Middleton, WI – The Wicab BrainPort is a device that takes information gathered by a small digital camera in a pair of glasses and sends it to a “lollipop” electrode array that sits on your tongue. The device was designed to help people who are blind or who have extremely low vision.
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The camera in the glasses transmits the light information to a small base unit the size of a cell phone, an article at Scientific American explains. The base unit converts the light information into electrical impulses; this replaces the function of the retina. The retina is the surface at the back of the eye that encodes light into nerve impulses and transmits them to the brain.
The base unit then sends that information into a set of 144 microelectrodes arranged on a lollipop-like paddle that you place on your tongue. The microelectrodes stimulate the nerves on the surface of your tongue. Users have likened the sensation to placing Pop Rocks candies on the tongue.
Although it seems incredible, the user’s brain actually learns to interpret the tongue sensations as a kind of visual image. After all, your brain cannot “see” – it can only interpret the nerve impulses from your eyes and then create a picture that helps you move through a room, or find nearby objects.
The base unit has features like zoom control, light settings control and intensity. Using these controls, users can successfully use the BrainPort to find doorways and elevator buttons and even read letters and numbers. At table, users can easily see cups and forks; I suppose you’d take it out to eat.
SciFi movie fans find this technology truly tasty, ever since something like it was demonstrated by Doctor Emilio Lizardo (aka actor John Lithgow) in the 1984 cult classic The Adventures of Buckaroo Bonzai Across the 8th Dimension.
The BrainPort device seems to work well in practice: patients quickly learn how to find doorways and elevator buttons and even read letters and numbers. At table, users can easily pick out cups and forks; I suppose you’d take it out to eat.
The BrainPort should be approved for market by the end of 2009; it will cost about $10,000 per machine. It has already been tested by the US Navy.
Boruch Poke’ach Ivrim
moshiach is on the way – amazing!
The imagination and drive that some human beings have to better the world is unbelievable. Those who are working on this, with a little siyata d’shmayoh, can bring about a miracle for millions of people to come.
Sounds freeky and sounds lik eit will take a really long time to learn how to see via ones sensative tong. Gr8 idea btw.
I really hope this works.
Its amazing what can be done with technology. Just look at at what cochlear implants have done for the deaf.
BS”D
G-d Bless!
Wonderful!
I hope, BE”H, they regain-obtain all of their vision perfectly!
The name “ Brainport” reflects the major goal of this technology – to transfer into the human brain the flow of information from outside environment using as an alternative channel, human skin and the surface of the tongue for particular applications to help people who lost natural sensory systems (vision, hearing, vestibular). Even more, this technology applied as a unique machine-brain interface can extend human abilities in limitless applications for navigation (including firefighters and scuba divers), communication, entertainment and other areas of everyday life and human activities, see Danilov, Yuri, Tyler, Mitchell. BrainPort: an alternative input to the brain. Journal of Integrated Neuroscience, 2005, 4, 4, pp.1-14.
This technology was patented in University of Wisconsin, Madison by Kurt Kazcmareck and Paul Bach-y-Rita. The Wicab, Inc. was founded by Mitchel Tyler and Paul Bach-y-Rita to speed up commercialization of BrainPort® technologies.
There is at least theoretical perspective for future development of color and stereoscopic vision for the blind; it is also very intriguing to explore combination of this technology with existing methods and tools developed for artificial visual systems. Interestingly, the blind subjects are intensively using the camera zoom on the current BrainPort vision device, even if it was not included in our original natural design.
As a scientific research tool, this technology can facilitate our understanding of brain plasticity, open new areas of research in human psychophysics (basically we discovered new way to utilize the electrotactile sensory system), help to understand interactions of information flows in the human brain. for sensory substitution, this technology tremendously changed the quality of life of people with sensory loss, for
Since 2006, when Paul Bach-y-Rita died, all original inventors and developers of BrainPort technology are working in the University of Wisconsin, Madison, Tactile Communication and Neurorehabilitation Laboratory, Orthopedic and Rehabilitation Medicine Department, web site: tcnl.med.wisc.edu.