
Bionic eye boosted by hemispherical retina - stiray
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01420-7
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nickparker
I want somebody to figure out a way to "backprop" / train neuromorphic
nanowire circuits[0] and interface one with this retina to create a complete
bionic visual system.

The main limitation of the retina appears to be interfacing the nanowires to a
processor, and doing most of your processing in trained nanowires instead of
digital circuitry maybe solves that.

You could make a sensor with all the benefits of human vision and similarly
minuscule power consumption.

[0]:
[https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/12/191226084403.h...](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/12/191226084403.htm)

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ge96
That's amazing, I hope I'm still in the right age range to see a lot of the
scifi eg. I see this I think full synthetic body(GITS), perhaps a stretch but
great to see nontheless.

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newyankee
Being hard of hearing and losing it, i am really hopeful of stem cells and
regenerative medicine or something else helping to restore sensorineural
hearing loss. I had seen talks as early as 2010 about the potential for this
which had 2020s as the goal date. However 1 decade later the Heller lab at
Stanford which worked hard on this, does not seem to have a lot of results to
my knowledge, real science indeed is hard.

I always wished that better data sharing mechanisms, more open source culture
in different fields and probably new developments such as machine learning and
significant computing power used in innovative ways would accelerate science
and make it exponential. However Physical sciences have their limit at which
progress can be done.

Personally i am of the view that some Chinese competition in the space might
help too, however ethics in areas such as genetic selection is going to get
crazy.

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ge96
> hopeful of stem cells

Sorry rambling

I can see the interest in a biological first approach/natural. I don't know
how promising the neuralink stuff is but it seems like that can help with
hearing, although you'd probably need some ear-sensors. I'm not sure how
effective basic hearing aids are. Neuralink is probably overkill just for
hearing benefits.

I also think it helps if the person trying to solve the issue is also
afflicted with the problem/more personal interest/drive other than money.

I hope you find better news, a decade is a long time. I can see arguments for
both directions about regulations but it would also be scary to be forced into
that situation... I don't know if you'd readily find volunteers.

At the end of the day order is progress... if you start taking everything
apart then it becomes "what's the point" idk that's my opinion eg. do morals
matter if you can build yourself to your exact desire/take apart
physics/science/write your own laws, etc... ehh scifi talk for now.

I personally would like to be able to transfer consciousness, arguable it's a
selfish goal "everybody gets a finite set of time". If you degrade is it worth
living, etc... and also when you transfer you'd probably still die
anyway(original you) unless you can transfer the motion/exact position of all
the synaptic signals... pretty much "quantum-ly impossible" now haha. I mean I
don't know if exact electron orbits matter but being able to preserve/persist
states at that level exactly and move it in spacetime...

I don't know we'll see. Who wants to live forever anyway.

This is not my field at all if that's not already apparent.

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newyankee
Hearing loss is complicated. Based on your profile (frequency vs. degree of
loss), hearing aids may not help enough. However a good analogy is that they
are like crutches. Just like crutches do not restore walking capability but
help improve mobility something similar happens with h aids.

Cochlear implant has existed for a long time but the problem is limitations in
terms of profile it creates. I believe Neuralink is the only ultimate solution
that might work giving you the capability to experience even frequencies
beyond what humans normally hear which is if the biological approaches do not
work.

The inner ear consisted of 15000 hair cells which are the crux of this. Idea
behind regenerative medicine was to induce pluripotent stem cells to convert
to these hair cells and replace those hair cells that were damaged or
destroyed. Personally i think this approach will be like Nuclear Fusion,
always 20 years away. At this point i personally think Neuralink may be
achieved first, this is because of the amount of $ and interest in that space
along with the wider repercussions.

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ge96
> i think this approach will be like Nuclear Fusion, always 20 years away

Oh man that sucks going to take that long. It does seem like the "ultimate
thing" regarding stem cells. Neuralink itself sounds "too convenient"/makes it
seem easy, not sure about accuracy... will see. Still seems like trying to
thread a needle with a mallet sort of thing.

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RickJWagner
Yes, but does it make that cool 'Nananananananana' sound?

(Warning: If you understand this reference, you might be getting old.)

