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Being able to reverse death might seem like something out of a science fiction or fantasy novel. But, scientists managed to do just that with a pair of dead eyes. The eyes, which were received from organ donors, were “brought back to life” in a groundbreaking procedure.
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Scientists managed to reverse death using a pair of eyes
Of course, the breakthrough isn’t as miraculous as bringing someone back to life would be. But it’s an intriguing step for science. Scientists were able to prove that photosensitive neuronal cells in the retina can respond to light up to five hours after death.
Moreover, they were able to prove that the eyes can also communicate with each other even after death. The scientists recorded the eyes sending signals that resembled the signals the eyes of living subjects send. This development, and others, raised the question of whether we could actually reverse death.
They published their findings in the journal Nature. The researchers detail their experiments. Basically, they discovered that cells react to different types of light. Previous experiments allowed researchers at Yale University to reboot the brains of 32 decapitated pigs. However, this new study went further.
b-wave restoration
The idea of being able to reverse death is not new. It’s been stylized in fiction for years, and scientists have searched for ways to reverse aging for decades. With this new research, however, scientists were able to restore b waves for the first time.
B waves are slow, rhythmic oscillations that scientists have recorded in living brains, and even in the brain of a dying person. The retina is part of our central nervous system. As such, getting cells in the retina to talk to each other like they do in a living eye was a huge breakthrough. And they hope it could help improve the speed of eye experiments.
Currently, many eye experiments are carried out on primates. However, if they manage to intensify this process of reversing death in the eyes, they could instead conduct these experiments on “living” donor eyes.
Researchers believe this could speed up new therapies to improve disease and vision loss. It could also improve our understanding of neurodegenerative eye diseases.
Ultimately, being able to reverse death is probably still a long way off. But, with these new experiences, we are slowly finding ways to go back a bit. And that can mean all the difference to disease studies.
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