Night vision?

Could a tapetum lucidum be introduced into the human eye in order to grant night vision properties, if not just enhanced vision?
I've read the multiple articles on the injection of Ce6 into the conjunctival sac to give the effect.. however, have you seen the eyes afterwards? That's something that might make people shy away from biohacking, or just scare children. So I guess my question is more along the lines of "could we grant nightvision with only cat-like reflective pupils?" Thoughts?
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  • A couple things here.. one, there is no detectable change in the appearance of the eye after administration of CE6. It's a misconception. Those lenses were intended to limit light that the eye received. CE6 in the presence of certain wavelengths of lights produces free radicals.. it's used as a chemotherapy agent because of this. The initial project seemed promising; however, there was no actual data collected. Other people who later received the same formulation reported no change to night vision. A number did report that planets were significantly different to look at than stars though.. so something was going on but exactly what that was isn't confirmed.

    Take a look at this thread: http://forum.biohack.me/discussion/745/ce6/p1

  • I've been involved in two night vision projects. The NIR project actually resulted in some ok data showing a shift in sensitivity to around 900nm or so. I was also running circles around people in the dark for nearly a month. Replication is easy.. but also terribly uncomfortable and the Retinoic Acid comes with risks. Dissolving SFM and such left me with a bad taste in my mouth regarding these projects and thus I haven't really moved forward with any new ideas I've had in terms of vision. I've also got a pretty solid list of projects I'm already working on. If you are seriously interested in furthering this though there's already a method that's been discussed a bit here:

    http://forum.biohack.me/discussion/942/night-vision/p1
  • In terms of tepetum Lucidum, there has also been discussion but no real suggestions as to how this could be accomplished. A pupil is a hole. The t.lucidum really more associated with the retina. Given the ability to perform a really serious optical surgery, you might be able to engineer a solution.

    There are also variants as to what the lucidum consists of. A tapetum fibrosum is a layer of collagen fibers. They are arranged in a way that makes it reflective. I doubt that you'd be able to find a way to induce collagen production in just such a way that you could replicate this effect. If I remember right, these are found mostly in herbivore animals like sheep.

    More promising is a tapetum cellulosum. An example animal would be a grey seal. In the grey seal, there are cells with an accumulation of Zinc cysteine. There are a crap load of other reflective materials in other organisms. You might find a way to induce the accumulation of a reflective material in the Endoplasmic reticulum of a layer of the retina. I'm not saying I know how, but it's a more realistic solution to propose then the others.
  • Thanks @cassox I'll definitely look into it, and as far as the tapetum lucidum goes, if you were to implant a reflective disk like my original idea, well.. you'd have to disconnect the retina. I'll have to look into other possibilities.
  • I wholeheartedly agree with Cass here in regards to the previous Ce6 projects. Initial proof of concept is so very much not anything amounting hard data. Big pile of hand waving. No data worth regarding. Don't get too excited.

    We actually talked with another member of the board about the tepetum project. Obviously nobody is doing any eye implants.
  • wow..... i will work on that...And I'll tell you all again
  • This definitely sounds interesting, would have to look more into it.
  • @glims & @cassox did you guys use cyclopentolate or something similar to dilate the pupils with either experiment?
  • There was no dilation in either project. Both projects were done with the hope of adjusting a non mechanical element to change the vision.
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