EVEN decades after someone loses their sight, the brain preserves at least some of its original ability to process visual information. The discovery raises the hope that one day some blind people may regain normal sight.
So far a tiny number of blind people have been lucky enough to get back some of their vision via surgery, but these operations are very rare. Researchers are working on retinal implants and gene therapies that might restore much more sight to many more people, but whether this will be possible depends not just on our ability to repair the eye, but also…
