The Science & Technology desk gathers a weekly digest of impactful and interesting research publications and developments at Stanford. Read the latest in this week’s Research Roundup. Stanford researchers develop retinal implant that restores reading ability in blind patients A microchip smaller than a fingernail, surgically placed beneath the retina, has restored the ability to read in patients who lost their sight to dry age-related macular degeneration, the most common form of incurable blindness in older adults. The microchip operates alongside augmented-reality glasses equipped with a camera that captures images and projects them as infrared light onto the implant’s 378 photovoltaic pixels. The device, called PRIMA, was developed by Stanford ophthalmology professor Daniel Palanker and works by converting infrared light into an electrical current that stimulates surviving retinal neurons, which then relay signals to the brain. “It’s basically like solar panels,” Palanker said to Stanford Magazine. “Every pixel is a little solar panel in the eye.” In a clinical trial which took place in Europe, 27 of 32 patients who completed one year of follow-up regained the ability to read letters, numbers and words. The results were published in the New England Journal of Medicine in Oct. 2025. Science Corporation, which now manufactures PRIMA, expects European regulatory approval by summer, with U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval pending. Currently, Palanker’s lab is developing a next-generation chip with more than 10,000 pixels to further improve image resolution and enable potential facial recognition. Stanford study finds gut bacteria drive age-related memory loss, and the decline may be reversible Shifts in the gut microbiome that occur naturally with aging impair communication between the intestines and the brain to drive cognitive decline, but restoring that pathway can reverse memory loss, according to a mouse study from Stanford Medicine and the Arc Institute published in