"The first flexible retinal implant could restore some vision to people with certain forms of visual impairment. Conditions such as age-related macular degeneration occur when some of the photoreceptors in the eye stop functioning properly. But as other parts of the eye still work, it should be possible to restore vision using an implant that mimics the photoreceptor layer, says Rostam Dinyari at Stanford University in California. To achieve this, an implant needs to convert a light signal into an electrical pulse – in other words, perform like a solar cell. But most solar cells are rigid, which makes them far from ideal for use inside the eye. "If you have a lens, the focal plane is always curved and the best picture forms on a spherical surface," Dinyari says. This is why the retina is curved." - Steven Perez from Bookmarklet