Three blind mice? No longer, say two researchers in the Institute for Computational Biomedicine at Weill Cornell Cornell Medical College who deciphered a mouse's retina's neural code. Then, they linked this information to a novel prosthetic device that restored sight to blind mice. In addition, they say that they have also cracked the code for a monkey retina, which is essentially identical to that of a human. They now plan to design and test a device that blind humans can use.

Current prosthetics provide blind users with spots and edges of light to help them navigate. This novel device provides the code to restore normal vision. The code is so accurate that it allows facial features to be discerned and animals are able to track moving images.

"It's an exciting time. We can make blind mouse retinas see, and we're moving as fast as we can to do the same in humans," says Dr. Sheila Nirenberg, the lead researcher and a professor in the Department of Physiology and Biophysics at the Institute. Because drug therapies help only a fraction of the 25 million people worldwide who suffer from blindness due to diseases of the retina, prosthetic devices may be their best option for future sight.

The researchers built two prosthetic systems — one with the code and one without. "Incorporating the code had a dramatic impact," Dr. Nirenberg says. "It jumped the system's performance up to near-normal levels, that is, there was enough information in the system's output to reconstruct images of faces, animals, basically anything we attempted."

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