Vision Restoration Through the use of Gene Therapy essays

Vision Restoration Through the use of Gene Therapy essays Vision Restoration and its Advances Using Gene Therapy Blindness has yet to be cured, and throughout the years many different experiments and theories have been made and tested. Our technological advances dealing with vision restoration have varied through the years, and especially as we go off into the distant future different theories are created, and the cure for blindness seems to come closer within our grasp. Three years ago scientists went about trying to restore vision using electronic devices which was a new concept for many. This device called for a way of stimulating the neurons in the retina that were still left from various patients who were blind from end-stage photoreceptor deteriorating diseases like the common RP (retina pigmentosa) along with AMD (age-related macular degeneration). It was founded that before death, RP eyes that have slight or absolutely no light perception sight just had a small percentage of 4% or less of the nuclei left in the outer nuclear layer while the ganglion cell layer had 30% and inner layer 80% of its nuclei. Because of this partial degeneration, the retinal implant could stimulate electrically the retinal neurons that are still left and give functional sight (Humayun et al., 2569) The components of this device consisted of a camera, and an image-processing chip, which would be carefully mounted on an eyeglass frame. The way in which it would work is that the mechanism would take and transform a view through as persons eyes into pixels (tiny dots). From there the data would be made into a frequency signal and sent to a retinal microchip that was implanted in the eye. The frequency sent would then be converted by the retinal chip to form a pattern of tiny electrical currents that would be put through a two dimensional grid of electrodes that are placed near each other over the retina. Hence every electrode site would excite the primary neurons, which in effect crea...