Neuralink Rival Claims Its Optical Implant Has Restored Sight To Blind People

One of these, called Argus II, was approved for commercial use in Europe in 2011 and in the US in 2013. That implant involved larger electrodes placed over the retina. Its manufacturer, Second Sight, stopped producing the device in 2020 due to financial problems. Neuralink and others, on the other hand, aim to bypass the eye entirely and stimulate the brain’s visual cortex instead.

Hodak says that Prima differs from other retinal tumors in its ability to provide “form vision,” or the perception of shapes, patterns, and other visual features of objects. What users see is not the “normal” view, however. For one, they are color blind. Instead, they see a processed image with a yellow tint.

The trial enrolled people with geographic atrophy, an advanced form of age-related macular degeneration, or AMD, which causes gradual loss of central vision. People with this condition can still see their surroundings but have blind spots in their central vision, making it difficult to read, recognize faces, or see in low light.

In AMD, special cells called photoreceptors are damaged over time. Located behind the retina, photoreceptors convert light into signals that are sent to the brain. The photoreceptors are lost but the retina is largely preserved. In our method, the implant replaces the photoreceptors,” said Daniel Palanker, professor of ophthalmology at Stanford University, who invented the Prima implant.