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A rival to Neuralink has just announced a revolutionary chip that promises to restore vision to elderly patients. This new technology allows people to see again and even read text, offering a groundbreaking solution for those who have lost their vision over time.
The idea of restoring vision in elderly patients using chips, prostheses and bionic implants arose well before the Neuralink and their brain implants. However, while Elon Musk's company is still in its infancy to launch a chip that can restore vision, after the approval of the “blindsight”, a rival of Neuralink announced the first restoration of vision in blind patients.
Startup is the second largest biotechnology company of the world
Neuralink's rival company is Science Corp, a biotechnology startup owned by Max Hodak, who founded Neuralink in 2016 alongside ElonMusk. Hodak founded Science Corp in 2021 with the aim of developing a device to restore vision, the Science Eye.
On the 21st, a month after Neuralink received approval for its system, the rival announced that it had managed to restore vision in elderly legally blind patients with central vision loss. The patients received the implants PRIMA retina and were able to read books and recognize faces.
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According to the CEO of Neuralink's rival, as far as we know, this is the first eye restoration that enables fluent reading ability in blind patients. As of 2022, the startup is already the second largest biotech company in terms of funding.
This contribution allowed the company to purchase, in April of this year, the patent and all assets related to the implant. PRIMA retina, from Pixium Vision. The concept of the chip that can restore vision in elderly patients, in the context of visual prosthesis, is a type of bionic system that uses photovoltaic technology to transform light into electrical signals.
Understand how the chip that can restore vision in elderly patients works
Developed in 2012 and with the first clinical trials in 2018, the chip that could restore vision in elderly patients is a chip that doctors implant below the retina. PRIMA is paired with a pair of special glasses with a built-in camera that projects visual data onto the chip via invisible near-infrared light.
In this way, when the near-infrared streams hit the chip's photovoltaic arrays, they energize the device and convert the transmitted data into electrical signals. These electrical signals, in turn, stimulate neurons in the retina that restore vision.
However, it is important to note that the Science Corp clinical trial performed implants on 38 patients with geographic atrophy. This condition is one of the final stages of age-related vision degeneration, meaning the patients were not completely blind. Thus, what the implant from Neuralink's rival achieved was to significantly restore visual acuity in patients with central vision affected by geographic atrophy.
Tested patients were able to read texts
According to the company, the chip that can restore vision in elderly patients has resulted in patients showing better results in reading short texts. For Neuralink's rival, the future of implants is promising for restoring central vision.
Although the implants do not restore vision to blind people, it is already a step forward in restoring central vision, but it does not show images in color. Furthermore, the study does not detail whether patients needed to use the zoom function to read the texts or how many times they used it.
It is worth mentioning that, recently, the billionaire Elon Musk stated that Neuralink should prioritize the development of a brain implant aimed at relieving back and neck pain.
The company is known for developing Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCIs), which can be implanted in the human brain for the purpose of treating and monitoring health conditions.
