"Let the Blind See"
From HowStuffWorks.com:
A blind woman sat in a chair opposite a scientist. She was holding a video camera that had been focused on the scientist, who was holding a rubber ball. The woman had a device in her mouth, against her tongue, with wires running to that device from the video camera. She had been blind since birth, and therefore didn't know what a rubber ball looked like, yet when the scientist rolled the ball towards her, she put out her hand and caught it. How?
She saw it. With her tongue.
The device in her mouth is called a BrainPort, and is the result of a lot of research led by Dr Paul Bach-y-Rita. It is based on the groundbreaking discovery that, with training, the brain is able to interpret optical signals no matter what part of the body they come from. In other words, if an electrically stimulated optical signal enters the brain from the nerves that transmit touch signals from the tongue, the optical part of the brain will process it, and the person will see!
As Dr Bach-y-Rita puts it:
"... we do not see with the eyes; the optical image does not go beyond the retina where it is turned into spatio-temporal nerve patterns of [impulses] along the optic nerve fibers. The brain then recreates the images from analysis of the impulse patterns."
Interested? Find out more!
A blind woman sat in a chair opposite a scientist. She was holding a video camera that had been focused on the scientist, who was holding a rubber ball. The woman had a device in her mouth, against her tongue, with wires running to that device from the video camera. She had been blind since birth, and therefore didn't know what a rubber ball looked like, yet when the scientist rolled the ball towards her, she put out her hand and caught it. How?
She saw it. With her tongue.
The device in her mouth is called a BrainPort, and is the result of a lot of research led by Dr Paul Bach-y-Rita. It is based on the groundbreaking discovery that, with training, the brain is able to interpret optical signals no matter what part of the body they come from. In other words, if an electrically stimulated optical signal enters the brain from the nerves that transmit touch signals from the tongue, the optical part of the brain will process it, and the person will see!
As Dr Bach-y-Rita puts it:
"... we do not see with the eyes; the optical image does not go beyond the retina where it is turned into spatio-temporal nerve patterns of [impulses] along the optic nerve fibers. The brain then recreates the images from analysis of the impulse patterns."
Interested? Find out more!
posted by David | 7:02 pm
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home