US scientists have made blind mice see again, thus offering hope that the same method could be used to treat also humans.

If the technique turns out to be effective, it may be in widespread use in seven years, according to Sheila Nirenberg, the neuroscientist who is working on the technique.

She says the creatures’ vision was good enough to distinguish a baby’s face and track a moving image.

Human trials could follow in just one to two years, reports Daily Mail.

Nirenberg says she hopes the blind will be able to “see patterned images, see faces, walk through the supermarket and pick out a box of cereal, recognise their children”.

“This has all been thrilling. I can’t wait to get started on bringing this approach to patients,” she says.

The first beneficiaries of the new method are likely to be sufferers of age-related macular degeneration, the most common cause of blindness in the elderly.

When we look at something, light falls on cells in the retina, the message travels to the back of the eye and is converted into electrical signals which are sent to the brain for processing into images. The electrical signals are then encoded.

But in age-related macular degeneration, the retinal cells that pick up light die off, leading to less information being passed to the brain and vision deteriorating.

However, Nirenberg claims she has found a way of bypassing these cells and sending the encoded information directly to the brain. Besides, she has also worked out how to accurately encode the information.

It should be added that scientists have already previously created implantable chips that restore some vision. But Nirenberg stresses that her technique produces a much clearer picture.

She has now worked out the coding for monkey’s eyes, which relies on the same code as the human eye. So, the first human trials could follow soon.

Ref: 105.105.105.1990