News for the Blind

Making a BOLD move on ice Group aims at adding activities for visually impaired kids
By GAY GRIESBACH - GM Today Staff	September 15, 2008
Kettle Moraine Ice Center general manager Craig Petersen helps Michael Diaz, 5, of Muskego line up a hockey shot while Isaac Rider of the Washington County Youth Hockey Association steadies him and Mary Rider looks on. Mary Rider helped form BOLD (Blind Leisure Outdoor Development) Kids, which is geared toward activities for children with visual impairments. Ariyana Nardi, 5, of West Bend is steadied by Kettle Moraine Ice Center General Manager Craig Petersen during a BOLD Kids skate event at the center Saturday. WEST BEND - There was more excitement on the ice than if the Stanley Cup came to town as BOLD (Blind Outdoor Leisure Development) Kids hit the ice at the Kettle Moraine Ice Center. "Come on mom, watch me," said Liz Hahn, 10, urging mom Kathy to follow her to the rink Saturday afternoon. Hahn, who lives in Sussex, skated last year with her Girl Scout troop. Although she admits that falling is a downside to gliding around the rink, she is eager to get out on the ice. "I love to go," said Michael Diaz, 5, of Muskego, who discovered the joy of skating through Isaac Rider. Rider and other members of the Washington County Youth Hockey Association served as guides, steadying new skaters who used a blue metal device similar to a walker to help them enjoy the experience and avoid falls. Ariyana Nardi, 5, of West Bend took a break for a minute in the penalty box, but was up and out again. It’s her first time skating. "I like to make a figure eight," said Nardi as she headed toward Kettle Moraine Ice Center General Manager Craig Petersen with her skating buddy, Emily Breckenridge. When he wasn’t watching figure eights, Petersen gave rudimentary hockey lessons. Petersen said he readily agreed to BOLD Kids Chairperson Mary Rider’s query about bringing the children to the rink. "I’m glad I was able to give them this opportunity," said Petersen. Diaz, fascinated by the feel of the puck, got a little stick help, slapping it into the boards. He smiled at the banging noise, ready to go again. His mom, Heidi Schludt of Muskego, stood on the sidelines, taking photos and cheering on Michael, who needed little encouragement and looked like he was having a great time on the ice. Rider said the kids division of BOLD started this year. "I realize BOLD is a phenomenal group, but it’s geared for adults. We needed something in addition," said Rider of the more child-centered activities. Schludt said Michael has been to several BOLD activities, but this is his first BOLD Kids event. "When we go to the other activities, it’s a very long day and some activities are mainly for older kids and adults," said Schludt. Rider said BOLD Kids started with a discussion with Southeastern Wisconsin Lions BOLD President Ken Sosalla. "When my daughter Peggy suddenly lost half her vision, it changed our life in a heartbeat. The object of (BOLD Kids) is to get kids to realize all their potential," said Rider. Other members of the youth group attend regular BOLD events - tandem bike riding, fishing, horseback trips and Harley rides. Rider said they are looking at holding a BOLD Kids Christmas party, a swim date and a craft event. Children up to age 12 who are visually impaired are invited to join in the BOLD Kids fun. TO CONTACT Those interested can e-mail Mary Rider at mj16@netwurx.net.

Aspen
The Bold Challenge (1979) by Jean Eymere
Since Aspen is in the heart of the Rocky Mountains, skiing is the most popular sport. This sculpture is dedicated to all the people who love to ski. Jean Eymere wrote this poem about his sculpture.

"When I ski I'm free
I feel the wind in my face
I fight the bumps with my legs
For a minute I can see again"
Do you have a sport or hobby that makes you feel the same way?
Did you know that a blind artist made this sculpture? Jean Eymere used his sense of touch rather than his sense of sight to create the marble figure holding on to the side of a mountain.

