Azerbaijan National Academy of Science

Sequential stimulation of neurons of the visual cortex allows you to see simple characters without eye involvement.

Most blind people lose their sight due to problems with the eyes or the optic nerve, that is, the visual region of the cerebral cortex remains in order and could receive some kind of signals. Naturally, at some point, the idea came to neuroscientists that it was possible to directly stimulate the visual cortex with the help of electrode implants, so that a blind person could see something. Of course, it is unlikely that in this way it will be possible to simulate a complex landscape - but here the letters, it seems, are quite possible.

Such experiments were performed, but the results were inconclusive. Usually the approach here was this: each electrode served as a single pixel, and so the complex of such pixel electrodes implanted in the cortex was to create an image of a letter. The electrodes turned on all at once, but the brain as a result did not see a letter, but some kind of blurry cloud in which it was difficult to isolate a specific image.

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