Optic nerve stimulation to aid the blind

Weekly Nerve system

New technology is being developed for visually impaired persons by the scientists of Ecole polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland and Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna in Italy. It skips around the eyeball and transfers messages in the brain so they could see visions of light of the real world.
This new technology is called OpticSELINI. It works by stimulating the optic nerve with a new type of intraneural electrode. This means that it records or stimulates contact located within the epineurium sheath of a peripheral So far it has been successfully tested on rabbits.
It is estimated that 39 million people around the world are visually impaired.
The patients sense light in the form of white patterns, without seeing the light directly.
Back in 1990s EPFL tried to perfect it but the results were inconclusive. The problem was that the electrodes are rigid and they move around, so the stimulation of the nerve fibres becomes unstable

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