![]() ![]() ![]() A major limitation of animal experiments is that unlike in humans we cannot get answers about their visual experiences during ultrasound stimulation of the eye. “It still needs to be figured out how exactly the mechanical pressure activated retinal neurons”Īccording to the university, the study is now at an earlier stage of developing a device to conduct human experiments. “We know that ultrasound can generate well-controlled mechanical pressure, the acoustic radiation force, and it could be utilized to active neurons,” said Gengxi Lu, one of Zhou's PhD students who recently presented the results of the research at a conference of the Acoustical Society of America in Seattle. “The challenge remains to enable ultrasound elicited visual perception so that it can provide useful vision for the blind,” said Humayun, who is a pioneer in the field of retinal prosthesis. For a comparable experience, anyone can feel light phosphenes by rubbing your eyes or by gently pushing your eyeballs while the eyes are closed. The mechanical pressure by sound can activate neurons in the eye and send signals to the brain. This approach made it possible to activate small groups of neurons in the blind rat’s eye, just like light signals can activate a normal eye. These high-frequency sounds can be well-manipulated and can be focused on a desired area of the eye. According to the university, to see if this approach could work, investigators stimulated the rat’s eyes with ultrasound waves, sound with a frequency far above what a human can hear. The study, published in BME Frontiers, 1 was funded by National Eye Institute. “Special glasses with a camera and an ultrasound transducer are intended to give blind and partially sighted people a new view of the world.” “This is a step towards a non-invasive retinal prosthesis that works without invasive eye surgeries,” Zhou said in a university news release. Humayun, MD, PhD, a professor of Ophthalmology and Biomedical Engineering and one of the inventors of Argus II, at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles (UCLA). Retinal degenerative diseases that are caused by progressive degeneration of the light-sensitive photoreceptors in the retina reman among the major causes of vision loss and blindness, affecting tens of millions of people worldwide.Īlthough the rods and cones which are the light-sensitive cells of the retina have completely degenerated, the neural circuitries connected to the brain are mostly well preserved providing the opportunity to restore vision by directly stimulating the retinal neurons.Ī new solution based on activating these neurons by ultrasound has been achieved by a research group led by Qifa Zhou, PhD, a professor of Biomedical Engineering and Ophthalmology, and Mark S. ![]()
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