Wow, how amazing!  I'd love to try it and see what it's like.

Peggy <who imagines it like an Optacon for the tongue>
http://kernsac.livejournal.com/
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Phil Scovell" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Sunday, May 24, 2009 2:29 PM
Subject: Seeing with your tongue.


> Just in case you haven't seen this already.
>
> Phil.
>
> Seeing with your tongue.
>>>
>>> By RON SEELY, 608-252-6131,
> [log in to unmask]
>>>
>>> Roger Behm lost his sight at 16, the victim of an inherited disease that
>>> destroyed his retinas. Both of his eyes were surgically removed.
>>>
>>> Now 55, Behm has made himself at home in a sightless world. He started
>>> his own
>>> business in Janesville selling devices that help the blind cope with
>>> day-to-day tasks. He and his wife have raised five children and just
>>> adopted another child from China who is also blind. He fishes, canoes,
>>> camps and scuba dives.
>>>
>>> But Behm can remember seeing. Which is why he couldn't believe it when,
>>> three
>>> years ago, he slipped a device over his head, turned it on, and was once
>>> again
>>> able to discern light and dark, shapes and shadows, letters and numbers,
>>> and even a rolling golf ball.
>>> "I could look down and and see the ball, white on black, and I could see
>>> myself
>>> swinging my putter," Behm said. "And, of course, I missed. But I could
>>> reach
>>> down and pick up my ball, like any other sighted person."
>>> The device is called BrainPort and, though it seems like a gadget from
>>> Star Trek, it may be available commercially by the end of the year.
>>>
>>> It works by converting images from a video camera to electrical impulses
>>> that are transmitted via the tongue to the brain of the blind person and
>>> turned again
>>> into black-and-white images that the user sees.
>>> It takes advantage of groundbreaking work by a UW-Madison scientist that
>>> showed
>>> the brain will reprogram itself to accept and use different sensory
>>> signals - in
>>> this case touch instead of sight - to replace signals that can no longer
>>> be received due to injury or disease.
>>> The device, which consists of a miniature camera mounted on a pair of
>>> sunglasses, a tongue sensor and a small control unit, was developed by
>>> Wicab of Middleton. It builds on another of the company's devices that
>>> uses the same underlying ideas to help restore users' balance.
>>> The company is applying to the federal Food and Drug Administration to
>>> get
>>> approval for a marketable version of the vision device that could be
>>> available
>>> by the end of the year, Wicab CEO Robert Beckman said.
>>>
>>> Trying circumstances.
>>>
>>> Few have tested BrainPort under more trying circumstances than Erik
>>> Weihenmayer,
>>> the only blind man to reach the summit of Mt. Everest. Weihenmayer,
>>> totally
>>> blind since the age of 16, has used the device to help him hike in the
>>> woods,
>>> even ascend climbing walls. But he has most appreciated it for letting
>>> him do
>>> such simple but rewarding tasks as playing tic-tac-toe with his daughter
>>> or reaching down to pet his dog.
>>>
>>> "I have a climbing friend who didn't believe me when I told him about
>>> this,"
>>> Weihenmayer said. "So he put a Pepsi can on my table in my kitchen while
>>> I was
>>> out of the room. Then he called me back in and told me to grab it. I
>>> reached out
>>> and grabbed the Pepsi can. He was blown away. He was speechless. He had
>>> tears in his eyes.
>>> "I mean, it may not seem like a real big deal to people, but to be able
>>> to
>>> see your coffee cup ... ."
>>>
>>> Neither Behm nor Weihenmayer are paid consultants to Wicab, although the
>>> company pays some of their expenses.
>>>
>>> The late Paul Bach-y-Rita, a UW-Madison physician and specialist in
>>> rehabilitation, first came up with the ideas that inspired BrainPort in
>>> the 1960s. The technology was patented by UW-Madison in 1998, and
>>> commercial
>>> development has been under way for more than 10 years.
>>>
>>> New ways to work.
