ARTIFICIAL ORGANS – The bionic man (part 2)

Posted by mzPOTTER | January 16th, 2010 in Biotechnology, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

artificial organs - the bionic manRemove dentures

According to these experts, this technology will eliminate the metal prosthesis and plastic that are implanted today to repair bone fractures and ligaments and thus avoid all the inconveniences that accompany them. In industrialized countries, one in 17 people has some kind of prosthesis of this kind and the number of complaints received by failures medical implants is increasing. The tissue engineering will be able to make structural tissues as the breast, or shapes defined as an ear, and, ultimately, may rebuild entire sections of the human body as a hand or arm.

According to the authors, an arm made of scaffolding described cellular above, it would take about six weeks to grow. A mechanical pump is responsible temperature control, supply nutrients and remove wastes constituent tissue while the arm grows. The only problem, according to authors, would be the nerve. No one has, so far, regenerate tissue nervous. But researchers do not cease their efforts and in the meantime, the microelectronics can solve many of the problems and deal with major challenges. One of the biggest is the vision. Restore vision to people who lost it at some point in their lives, i.e. retaining some visual memory, has become the target of a series of studies being conducted in the United States. And the results obtained so far and suggest that the idea of an eye bionic not a dream. Researchers have already succeeded in creating images visually in a blind woman after implanting electrodes directly in his brain. Another team of scientists got some rabbits blind could see, placed in the back of their eyes, the retina, a microchip sensitive to light. There are huge technical problems to be solved and much remains to be can restore normal vision, but these experiments are demonstrating it is not impossible. According to an article in New Scientist last August, there two common forms of blindness caused by injury to the cones and rod-the light sensitive cells, which could be addressed within a couple of years by researchers at the Institute of Technology Massachusetts. These diseases include retinitispigmentosa, an inherited condition that affects more than one million people worldwide, and macular degeneration, which is related to aging and is the leading cause of blindness in western countries.

What about making the team led by neuro-ophthalmologist and Joseph Rizzo electrical engineer John Wyatt is to use a microchip to avoid damage rods and cones and to stimulate ganglion cells directly found on the surface of the retina. In the normal functioning of the eye, the rods and cones are stimulated by light and send electrical impulses through the different cell layers the retina to the ganglion cells, which in turn send the message to through the optic nerve to the cerebral cortex area of the vision for to form the image we see.

Special Glasses

With these experiments, scientists hope to be fitted for a very special glasses fitted with a camera and a computer capable of capturing images. The chip will decrypt what portion of the retina should be encouraged in order to distinguish the movement, shape, color, etc. But in fact, until proven in humans, no one knows what would really patient with bionic implants. In addition, researchers are aware that these projects can create false hopes in the blind. There are numerous technical problems associated with retinal implants, beginning with the technical surgery. Although, as noted by Veronica Bevan, a spokeswoman for the Institute National Blind, any progress, however small, to improve vision
of the blind would be highly desirable.

credit to: MYRIAM LOPEZ BLANCO

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One Response to “ARTIFICIAL ORGANS – The bionic man (part 2)”

  1. dewong.com says:

    ARTIFICIAL ORGANS – The bionic man (part 2) « Medical Publishing…

    According to these experts, this technology will eliminate the metal prosthesis and plastic that are implanted today to repair bone fractures and ligaments and thus avoid all the inconveniences that accompany them….

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