Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by urs2102 2480 days ago
Any information on the state of the patient’s vision both pre and post-op?

If you’re going from, let’s assume, blindness, to now full vision: how does your visual cortex move from dormant to active? Is it jarring?

2 comments

From the article :

Nishida said that the woman’s cornea remained clear and her vision had improved since the transplant a month ago.

From what I understood, she was not blind : she had an issue that made her vision blurry and could lead to blindness over time, but she took care of it early enough it seems

Of topic a bit but I recently watched some youtube videos about people hearing for the first time, I was surprised how instant things appear to be. Thinking about it you have baby animals that can just walk after a few minutes at tbirth so it makes sense that most of the basic mechanism are pre-programmed before birth.
There are a couple of stories of people born blind/deaf that choose to revert an operation that restores their senses because they find it too "confusing" (can't make sense of it basically).

I believe trying to "learn" those things after youth neuroplasticity is gone is hard

I can't believe that(but I will read any credible links if you have ), in the hearing case the people would turn off the device in the beginning when they feel overwhelmed, I assume that for the eyes you can cover them when you also get tired or if you are in a place with lot of visual information.
I worked in Audiology for 15 years and saw many elderly people unable to adapt to the changes and device acceptance was inversely related to age.

The world is a noisy place, and the less you exercises your noise reduction skills the harder it is to cope.

the #1 complaint I received from new users: "I hear too much noise"

the #1 request from all hearing aid users: "I only want to hear what I want to hear and nothing else"

Imagine telling your optometrist you only want to see the nice things in life.

In the Deaf community many people are shunned if they use hearing devices.

http://meducator.org/2018/01/the-cochlear-implant-genocide-o...