Sat 29 January 2022:
Russian scientists and doctors have installed in a monkey’s brain a neural implant designed to restore vision through transmitting images directly into the brain with special equipment, the Far Eastern Federal University (FEFU) said on Wednesday.
“FEFU Medical Center neurosurgeon Artur Biktimirov has successfully performed a two-hour surgery to put the ELVIS brain implant into a monkey. This is another very significant step in the fulfillment of a project aimed at returning sight to blind and deaf-blind people and enter the final stage of preclinical trials,” the university said in a statement, adding that Biktimirov was assisted by a team of anesthesiologists, veterinarians and neurophysiologists.
The test subject is a six-year-old male baboon, who is recovering well.
The operation took place at the Research Institute of Medical Primatology in the southern Russian city of Sochi.
Its goal was to see if the device was operational and evaluate compatibility of the implant and brain tissues. The FEFU expects such surgery to become available in 2027.
According to the head of the Moscow Center for Innovative Technologies in Health Care, Vyacheslav Shulenin, about 300,000 people in Russia are blind and the neural implant could return sight to at least 20% of them.
“We are ready to support our colleagues’ innovation in Moscow. We are ready to offer the city’s medical facilities and help from Moscow doctors to the developers at the clinical trial stage,” Shulenin said.
In the next two years, the project team plans to install a neuroimplant in dozens of monkeys and will conduct a series of behavioral experiments. In one of them, the monkey will be taught to distinguish geometric shapes in advance, before the implant is installed.
Then, after placing the electrodes in the visual cortex of the brain, the animal will perform the same exercise, but blindfolded – using electronic vision. All tests are carried out in compliance with international ethical standards.
“With our support, testing of the technology began in 2020,” explained Natalia Sokolova, Executive Director of the Soyedinenie Foundation. – The first stage was tests on rodents, scientists assessed the reaction of their brains to the impact of the electrodes.
This stage has been successfully completed, and now the neuroimplant will be tested on species that are closer to humans – on monkeys. In 2024, we expect to move on to installing a neuroimplant for the first blind volunteers. Already now we are receiving many applications for participation, in two years we will begin the selection of candidates.
SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES
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