vision news stories on Newser

Long Missions May Wreck Astronauts' Vision

John Johnson — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 13:09:05 CDT

NASA has been worried for a while now about astronauts returning from space with blurred vision and other eyesight problems. A new study in the journal Radiology might help explain why: Brains scans of 27 astronauts who had been on missions longer than a month showed that they had abnormalities...

Star Trek -esque Device May Let Blind 'See'

Matt Cantor — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 12:54:33 CST

Remember the iconic Star Trek visor that allowed a blind engineer to see? A team of scientists in Israel has developed something like a real-life version of the gadget, the Daily Mail reports. The Sensory Substitution Device turns visual information into sound that blind people can interpret after a little...

NASA's New Worry: Astronauts Going Blind

John Johnson — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 14:24:45 CDT

NASA has a serious health concern to resolve before it fires up a manned mission to Mars or some other way-off locale: Astronauts might not be able to see anything once they get there. As the Orlando Sentinel explains, the space agency is seeing more cases of astronauts reporting blurred...

Why Elderly Drive Badly: They See Too Much

John Johnson — Sat, 29 Jan 2011 07:47:55 CST

One of the knocks against elderly drivers is that, like Mr. Magoo, they just can't see what's in front of them. A new neurological study flips the premise and suggests that they see too much, reports Scientific American . The theory goes like this: Our brain takes in so much visual...

Retinal Implant Restores Partial Vision to Blind

Nick McMaster — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 18:21:15 CDT

Scientists in Germany have used an implant to restore at least partial eyesight to three patients with a disease that causes degenerative blindness, PhysOrg reports. The new device, called a sub-retinal implant, is a light-sensitive microchip with 1,500 light sensors inserted below the retina. Previous devices required an implant...

Lab-Grown Corneas Restore Sight

Kate Schwartz — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 08:06:57 CDT

For the 1.5 million who go blind each year waiting for new corneas, new hope: For the first time, lab-grown corneas have been successfully transplanted—and worked, stimulating regeneration and allowing patients to blink and cry, and, in some cases, fully restoring their sight. Currently, human donors are the...

Teary Glenn Beck: I Might Be Going Blind

Mary Papenfuss — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 06:30:00 CDT

A teary-eyed Glenn Beck has confided to a conservative crowd that disease may rob him of his vision in a year. "I can't focus my eyes," he told some 6,000 people in Salt Lake City on his American Revival tour. After tests, his doc told him: "You have macular...

Scientists Cure Red-Green Color Blindness in Monkeys

Nick McMaster — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 14:36:28 CDT

Scientists have cured red-green color blindness in monkeys, the Times of London reports. Researchers injected a virus containing L opsin, a gene that regulates the production of the red-sensitive light receptor—known as a “cone”—into the retina of red-green colorblind adult monkeys, according to a study published in Nature...

Lost Contact Lens Delays Brown Speech

Jason Farago — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 05:00:00 CDT

Gordon Brown was forced to delay a speech to a Labour Party conference last week after he accidentally washed a contact lens down the sink, reports the Times of London. The British PM had no extra pair, and a staff worker had to detach the pipe beneath the sink to...