Novel Brain Implant Restores Visual Perception to the Blind

Seven years ago, Jason Esterhuizen was in a horrific car crash that destroyed his eyes, plunging him into total darkness. Today, he’s regained visual perception and more independence, thanks to an experimental device implanted in his brain by neuroscientists at UCLA Health.

While the technology doesn’t provide normal sight, it enhances users’ ability to navigate the world by restoring their capacity to detect movement and distinguish light and dark. It’s geared to people who used to be able to see but lost their vision to injury or disease.

“This is the first time we've had a completely implantable device that people can use in their own homes without having to be plugged into an external device,” said Dr. Nader Pouratian, a neurosurgeon at UCLA Health and principal investigator of the five-year study.

Designated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration as a “Breakthrough Device,” the system wirelessly converts images captured by a tiny video camera mounted on sunglasses into a series of electrical pulses. The pulses stimulate a set of 60 electrodes implanted on top of the brain’s visual cortex, which perceives patterns of light and interprets them as visual clues.

The National Institutes of Health’s Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative funded the study at UCLA, with device development and support from Second Sight Medical Products, which developed and markets the Orion device.

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