One of the participants, Benjamin James Spencer, who went blind aged nine, described his joy at seeing his wife and three daughters for the first time. It is awe inspiring to see so much beauty, the 35-year-old told the Daily Mail last night. I could see the roundness of my wifes face, the shape of her body.

I could see my kids running up to give me a hug. It is not perfect vision it is like grainy 1980s surveillance video footage. It may not be full vision yet, but its something.
It was September 18, 1992, a week after my birthday, he said. I was at school leaving a class and in the time it took me to walk 50ft everything disappeared.

At first it started to go foggy and then a few paces later it was just dark.

I panicked and started screaming and kind of went into shock. Everything after that is pretty vague.

In the coming days specialists at a hospital near his home in Texas broke the news that he would never see again.

I was told this was going to be my future. I was classed as lacking 100 per cent light perception. I was blind, he said.

Mr Spencer had paediatric glaucoma, a rare condition caused by a defect in the eyes drainage system.

It had been incurable but scientists have now managed to bypass the broken link by sending images directly to the visual cortex, the part of the brain responsible for sight.

Mr Spencer lives in the city of Pearland, near Houston, with his wife Jeanette, 42, and daughters Abigail, 15, Melissa, 13, and Jane, ten. In April 2018, he became one of just six people to have a 60-electrode panel implanted in the back of his brain.

Surgeons at Baylor Medical College in Houston spent two hours cutting a window in his skull, placing the electrode array on the surface of the brain, and stitching it up again. They then spent six months mapping his visual field.

This involved sending computer signals to the stimulation panel in his head to synchronise his brain to the real world in effect teaching his visual cortex to process images again.

Eventually, in October, the device was wirelessly connected to a tiny video camera, mounted in a pair of glasses, and switched on. He saw his wife and three children for the very first time.

It was an incredible moment, he told the Daily Mail. It was very humbling.

now that is impressive

Seeing your family for the first time

I didn't read past the original post but that's lovely. Science is awesome.

gives hope

That's interesting, might help with AMD in the future too.

So like... Bluetooth

no!

resistance is futile