An amazing experiment has enabled a group of blind rats to see the world.

Researcher Yuji Ikegaya and Hiroaki Norimoto from the University of Tokyo performed an experiment in which they provided a number of rats with geomagnetic prosthetics. The eyes of the rats were sealed shut so spatial information could reach the brains of the rats directly.

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The study's goal was to "restore the allocentric sense of 'blind' adult rats by stimulating the visual cortex in the rodents' brains. They researchers constructed a tiny head-mounted sensor made of a digital compass connected to a microstimulator by two electrodes.

Once connected to the rats' visual cortex the gadget detects movements, sends out a "geomagnetic signal" that tells the rodents which way they are facing.

The major element of the experiment is it uses the natural allocentric sense of the body that controls the individual's spatial movement inside their environment. Individuals that have visual impairments encounter difficulties when moving, not only because they can't notice the obstacles in front of them, but also because they have a deficiency in what scientist call "absolute direction perception".

By bypassing the rats' eyes and triggering the visual cortex from the exterior so as to correspond immediately with the north or south alignment, the scientists succeeded in improving the rats' allocentric sense. This compensates for the lack of directional perception. In the end, the subjects have the ability to move as if there were nothing wrong with their sight.

The research demonstrates how mammalian brains are capable of adapting and are able "to learn and adapt" to new data well into their adulthood.

"The most remarkable point of this paper is to show the potential, or the latent ability, of the brain. That is, we demonstrated that the mammalian brain is flexible even in adulthood - enough to adaptively incorporate a novel, never-experienced, non-inherent modality into the pre-existing information sources," said Ikegaya.

The study, "Visual Cortical Prosthesis with a Geomagnetic Compass Restores Spatial Navigation in Blind Rats", appeared in the journal, Current Biology.

TagsBrain Compass Implant Could Help Blind Mouse See, blindness, rats, Mouse, brain compass, allocentric sense of blind, allocentric, geomagnetic prosthetics