The News
Study a ray of hope in restoring lost sight
By Randolph E. Schmid The Associated Press
Article Last Updated: 04/23/2007 11:56:43 PM MDT
Washington - Electrodes inserted in the brain may point the way to restoring sight lost to eye disease or trauma.
The research in monkeys is in very early stages but has shown some promise, Harvard Medical School researchers report in today's issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
While researchers have worked on developing implants for the eye's retina, John S. Pezaris and R. Clay Reid turned their attention to a portion of the thalamus that relays signals from the retina to the visual cortex.
They were able to get the brains of the monkeys to register a point of light by sending a signal down the electrodes - even though no actual light was visible, Pezaris said. "We don't know what it looked like because we can't really ask them," he said. "But there definitely was something."

The Research
Read the research behind this story in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.