology and instig ate further integration of the rapidly expanding fields of electronics and medicine. In 1988, a multidisciplinary research team called the Retinal Implant Project, spanning the knowledge bases of Harvard Medical School, the mama Eye and Ear Infirmary, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technologys Department of Electrical engineer and Computer Science, was formed with the explicit goal of creating an intraocular retinene prosthetic device to combat the effects of certain types of progressive blindness (4). The prostheses are intend to stimulate retinal ganglion cells whose associated photoreceptor cells have fallen victim to degradation by macular degeneration or retinitis pigmentosa, two currently incurable but widespread conditions (2). Their most recent work has been to orchestrate short-term clinical trials in which blind volunteers receive a temporary intraocular prosthetic implant and abide a series of tests to determine the quality of visual percepts experienced everywh ere a two- to three-hour period (2). The leaders of the Retinal Implant Project, while importunate about their progress, do not anticipate the realization of a feasible prosthetic within the next five years (2). The goal of retinal prosthetic proposed by the collaborators is to bypass degenerate photoreceptors by providing electrical stimulant drug directly to the underlying ganglion cells (2,3,4,5). The ganglion cell axons compose the optic nerve, which travels from the eye and terminates in various regions of the brain, where the combined input is processed along multiple routes and lastly results in the experience of sight (4). Ganglion cell excitation will be accomplished by attaching a two-silicon-microchip system onto the surface of the retina, which will be powered by a specially designed laser attach on a pair of glasses worn by the tolerant (4,5).