Brain_Hawk t1_j1thr3n wrote
A full eye transplant would require detaching the retinal nerve and grafting it on to someone else, which is not currently a feasible form of technology. If we could perform those kind of nerve graphs, we could repair damaged spines and restore people who are paralyzed from spine severing. To the best of my knowledge this is still generally impossible.
The optic nerve carries information from different parts of the retina to the brain in a very specific way. This means essentially we would have to be able to one-to-one remap and reconnect nerves at the level of single axons, extremely microscopic it involving tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of specific connections. It's not as simple as taking one nerve and then smashing it to another and hope they all link up. If we could get random events to link up together, the person receiving the eye transport plan would essentially receive White Noise Vision to their brain, with everything all mixed up and wrong.
We can currently do cornea transplants, and fun side bar, some recent advancement in transplanting retinal cells and restoring Vision when people have damage to the retina
Personally I believe the widespread use of bionic style and implants, such as a robotic eye, will never become a big thing because the biology will outpace the engineering. So at least from a recovery of function perspective I don't think it'll take off. It's always possible that doesn't the form of human enhancement, for example producing biotic eyes that have different kinds of vision. But I think the biology will be a lot faster
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