Blindness no handicap for golfer Hojnicki hits for par in Lions Club event
By MELISSA RIGNEY BAXTER - Special to GM Today	June 16, 2007
Joe Hojnicki drives from the tee box on the 10th hole Friday during the Waukesha Noon Lions Club annual golf outing at Western Lakes Golf Course. Hojnicki was born partially blind and his vision is worsening with age. Ken Sosalla, left, helps Joe Hojnicki line up his shot Friday during the Waukesha Noon Lions Club golf outing. PEWAUKEE - Joe Hojnicki reads putting greens with his feet. His guide and golf instructor, Ken Sosalla, leads him to the hole and then back again to the ball position. As Hojnicki, who is blind, slowly covers the short distance, he feels the lay of the land and predicts how the ball will break. "Sometimes he reads it better with his feet than I do with my eyes," says Sosalla, of Waukesha. Friday morning, the two golfers, along with Rick Skotzke, participated in a golf scramble event to benefit the Waukesha Noon Lions Club. Steve Nehs was chairman of the event and said it is the club’s major fund-raiser of the year, raising $12,500 in 2006. The Lions Club participates in many activities to help the blind and visually impaired. Hojnicki, of West Allis, participated for the second consecutive year. Although his vision is impaired, his golf game is not. Legally blind since 1960, Hojnicki, 53, has never had a driver’s license, but he’s participated in a myriad of sports, including track and field events, football, race walking, ski racing, swimming and, of course, golf. He’s competed in several tournaments for visually impaired golfers. "I love golf," Hojnicki said. "I’m addicted to it." Hojnicki grew up in Delaware and lost his sight at the age of 7. Despite his impairment, he said his parents let him "be a kid." He rode his bike everywhere and played golf and football in high school. "I had a normal childhood," Hojnicki said. "I just couldn’t see." After moving to Wisconsin in 1990, Hojnicki began work at the Southwest YMCA in Greenfield as a personal trainer. He works with people with disabilities such as multiple sclerosis, muscular dystrophy, spina bifida and cerebral palsy. He had believed since a child that his vision was as impaired as it ever would be due to macular degeneration, but nearly 15 years ago he learned that he was misdiagnosed and his vision will continue to get worse because of retinitis pigmentosa. Sporting dark glasses, Hojnicki looked like nearly every other golfer on the course until Sosalla came up close beside him to strategize his first shot. "I see a dark high spot," Hojnicki said. "Is it to the right or left of that?" Sosalla helped him locate the hole, and Hojnicki took a few expert practice swings and made a good shot. "Can you line mine up, too?" joked Skotzke as he placed his ball on a tee. Later, Hojnicki read the green with his feet, coming inches from the hole with the second-closest putt on the 10th hole. "We had a great time," said Sosalla after the event. "Finished even par. Had some good shots and some not-so-good shots." Besides working with Hojnicki, Sosalla is president of Blind Outdoor Leisure Development. The organization, run by local Lions, helps the blind and visually impaired participate in all kinds of outdoor sports from skiing, golfing, canoeing and more, he said.

 

