While people complained about Elon Musk because he supports Donald Trump, he was quietly curing blindness. His Neuralink Blindsight will help blind people see, even people who have never seen before. It doesn’t rely on the optic nerve or eyes.
Elon Musk envisions Blindsight enabling superhuman vision beyond natural limits, like infrared.
Vision becomes a cognitive process, not just biological, with tech expanding perception’s possibilities.
Neuralink’s latest endeavor, the Blindsight implant, is designed to restore vision in individuals who have lost it, even those without functioning optic nerves.
Blindsight is a brain-computer interface (BCI) device, or a chip, surgically implanted in the brain, that will enable those who are blind to see. It will only work for those who have suffered damage to their optic nerve, but not the visual cortex of the brain which processes imagery and input from the eyes.
The device will enable the transmission of signals by bypassing the optic nerve and directly stimulating the visual cortex of the brain to make imagery visible to those without eyesight.
It redefines eyesight itself.
Musk explained, “The Blindsight device from Neuralink will enable even those who have lost both eyes and their optic nerve to see. Provided the visual cortex is intact, it will even enable those who have been blind from birth to see for the first time.” But here’s the part that truly expands the horizon of what we think vision can be: “At first, the vision will be low resolution, like Atari graphics, but eventually it has the potential to be better than natural vision and enable you to see in infrared, ultraviolet, or even radar wavelengths, like Geordi La Forge.”
The FDA has labeled it a “breakthrough device.” That designation brings it one step closer to consumers.
Musk has overseen the second patient to receive the implant and so far it is very successful.
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