Vision for the blind: retina code cracked

The neural code used by a mouse’s retina to communicate to the brain has been deciphered and used to successfully restore normal vision to blind mice, US researchers reported.

The two scientists at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York, who published their findings in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, have also deciphered the retinal neural code of monkeys — which is essentially identical to that of humans.

It’s an exciting time, said Sheila Nirenberg, a computational neuroscientist and lead researcher on the study. We can make blind mouse retinas see, and we’re moving as fast as we can to do the same in humans — via redwolf.newsvine.com