Priest guides blind skiers down slope

For Fr. Key, participation in BOLD is way to serve community

By Cheri Perkins Mantz Catholic Herald Staff

Fr. Bill Key rides the ski lift with Doreen Lundgren at Sunburst Ski Hill Feb. 18. The labeled vests alert other skiers to use caution near the blind skiers. (Catholic Herald photo by Allen Fredrickson) KEWASKUM — Imagine zipping down a ski hill, the crunch of the snow beneath your skis, and the wind blowing into your face. Imagine being that skier, but without your eyesight. How would you safely make it down the hill? That is the job of Fr. Bill Key, pastor at St. Joseph Parish in Waukesha. He and other guides for the Lions Club Blind Outdoor Leisure Development (BOLD) are trained to lead legally blind skiers down the hills of Sunburst Ski Hill in Kewaskum. Fr. Key has volunteered to ski with the blind for 20 years. For six Sunday nights during winter, BOLD members and skiers take passes up and down the hills. Blind people who have never skied are taught by an instructor. When they get on the slopes, guides follow them down the hill, giving them directional commands. The voice of their instructor is the only way they can make it down the hill. Fr. Key said it’s a lesson in trust — similar to the blindfolded “trust walk” done on many Cofirmation retreats. “I ski behind them and tell them to go left or right and when to stop,” he said. “You need to do it in a very calm way. All the anxiety in my voice is transferred to them.” Fr. Key said the skiers express their appreciation and the guides know they’ve done something nice for another. “I’m giving back by helping others enjoy the night,” he said. “Without a guide they couldn’t do it.” Known as “Fr. Bill” to the skiers, Fr. Key said his roles as guide and priest are intertwined. Ken Sosalla, president of the BOLD Lions, assigns a guide to each skier. “Sometimes I specifically ask him to guide someone if it looks like they need to talk,” said Sosalla. “He brings a positive spirituality because of his background.” Fr. Key said others joke that his skiers are assigned to him because they need divine intervention. “They laugh and say, ‘You have Fr. Bill so you must need some special help,’” he said. For guides to appreciate what the blind skiers experience, their training includes a period in which they are blindfolded, asked to put on their skis, and, with the help of another guide, ski down the mountain. This includes a training session where they are completely blindfolded for one hour. “Their only sense of safety and security is your voice, so guides need to appreciate that,” said Sosalla. Blind skier Doreen Lundgren agrees that skiers need to have unwavering trust in their guide. “It’s very important because if you can’t trust them you don’t want to go down the hill with them,” said Lundgren. A skier for 27 years, Lundgren said Fr. Key has guided her often. “He’s easy to talk to,” she said of Fr. Key. “If I need something extra, and he’s able to do it, he will. He’s very easygoing and laid back.” Lundgren, who was raised Catholic but currently is not practicing, said she and Fr. Key talk about “all kinds of things.” “He lets me be who I am without preaching or criticizing, but he lets me know where he stands,” she said. Fellow blind skier Jennie Post has been skiing with the group since the mid-1980s. She said she enjoys Fr. Key’s demeanor while guiding. A member of St. Margaret Mary Parish in Milwaukee, she also appreciates having a priest guiding her down the hill. “He does a wonderful job as a guide,” said Post. “He’s definitely dedicated to his work and to the church. “Fr. Bill and I talk about some of the priests we know and that I knew as a kid,” she said. “He knows the grade school teacher who taught me Braille.” Post also stressed the importance of trust between the blind skiers and guides. “Trust is extremely important between a blind skier and a guide because if you don’t trust who is guiding you, you could get seriously injured,” said Post. “You need to listen and pay attention and have a good response time. I feel that trust is number one.” Equipment rental and lift ticket fees are paid for by Sunburst Ski Hill. The group meets about six times each winter to ski on Sunday nights.

For the story about 8 year old VIP Peggy Rider, click on the link below.

See skiing in a whole new light.

Japanese scientist's lab dish offers doctors tool in operations to
restore sight to blind
Associated Press
KENJI HALL Associated Press Writer

TOKYO (AP) - Cornea transplants can give sight back to the blind, but they are notoriously tricky: Sutures can cause
swelling. The body can reject the tissue. Each transplant requires a large mass of cells taken from a healthy eye.

Now a Japanese surgeon has come up with a method being hailed as a possible solution for all those potential
troubles.

Teruo Okano, at Tokyo Women's Medical University, has developed a procedure allowing doctors to grow an entire
cornea from a tiny speck of cells in a petri dish in an incubator, peel it off at room temperature, and place it directly on the eye - without a single stitch.

``We can make an unlimited number of corneas for transplants,'' Okano says. ``And the operation is so simple - in five to 10 minutes, the new cornea sticks by itself.''

The experimental procedure was first performed on a human in December 2002, and a total of 12 people have
undergone it to replace a cornea, which is the transparent tissue that covers the iris and pupil at the front of the eye.

But while limited trials of unapproved techniques are allowed in Japan, approval for large-scale human clinical trials could take months and full approval for medical use is at least two to three years away, Okano said.

If accepted, the procedure could help tens of thousands of patients in the United States and tens of thousands more in other nations like Japan, where donor cadavers are scarce and waiting lists are long. In Japan, doctors say about
20,000 people need a transplant every year but only about 1,800 get one.

So far, Okano's transplants have worked for all 12 patients operated on at Osaka University Hospital in western Japan. It's not clear how long the corneas will last, but the transplants are still working in all of the patients, he said. The strength of vision varies widely from patient to patient.

Okano and his collaborator at Osaka University Hospital, Koji Nishida, described the results of animal studies in the
February issue of the U.S. science journal Transplantation. They plan to submit the results of their human trials to an English-language journal soon.

Other scientists give the research high marks.

Alan Russell, director of the McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh, said corneal cells grown with Okano's method peel away from the dish so easily it is like removing a Post-it note.

The research ``is tremendous work,'' Russell said. ``Literally, it makes the blind see.''

Normally, doctors transplant cornea cells directly from one person's eye to another, taking about half the cells of a
donor's limbus, the circle where the clear cornea turns to white.

