Mind Meld

THE BRAIN-COMPUTER INTERFACE IS REAL. IT'S CHANGING LIVES—AND COULD SOON CHANGE THE WORLD

- JEFFREY KLUGER

It's been a long time since Alice Charton got a good look at a human face.

There are plenty of people moving through her world, of course—her husband, her friends, her doctors, her neighbors—but judging just by what she can see, she’d have to take it as an article of faith that any one person was there at all. It was five years ago that the 87-year-old retired schoolteacher, living in a suburb of Paris, first noticed her eyesight failing, with a point in the middle of her field of vision going hazy, muddy, and dim. Soon that point grew into a spot, and the spot into a blotch—until it became impossible for her to recognize people, read a book, or navigate unfamiliar places on the streets.

The cause of the problem was age-related macular degeneration (AMD), a disease that afflicts some 200 million people worldwide and involves a breakdown of the cells in the retina, particularly in the area known as the macula, which is responsible for central vision. AMD does not typically cause blindness, but vision can be severely impaired. As for a cure for AMD? Nonexistent.

“I always worked with children, teaching them how to read,” says Charton. “So it was especially devastating for me not to be able to read.”

But three years ago, everything changed. After battling two years of slowly deteriorating vision, Charton was able to claw back a small portion of her lost world. Today, while she still can’t see faces or walk the streets unassisted, she does read—not very much; just an hour in the morning and an hour in the afternoon. But restoring even that small portion of her lost sight was transformative. “This brought me hope,” she says. “It literally changed my life.”

The breakthrough came about thanks to the work of Science Corp., a four-year-old neuroscience company based in San Francisco and led by biomedical engineer Max Hodak.