“The brain receives the image!” : these blind patients have started reading again thanks to a chip under the retina

Age-related macular degeneration is the leading cause of blindness worldwide. For its atrophic form, no treatment existed until now. A clinical trial carried out in five European countries has just demonstrated that a neurostimulation system allows blind people to regain part of their central vision.

The Prima system is based on an ingenious principle: bypassing the photoreceptors destroyed by the disease. The implant, a 2 mm² photovoltaic microchip equipped with 378 electrodes, is grafted under the retina. Augmented reality glasses capture surrounding images via a miniature camera, then an algorithm enhances them by increasing contrast and brightness up to 12 times. These images are then converted into infrared beams projected onto the implant, which directly excite the remaining nerve cells to transmit the visual information to the brain.

The clinical trial recruited 38 people, with an average age of 79 years, whose vision was extremely poor. After one year, 81% of the 32 participants who completed the study gained the ability to read at least 10 additional letters on the standardized vision boards. The most spectacular case allowed the reading of 59 more letters.

“This is the first time that a system has allowed patients who have lost central vision to resume reading words, or even sentences, while preserving peripheral vision”underlines José-Alain Sahel, researcher affiliated with Inserm and main author of the study published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Adverse effects, mainly ocular hypertension and retinal detachment, were observed in half of the participants but resolved in 95% of cases. The therapeutic benefit far outweighs these complications, which occur especially during the first two months following the surgical procedure.

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