But Okano's technique might someday replace person-to-person transplants with tissue bioengineering.

Growing cells for transplants is nothing new. Skin grafts have been around for years, and scientists recently have
made progress in research designed to mass produce corneas and other tissue.

But making corneas in a lab dish has been difficult because the best way to pull them off the dish is with an enzyme - and that often kills the binding proteins the cornea uses to anchor itself when transplanted onto an eye.

Okano solved that problem with a heat-sensitive polymer coating on the petri dish in which a new cornea is grown. At higher temperatures, the cornea sticks to the dish; at room temperature, the cornea can be peeled off without harming its binding proteins. Once transplanted, those proteins allow the cornea to adhere to the surface of the eye.

The method could give doctors a way to grow enough corneas for several patients from one person's minuscule
amount of donated tissue, Okano said.

It also could allow patients to act as their own donors, he said. That would reduce the risk of donor rejection, which
occurs when the body tries to defend itself against an invasion of foreign cells.

Between December 2002 and this past January, Okano and Nishida recruited 12 patients with damaged epithelial
stem cells in the limbus. Such patients comprise about 20 percent of those awaiting cornea transplants.

Okano and Nishida declined to say how the patients lost their sight, saying they would do so in their scientific paper
on the human trials. But people who need such transplants mostly have been blinded by disease, burns or contact with caustic chemicals.

Epithelial stem cells constantly generate new cells to cover the body's outer surface and line the inner walls of the
mouth, lungs and stomach. In the eye, the stem cells replace dead corneal cells. The cornea can become cloudy or be overrun by capillaries from the white of the eye if those stem cells die.

Okano's team made each test cornea from an area of limbus stem cells about 2 square millimeters (three-hundredths of a square inch) - the size of a single printed letter in a newspaper.

Once the cornea grew to 1.5 centimeters (about a half inch) across on top of a doughnut-shaped membrane, it was
lifted off the dish with tweezers and placed on the patient's eye, Okano said. The cornea fused with the eye within 10 minutes and the membrane was cut off, he said.

``The adhesive proteins act as a kind of bio-glue,'' Okano said.

Nishida, an ophthalmologist, said all 12 patients, who had been legally blind, could see after the procedure. However, their vision since the operations has varied widely, depending in part on how much sight was impaired before the operation.

The only side-effect was temporary inflammation, and none so far has complained of deteriorating vision or corneal
tearing, Nishida said.

Okano said he set up CellSeed Inc. three years ago to market his research and is in talks with two major U.S. drug
makers - which he declined to identify - about seeking regulatory approval in the United States.

CellSeed plans to recruit new donors and build up its own self-renewing supply of corneal cells, he said.
---
On the Net:
CellSeed Inc.: http://www.cellseed.com
 
 

The 60-milligram device is implanted into one eye behind the iris.
In a normal eye, the cornea and lens focus and reflect incoming
light onto the retina. But macular degeneration damages the
central retina (macula), causing blind spots. The IMT magnifies
images up to 3 times and projects them over the undamaged
retina. Illustration by Garry Marshall

Tele-Vision Implant     By: Michael Rosenwald, Popular Science Magazine

A tiny telescope may rescue degenerating eyes.

PICTURE THIS:  A loved one sits directly across from you sipping coffee,
but when you look at his or her face you see a gaping black splotch.  For
more than 15 million Americans with macular degeneration disease – a
mysterious and potentially blinding condition that chews away at the
central retina – this is everyday life. Now doctors are inching closer to
a breakthrough treatment for the disease.

VisionCare Ophthalmic Technologies in Saratoga, California, is
enrolling patients in a clinical trial to assess the safety and efficacy
of its pea-size Implantable Miniature Telescope. Measuring 4
millimeters long by 3 millimeters in diameter, the telescope is a
quartz tube that has microscopic lenses inside and quartz windows
on both ends.  The device replaces the eye lens and works with the
cornea to magnify and project objects over the undamaged area
of the retina.  It is implanted only in one eye, which takes over
central or “straight-ahead” vision, essential for facial
recognition, reading and watching television. The other
eye controls peripheral vision.

