Some call her the bionic woman. Others call her a medical miracle. But Cheri Robertson has given herself another title:
“I just call myself the robo-chick.”
Robertson is blind, but this device allows her to see, not with her eyes but with her brain! Fifteen years ago, she lost both of her eyes in a car accident. She was just 19 years old.
[…]
Neurosurgeon Kenneth Smith, M.D., of Saint Louis University School of Medicine, said the procedure is the first to reverse blindness in patients without eyes. “They are really seeing. The brain is getting impulses just like when you and I see.”
A camera on the tip of Robertson’s glasses sends signals to a computer that’s strapped around her waist. The computer then stimulates electrodes in the brain through a cord that attaches to the head. Patients see flashes of light and outlines of objects.
I wonder what could power it?
(via slashdot)
