Scientists have momentarily restored a faint twinkle of life to dying cells in the human eye.
In order to better understand the way nerve cells succumb to a lack of oxygen, a team of US researchers measured activity in mouse and human retinal cells soon after their death.Amazingly, with a few tweaks to the tissue's environment, they were able to revive the cells' ability to communicate hours later.
It's the first time deceased human donor eyes have ever responded to light in this way, and it has some experts questioning the irreversible nature of death in the central nervous system. The feats were achieved by stalling the rapid degradation of mammalian neurons, using artificial blood, heaters, and pumps to restore circulation of oxygen and nutrients.
Initially, the experiments showed retinal cells continued to react to light for up to five hours after death. Yet the crucial inter-cellular b-wave signals quickly dropped off, apparently due to the loss of oxygen. Nonetheless, some definitions of 'brain death' require a loss of synchronous activity among neurons. If that definition is accepted, then the human retinas in the current study were not yet fully dead.
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