Stimulating Vision Artificially
From: IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Magazine - Volume 19, Number 4
July / August 2000 - page 126

More than a dozen European labs and firms are involved in an experiment
directed by the University of Louvain to stimulate vision artificially in a
patient suffering from blindness. As opposed to the recently well-publicized
American project of the same nature, the European team has decided to work
outside the limelight, and the patient`s anonymity remains complete.
Somewhere in Belgium a totally blind woman, but not from birth (so that the
interpretation of visual signals has already been learned), and whose optic
nerve has remained in good shape, was fitted with a video camera built into a
pair of glasses and connected to a fannypack computer, which is in turn wired
to electrodes attached to her optical nerve. A subcutaneous receiving antenna
will soon replace the uncomfort able wire. Meanwhile, she has recovered the
ability to distinguish shapes, and hopes are that she will acquire enough
perception to permit full mobility. Several more projects of similar type are
planned for the months to come (Liberation, April 30, p. 22, Denis Delbecq). 

(Excerpted with permission from FAST #169, by Timothy Carlson,
http://www.france-science.org/fast. FAST is a free review of mainstream
French press on issues of science and technology.)