Gennaris (a brain implant for return of sight)

2020: Start of clinical trials of a brain implant of Gennaris which returns sight to blind people

At the end of September, 2020 in Australia clinical trials of a brain implant which can return sight to blind people partly began. The Gennaris system developed in Monash University in Melbourne influences directly a visual cerebral cortex to transfer images from the camera.

The wireless implant is located on the surface of a brain and can generate the impulses perceived by the person as 172 different bright spots. Generating this phosphene in the correct order, a system can transfer to the blind person elementary visual information on the objects which are before it. The Gennaris system can be used at a set of damages of an eyeball and optic nerve.

Clinical trials of a brain implant of Gennaris which returns sight to blind people begin

New implants are quite small and can be used without threat of an infection for a long time. Though a system is developed especially for recovery of sight, the same technology can be used for treatment of paralysis, allowing to tie the affected extremities directly with a brain bypassing invalid nerves.

The existing prototype includes points with the camera, hardware and the software for image processing, the wireless transmitter and an implant which consists of tiles of 9 × 9 millimeters in size. This technology was already tested on sheep with positive results. During the research animals passed more than 2700 hours of visual stimulation without any noticeable ghost effects.

Results of a research show that long-term stimulation using wireless arrays can be reached without the expressed damage of fabrics and also without the visible behavioural problems or spasms resulting from stimulation, - the head of a research Jeffrey Rosenfeld noted.[1]

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