Gennaris tested on sheep
The Gennaris bionic vision system is ready for human testing
Stepan Ikaev, Hi-tech+
Scientists from Monash University has spent more than 10 years developing the first device that restores vision to completely blind people using implantable electrodes, a small camera and a video processor. The Gennaris system has successfully proven its effectiveness in preclinical tests on sheep and is gradually approaching the first tests on humans, according to the press release of Opening eyes to a frontier in vision restoration.
Article by Rosenfeld et al. Tissue response to a chronically implantable wireless intracortical visual prosthesis (Gennaris array) is published in the Journal of Neural Engineering – VM.
The device looks like a small headdress with built-in glasses and can become a direct competitor to the Neuralink technology developed by Elon Musk's company.
Gennaris bypasses the damaged optic nerves and transmits the information collected by the camera and analyzed by the video processor unit through the air into a set of square implants with very thin electrodes that are inserted directly into the brain. Implants (they are 9×9 mm in size) convert images into electrical impulses that are transmitted to brain neurons through microelectrodes.
As a result, the system should allow people who have lost their sight to "see" the world around them, distinguish objects, bypass obstacles, recognize people, etc. This will be a specific vision consisting of a maximum of 172 light spots, but experiments on sheep have shown that this is quite enough to effectively interact with the outside world.
At the same time, Gennaris can be used not only as a means of combating blindness, but also to solve more complex problems related to the brain – scientists promise to use the system in the treatment of paralysis, Parkinson's disease and quadriplegia. As for more primitive tasks, Gennaris is already able to broadcast music directly to the brain, which Musk dreams of as part of his Neuralink project.
During the initial studies, the authors of Gennaris implanted 10 matrices (seven active and three passive) to three sheep and observed the behavior of the animals for 2.7 thousand hours of stimulation. Observations revealed no side effects and adverse health effects, and the system functioned stably. It is important to note that animal testing is very different from studying the effects of technology on humans. Therefore, before Gennaris is implanted in the first patients with vision loss, the Australian regulator must approve its clinical trials.
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