In initial trials, the results from 14 patients were solid,
researchers say, but not miraculous.  Patients who have more
severe forms of the disease improve more than those who
have lesser symptoms. And possible side effects include
infection, inflammation and mild discomfort – generally
the same as those of cataract surgery.  “This lens doesn’t
bring back the vision people may have had 20 years ago.
We don’t want to oversell this. But for people who are ore
or less functionally blind, this invention is as important the
invention of the automobile,” claims Dr. Steven Lane, who
has implanted a half dozen of the devices.

The procedure takes just 45 minutes. Patients are home
within four hours, but it can take several months of
training to adapt to this new way of seeing:  One eye
focuses on precise details of what’s in view, such as a
face – the hair, the ears and the neck – while the other eye
zooms in and out.

Teens Begin Pioneer Adventure of Senses

    BY CHRISTOPHER SMITH
      THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE

A group of teen-agers and their adult leaders will strike out on a
1,000-mile camping trip along the Oregon, California, Mormon Pioneer
and Pony Express trails today to get a taste of Western pioneer
adventures. This trek has one key distinction: The young people will
use all their senses but sight. Now in its fifth year of taking visually
impaired and blind students to key spots along the historic Western
overland routes, the Oregon Trail Project is a collaboration between
Accessible Arts Inc., a program that promotes arts for children with
disabilities, and the Kansas State School for the Blind.

For the first time, the National Park Service Long Distance
Trails Office in Salt Lake City is helping to fund this year's outdoor
adventure.

"I've been observing this program for five years and have been taken
with it," said National Trails Superintendent Jere Krakow. "The outcome
is not just a two-week camping trip but a dissemination component,
where these kids are going back home with expressions of art and stories
of their experience on the trails that they share through presentations to
school classrooms and retirement rest homes."
Twelve teen-agers from Kansas, Missouri and Texas will be led by 11
adults with normal eyesight, including four artists who help the teens
express their tactile experiences on the trail in various art forms, from
carving their names in limestone rock to sculpting wagon ruts and
landforms.

"What both the kids and the adults come away with is a recognition
that every one of us has strong points and blind spots in our way of
experiencing the trails," said Eleanor Craig, the Oregon Trails project
director in Kansas City, Kan. "We may count on our particular strengths
but once we understand other people's strengths, it becomes a shared
experience."

To illustrate trail features, Craig has students walk side-by-side
carrying a rope as they travel up a 9-foot-deep gouge left in the west
bank of the Blue River in Kansas from 100,000 wagons that crossed
more than a century ago.

"In the middle of this deep cut, we pull the rope taut with the surface of
the hillside and the kids use their walking canes to wave above their
heads to find how high that rope is," she said. "We try to engage their
imagination so they can take in the experience of the trails in as many ways as possible."

During their motorized trek from Shumacher Park in Kansas to Scotts Bluff in Nebraska and finally to Martin's Cove in Wyoming, the teens will hear stories from pioneer journals, plant wildflowers at emigrant graves, and camp out nightly on the trail. For the next year, they will recount their experiences to grade school students and older adults in oral presentations and artwork displays. Craig said the Park Service's underwriting of the trip helped save the Oregon Trail program from extinction. "We're just delighted with their support because, among other things, state budgets are so tight we were afraid we might not be able to go this year," she said.

BLIND FAITH

In the June 18, 2001 issue of TIME Magazine there was the story of Erik
Weihenmayer’s recent success of  climbing of Mount Everest.  Not an unusual
story of people who love the challenge of climbing tall mountains,but inspiring
when you realize that Erik has been totally blind since the age of 13.

Erik, as he stumbled through the icefall, (going up the Mountain) was so far
out of his comfort zone that he began to speculate on which of those fates might
await him. For a moment he flashed on all those clichés about what blind people are
suppose to do – become piano tuners or pencil salesmen – and thought maybe
they were stereotypes for good reason.   Blind people certainly shouldn’t be out here, wandering through an ever changing ice field, measuring the distance over a
1,0000 ft. deep crevasse with climbing poles and then leaping, literally, over and
into the unknown.

The blind thrive on patterns: stairs are all the same height, city blocks roughly the
same length, curbs approximately the same depth.  They learn to identify the patterns in their environment much more than the sighted population do, and to rely on them to plot their way through the world.  But in the Khumbu Icefall, the trail through the Himalayan glacier is pattern-less, a diabolically cruel obstacle course for a blind person.  A typical assault on Everest requires each limber to do as many as 10 traversesthrough the icefall, both for acclimatization purposes and to help carry the immense amount of equipment required for an ascent.

