Slanted Science

This is a story which may be of great benefit to many people in a few years’ time, but which at the moment we find most remarkable for two things. One is cool but a little bit weird, the other is cool but so freaking creepy it’ll dance through your dreams tonight.

Following a stroke, car wreck or combat injury, thousands of people each year are left unable to blink. At first glance – no pun intended – this might not sound too bad. However, the eyes need us to blink many times each day in order to keep them lubricated, and free of dirt and bacteria.

Currently, one of the most widely used methods for restoring some level of blinkability is to transplant a small piece of muscle from the patient’s leg into their face (another method used is detailed below). However, as this is a surgical procedure it is unsuitable for older folks, amongst others.

So, scientists at UC Davis Medical Center in California, led by facial plastic surgeon Travis Tollefson, have been working on ways of using miniaturized motors and electronics to operate the eyelids.

Their approach has focused on the use of “electroactive polymer artificial muscle” (EPAM). EPAM makes use of electroactive polymers which, similarly to human muscle, expand and contract in response to an incoming voltage (just think of those crazy abdominal muscle belts, which zap your belly mountain with electricity in order to turn it into a rock-hard love plateau).

The surgeons and scientists describe why curing facial paralysis was their first choice. As otolaryngologist Craig Senders says:

Facial muscles require relatively low forces, much less than required to move the fingers or flex an arm.

Before moving onto those higher-load systems, the boffins hope next to target their technology at restoring the ability to smile, and to maintain bladder control.

And now, the coolest aspects of this work:

Cool but a little weird: The second most common current treatment – after the muscle transplant – is to implant a small gold weight inside the eyelid.

When the muscle damaged is the orbicularis occuli, the other muscles -which hold the eyelids open – still function. With this treatment, when a person wishes to blink they relax the working eye muscles and the weight of all that bling acts to close the lids.

WTF? We can create tiny remote-controlled helicopters for guys’ drunken amusement, yet our best response to paralyzed eyes is little more than duct tape and a rusty old screw?

Cool but so freaking creepy it’ll dance through your dreams tonight: Do you want to know their testing system for this invention?

Cadavers.

Dead human bodies.

That’s right, there are people in this world who spend their days making dead guys blink, like some sort of eye-obsessed Herbert West.

And, while we salute them and wish them all the best, there is one other group of people for whom we reserve our greatest admiration: their wives.

Now, here’s some anatomical gifts from Amazon. You weirdos.

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