Researchers use neural implant to restore sight to monkey

The Russia has invested heavily in the program ELVIS (Electronic VISion), which consists of creating technologies to restore sight to people who were blind from birth or who became so after an accident, illness, etc. And if we are to believe a recent publication, the Sensor-Tech Lab has achieved a conclusive and spectacular result by managing to partially recover the sight of a monkey (a male baboon). The technology used consists of a camera placed on the patient’s head (therefore the monkey’s head), the images captured by the camera then being transferred to a neural implant (located therefore in the monkey’s brain).

Sensor-Tech Lab team places neural implant in monkey brain

Note that the images from the camera are transferred to the implant in the form of waves. The results obtained would already be very promising since the baboon would indeed have partially recovered his sight. The Sensor-Tech Lab hopes to improve the device in order to obtain a level of recovered vision very close to that of a person without sight problems, i.e. before 2024 and the start of the first clinical tests on humans. In the long term, the whole device should cost at least 70,000 dollars, but the Russian government is already planning to set up financial aid for those interested.