Elon Musk wants to test brain implants in people https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/elon-musk-wants-to-test-brain-implants-in-people-180981231/ Daniel Yoshor: "I would be highly unsure of this kind of device in a patient with congenital blindness"; #Neuralink #BCI #NeuroTech
@seeingwithsound I agree that this far from use for congenitally blind. @wandell had a good point the other day about potential problem for cortical implants is that it will need some sort of compensation for movement. I presume wandell refers to the image stability that is normally achieved through VOR that prevents retinal image slip.
Also the stability of the long term electrode implants will need to be determined as well. It seems there's quite a bit of development on flexible ultra thin electrodes, which could help in the future. Certainly, more research needs to be done.
@hkl @wandell Yes, with the Dobelle and Orion I brain implants, users had to learn to minimize eye movements, cf. https://physoc.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1113/jphysiol.1974.sp010766 Some degree of compensation should be possible using an eye-tracker. Electrode longevity with newly developed thin wires remains a major uncertainty, and one cannot really do accelerated lifetime testing in vivo, so finding out takes (many) years. A V1 implant will almost certainly give very little or no vision to congenitally blind.