The body electric

Manipulating our electrical fields is an emerging science whose frontiers range from treating depression, wounds and cancer to restoring sight.

- RUTH NICHOL

Did having her scalp zapped with electrical currents five times a week for four weeks restore Dunedin writer Lynley Hood's sight? After more than a decade of being unable to read or write easily because of damage caused by glaucoma, Hood has no doubts the electrical stimulation she received in 2021 is the reason she can now see properly again.

"I'm on a mission to correct people when they say it's a miracle - it's obviously science," says Hood, who is now happily carrying out research for books she once thought she would never be able to write.

She received the therapy as part of a placebo group in a University of Otago study looking at the treatment of chronic lower back pain. She'd be delighted if her experience leads to others also regaining their sight: "It's really important that other people benefit from this."

Not surprisingly, the study lead, University of Otago research fellow Dr Divya Adhia, takes a slightly more circumspect view. She agrees there is very likely a link between the electrical stimulation Hood received and the return of her eyesight. But exactly how it happened is far from clear.

"At the moment, we are really hitting in the dark. We don't know what the mechanism is."

She says there have been a few overseas studies suggesting a link between electrical stimulation and vision, "but the evidence is still very preliminary". One possibility is that the electrical currents travelled through the skin on Hood's scalp to her eye region and somehow affected her retina, but more research is needed.

Adhia and her colleagues are now collaborating with ophthalmologists to design a study to find out more. "We want to design a more robust study to help people specifically with visual problems."