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Sep 17, 2009 | 9
A 60-year-old Mississippi woman who had been blind for nine years can now see again after doctors implanted one of her teeth into her eye—the first time the surgery had been performed in the U.S. Two weeks after several sessions of intensive surgery, she now has 20/70 vision in one of her eyes, which is predicted to continue improving as it heals.
In 2000, Sharon Thornton was diagnosed with Stevens-Johnson syndrome, a rare disease that can destroy skin—and corneal—cells. Even after she recovered from the disease, brought on by a reaction to her medication, her corneas—the surface of the eye—were too scarred to allow her to see, or obtain a transplant.
After stem cell treatment in 2003 failed to restore her vision, doctors went looking for alternatives. Victor Perez, an associate professor of ophthalmology at the University of Miami Bascom Palmer Eye Institute, decided to attempt modified osteo-odonto keratoprosthesis (MOOKP), what he called a procedure "of last resort," in a prepared statement.
Mar 4, 2009 | 8
When vision fails, it's often the result of damage to the eye caused by an injury or degenerative disease. In an attempt to restore such vision loss, researchers for more than a decade have been working to develop an optical prosthetic that can restore sight by delivering images directly to the brain. And it appears they succeeded. The BBC reports that a 73-year-old man identified only as Ron, who received an optical implant at Moorefields Eye Center in London last summer, can see again for the first time in 30 years.
The BBC hails the Argus II prosthetic—made by Second Sight Medical Products, Inc., in Sylmar, Calif.—as a "bionic eye," although it's actually a wireless communication system implanted in the damaged eye that captures images and relays them to the brain.
Oct 27, 2008 | 2
Flummoxed by those wrong "out" calls tennis referees make? Blame it on the brain's sluggish visual-processing system: It makes the ump — and all humans — likely to perceive moving objects as farther along in their trajectory than they actually are, a new study says.
The glitch produces a visual illusion that makes refs' erroneous calls overwhelmingly more likely to be on balls they call "out" than on ones they judge as "in," according to new research in today's Current Biology. Because the brain is constantly playing catch up with visual reality, it can become particularly taxed in situations in which an object is moving extremely quickly or unpredictably; in the case of a bouncing tennis ball, the brain may perceive it as landing beyond where it actually did.
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