Over the past few years, there have been some amazing developments in medical bionics that are changing how we think about health. Developments like bionic hands that give patients back their sense of touch are incredible innovations that help change people’s lives.

Date:   8/21/2018 6:49:24 AM ( 6 y ago)

Over the past few years, there have been some amazing developments in medical bionics that are changing how we think about health. Developments like bionic hands that give patients back their sense of touch are incredible innovations that help change people’s lives.

As this type of technology continues to develop, however, scientists are able to explore different avenues. With the progress being made in bionics and prosthetics, this type of technology can be used not just to treat patients, but to theoretically ‘upgrade’ our bodies too.

So how can science potentially enhance our bodies in the future?

Give us bionic vision

A long-time fantasy of sci-fi writers, scientists are currently working on bionic eyes to enhance vision. This wirelessly-powered eye display is currently being developed at the University of Washington, in order to both restore and enhance patients’ existing vision.

The bionic eye utilizes micro-optics embedded in the patients’ lens, to project data into the line of sight. The main purpose of this technology is to treat a condition called macular degeneration, an age-related illness that can lead to complete vision loss.

Macular degeneration would be treated by the bionic eye spreading incoming images across the remaining functional parts of the retina. The research team at the University of Washington hope to be make a commercial version of the bionic eye within 10 years.

Upgrade our senses

For the entirety of human existence, we’ve made do with five senses, but there are animals who are able to detect other forces at play with senses such as echolocation and magnetoreception.

There are actually a wide range of signals occurring that we are unable to pick up with our existing senses, for example radio waves and x-rays, which means we are essentially looking at the world through a tunnel.

This could change by 2035, where some experts suggest we could supplement our existing senses through implants that detect different signals. Small neuronal computer chips would be implanted into the hands, which would directly interact with our nervous systems, allowing people to sense signals that are not currently perceptible.

Such technology could be used to help blind patients, by allowing them to detect objects ultrasonically.

Backup our brains

Adding a few extra senses or enhancing your vision, however, is just the start, and according to noted futurologist Dr. Ian Pearson, who claims to have an 85% accuracy with his predictions, by 2050 we could be able to replicate the human brain using technology.

Creating a replica version of your brain would theoretically allow you to have a backup of yourself, meaning you could continue to live through a computer replica of yourself if you died. Many scientists believe this theoretical concept is the key to human immortality.

Whether you’d want to live as a digital version of yourself is, however, a question for another time.

Science is pushing the human body into many new and incredible directions, with these examples just a few of things that we could possibly see in the future.

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