This was posted on the Seeingwithsound mailing list.  The man with the
camera attached to electrodes implanted in his brain is interested in
becoming a computer user.

From: [log in to unmask]


The appended article is from Monday's Wired News
at the URL

   http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,33691,00.html


Computer Helps Blind Man 'See'

Reuters

A New York researcher said he has helped a blind man to see again using
electrodes implanted into his brain and connected to a tiny television camera
mounted on a pair of glasses.

Although he does not "see" in the conventional sense, he can make out the
outlines of objects, large letters and numbers on a contrasting background,
and can use the direct digital input to operate a computer.

"If he is walking down a hall, the doorway appears as a white frame on a
dark background," William Dobelle, of the Dobelle Institute and
Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center in New York, said in a telephone
interview.

His Dobelle Eye, consists of a tiny television camera and an ultrasonic
distance sensor mounted on a pair of eyeglasses. A cable runs to a
dictionary-sized computer, worn in a belt pack.

After processing the information from the camera, the computer sends a
signal to the user's brain via 68 platinum electrodes. "Each electrode on the
surface of the brain produces dots of light when stimulated that resemble
stars in the sky," Dobelle said. These dots are known as phosphenes.

He demonstrated with Jerry, a 62-year-old patient who lost his vision at the
age of 36 after a blow to the head.

"On a black background, he gets white phosphenes. With small numbers of
phosphenes you have (the equivalent of) a time and temperature sign at a
bank," Dobelle said. "As you get larger and larger numbers of phosphenes,
you go up to having a sports stadium scoreboard."

Jerry, who does not want his last name used, demonstrated by walking
across a room to pull a woolly hat off a wall where it had been taped, took a
few steps to a mannequin and correctly put the hat on its head.

A reproduction of what Jerry sees showed crosses on a video screen that
changed from black to white when the edge of an object passed behind
them on the screen.

"When an object passes by the television camera ... I see dots of light. Or
when I pass by it," Jerry said.

The system works by detecting the edges of objects or letters. Jerry,
currently the only user of the latest system, must move his head slightly to
scan what he is looking at.

Writing in the ASAIO Journal (the journal of the American Society of Artificial
Internal Organs), Dobelle said Jerry has the equivalent of 20/400 vision --
about the same as a severely nearsighted person -- in a narrow field.

"Although the relatively small electrode array produces tunnel vision, the
patient is also able to navigate in unfamiliar environments including the New
York City subway system," Dobelle said in a statement.

Jerry can read two-inch tall letters at a distance of five feet. And he can
use a computer, thanks, Dobelle said, to some input from his 8-year-old son,
Marty.

"He was with us this summer and he said, 'You guys are out of date. Why
don't you take digital signals straight from the TV or computer?'" It worked.
Jerry must scan these images, using a joystick for a computer game, but he
is learning to use a computer and is eager to try some online stock trading.
"He's hot for that," Dobelle said.

Dobelle said he thought being able to use a computer would ultimately prove
more important for blind users of the system than the mobility it offers them.

Jerry and one other patient have had the electrodes implanted in their brains
since 1978, said Dobelle, who specializes in various neural-stimulating
implants.

He said only recently was he able to get the computer small enough to be
portable. "The original electronics package was 10 feet long, 5 feet high,
and 3 feet wide," he said.

"It weighed 2,000 pounds. The present system weighs 10 pounds and is 500
times faster. The semiconductor technology that we needed to implement
active stimulation has changed dramatically and that was the last
technology piece. The chips became available less than a year ago."

One other patient who has tried the new system cannot "see" anything with
it. Dobelle said the man was blinded at the age of 5, 60 years ago, and his
brain may have "forgotten" how to use its visual cortex.

He added that he does not know whether the system will work for people
who were born blind.

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