For Erik, who knew almost as soon as he could speak that he would lose his vision
in his early teens, excelling as an athlete was the result of accepting his disability rather than denying it.

When he lost his vision, Erik at first refused to use a cane or learn Braille, insisting
he could somehow muddle on as normal. “I was so afraid I would seem like a freak,
” he recalls. What Erik achieved is hard for a sighted person to comprehend.  What do we compare it with? How do we relate to it? Do we put on a blindfold and go hiking? That’s silly, Erik maintains, because when a sighted person loses his vision, he is terrified and disoriented.  And Erik is clearly neither of those things. Perhaps the point is really that there is now way to put what Erik has done in perspective because no one has ever done anything like it. It is a unique achievement, one that in the truest sense pushes the limits of what man is capable of.

*** For the full story of Erik Weihenmayers’s climbing of Mt. Everest, please check
out the June 18, 2001 issue of Time Magazine at your local library or (Click here)
to read the full story
 

If you would like a copy of the complete article in Time magazine,
please call or email me.
Ken Sosalla
  262-548-9114

Bio-medical Engineering

Today researchers in  bio-medical Engineering are
working onsolutions to  the problems of the human
body. In the February issue of Popular Mechanics
magazine an article titled, " The New
Bionic man", written by Mike fillon, describes some of
the projects that researchers are addressing.  These
projects include: bionic arms, artificial muscle implants,
bionic heart assist pumps, bionic nerve implant circuitry,
bionic taste research, bionic sound implants and research for
the visually impaired.

One  of the most dramatic applications of bionics is the
creation of artificial eyes.  Artificial retinas,  in particular
are showing great promise.  Researchers have long known that
damaged photoreceptors in the eye could be bypassed.  A device
that stimulated the retinal ganglion cells - connected to the
optic nerve - could transmit visual information to the brain.
Now,  a new technology promises to replace the retina,
allowing the blind to see.

Working jointly,  researchers at North Carolina State
University, the University  of North Carolina and  Johns
Hopkins University, have created the implantable artificial
retina component chip ( ARCC).  The ARCC consists of a
silicon microchip  embedded  with photosensor cells and
electrodes.  It would be implanted near the vision  center of
the retina.  Light and images entering the pupil would
pass through the ARCC's   front surface and strike
photosensors on the the back of the chip.   The photosensor
array would convert the image pattern of light and dark
into electric impulses ,  much as a healthy eye's rods and
cones do.  The impulses would stimulate nerves behind the
retina, sending the information to the brain.

The device is not expected  to produce full, clear
vision.  Instead it would allow the patient to perceive
basic shapes, the direction of movements,  and  the
boundaries between contrasting objects.
 

Popular Mechanics
October 2000
Technology Watch

Raised Print For The Blind

A new type of printer produces raised text and images that can be felt by the
blind.  Images to be printed can be scanned or sent from a personal computer.
 In either case, a heat-activation process developed by Zychem of Cheshire,
England, causes printed areas to rise just enough to be detected by the fingertip.
The Confederation of British Industry named the printer its Invention Of The
Year.  Previously, raised images were created by hand.

LONGEST-SERVING GUIDE DOG

World Record Holder
Guinness Book of World Records

      The longest period of active service reported for a guide, or seeing-eye dog is  14 years 8 months. Cindy-Cleo, a Labrador, aided her owner Aaron Barr of  Tel Aviv,Israel, from August 1972 to March 1987. The dog died on April 10,1987.   She was 16 years old.  Donna, a hearing guide dog owned by John Hogan of Pyrmont Point, Australia, completed 18 years of active service in
New Zealand

Retina Bypass For The Blind

A novel artificial vision system produced promising results during initial trials in Brussels. Like systems being developed in the United States and Switzerland, the Mivip eye uses a tiny video camera to capture images.  It differs in how the information is delivered to the brain and which part of the brain is stimulated.  Rather than a hard-wired link between the camera and the brain, Mivip uses a short-range radio transmitter mounted on
eyeglasses.  The receiving antenna is surgically implanted.During the implantation process, a connection is made to deliver the output from the receiver to the optic nerve, rather than the patient’s visual cortex.  “A long road lies ahead before crossing over from experimentation to a commonly available prosthesis,” says project spokesman Charles Trullemans.