>>> Bach-y-Rita's earliest thinking about the brain's ability to adapt to
>>> new ways
>>> of receiving and processing information - its "plasticity," as it is
>>> known now -
>>> was likely sparked by the dramatic struggle of his father, Pedro, to
>>> recover from a devastating stroke in the mid-1960s, Beckman said.
>>> Neurologists in those days believed brain damage could not be reversed.
>>> But
>>> Bach-y-Rita's brother, George, soon put their father to work doing 
>>> chores
>>> such
>>> as sweeping the porch of the house. Forced to accomplish more and more
>>> difficult
>>> tasks, their father eventually recovered completely and even went back 
>>> to
>>> his job teaching.
>>> He died at the age of 73 of a heart attack while climbing in the
>>> mountains of
>>> Columbia.
>>> Remarkably, studies of Pedro's brain after his death showed massive
>>> damage to his brain from the stroke. Yet he recovered. Somehow, his
>>> brain had found new ways to work.
>>> At the UW-Madison, Bach-y-Rita focused his studies on sensory
>>> substitution, the idea that the brain can learn how to use other senses
>>> to replace one that has been lost or damaged. He concentrated on the
>>> power of touch, studying what happens in the brain when visual cues come
>>> from the sensitive nerves of the
>>> skin, such as those on the fingertips.
>>>
>>> Perfect organ.
>>>
>>> Those studies buttressed others that showed the brain can indeed learn
>>> how to use nerve impulses, delivered through touch, to create images.
>>> Exactly what happens remains somewhat of a mystery. But more recently,
>>> MRI images taken of the brain while it is working do show the visual
>>> cortex of the brain
>>> lighting up when receiving sensory data retrieved through touch.
>>> "The information does get to the area of the brain that is responsible
>>> for vision," said Kurt Kaczmarek, a UW-Madison engineer and scientist 
>>> who
>>> was involved in the early work on BrainPort.
>>> The tongue is the perfect organ for the task, Beckman said, because it 
>>> is
>>> moist
>>> and an excellent transmitter of electrical signals, and it has more
>>> tactile nerve endings than any other part of the body except for the
>>> lips.
>>>
>>> Though one can read the science over and over again, it still requires
>>> somewhat
>>> of a leap of faith to grasp the idea of "seeing" through the tongue.
>>> Simply, the
>>> patterns of light picked up by the camera are converted by a tiny
>>> computer into
>>>> electrical pulses across 100 stainless steel electrodes. Users say it
>>>> feels similar to touching a weak battery to your tongue, a bubbly or
>>>> tingling sensation.
>>>
>>> The pulses are spatially encoded, meaning the person receiving those
>>> signals on the tongue can perceive depth, perspective, size and shape.
>>> That information is translated by the brain into images - fuzzy images,
>>> because of the low resolution, but images nonetheless. Those who have
>>> used the device explain
>>> that they perceive the objects in front of them, separate from their own
>>> bodies. A milestone of sorts. Weihenmayer recalled how when he first
>>> tried BrainPort, the researchers sat
>>> him down at a table, fitted him with the device, and then rolled a ball
>>> toward
>>> him.
>>> "It's a hard thing to wrap your brain around," said Weihenmayer. "But
>>> when they
>>> rolled a white tennis ball toward me, I could feel the ball rolling.
>>> First I could feel the ball starting at the back of my tongue and
>>> getting bigger and bigger, coming toward me. And then I reached out and
>>> grabbed it."
>>> When he ascends a rock climbing wall with BrainPort, Weihenmayer said, 
>>> he
>>> can see the handholds, their differences in shape and the contrast in
>>> light between
>>> them and the background. What he sees, he explained, is largely shapes
>>> and light
>>> variations, sort of an out-of-focus image.
>>> Last month, Weihenmayer joined Beckman at the National Eye Institute's
>>> 40th
>>> anniversary celebration to demonstrate BrainPort and some of its powers.
>>> It
>>> seemed a milestone of sorts.
>>> But the man whose genius led to the creation of such a useful invention
>>> was not present. Bach-y-Rita died of cancer in November of 2006.
>>> "He would have loved to have been there," said Beckman.
>
> End Of Article.
>
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