Scientists have developed a technique called a tongue display unit that allows blind or blindfolded individuals to perceive basic shapes and features through electrical signals transmitted to the tongue from a camera. The visual cortex is able to interpret these tactile signals from the tongue as crude visual images. While the resolution is low, this method has allowed some blind users to perceive things like motion or the flickering of a candle flame. The ultimate goal is to improve the resolution of the device to help visually impaired individuals better navigate and improve their quality of life.
Oculopathy: Disproves the orthodox and theoretical bases upon which glasses are so freely prescribed, and puts forward natural remedial methods of treatment for what are sometimes termed incurable visual defects
Scientists have developed a technique called a tongue display unit that allows blind or blindfolded individuals to perceive basic shapes and features through electrical signals transmitted to the tongue from a camera. The visual cortex is able to interpret these tactile signals from the tongue as crude visual images. While the resolution is low, this method has allowed some blind users to perceive things like motion or the flickering of a candle flame. The ultimate goal is to improve the resolution of the device to help visually impaired individuals better navigate and improve their quality of life.
Scientists have developed a technique called a tongue display unit that allows blind or blindfolded individuals to perceive basic shapes and features through electrical signals transmitted to the tongue from a camera. The visual cortex is able to interpret these tactile signals from the tongue as crude visual images. While the resolution is low, this method has allowed some blind users to perceive things like motion or the flickering of a candle flame. The ultimate goal is to improve the resolution of the device to help visually impaired individuals better navigate and improve their quality of life.
Scientists have developed a technique called a tongue display unit that allows blind or blindfolded individuals to perceive basic shapes and features through electrical signals transmitted to the tongue from a camera. The visual cortex is able to interpret these tactile signals from the tongue as crude visual images. While the resolution is low, this method has allowed some blind users to perceive things like motion or the flickering of a candle flame. The ultimate goal is to improve the resolution of the device to help visually impaired individuals better navigate and improve their quality of life.
Although each type of sensory input is received primarily by a distinct brain region responsible for perception of that modality, the regions of the brain involved with perceptual processing receive sensory signals from a variety of sources. Thus, the visual cortex receives sensory input not only from the eyes but from the body surface and ears as well. One group of scientists is exploiting in an unusual but exciting way this sharing of sensory input by multiple regions of the brain. In this research, blind or sighted but blind folded volunteers are able to crudely perceive shapes and features in space by means of a tongue display unit. When this device, which consists of a grid of electrodes is positioned on the tongue, it translates images detected by a camera into a pattern of electrical signals that activate touch receptors on the tongue (see the accompanying figure). “The pattern of tingling” on the tongue as a result of the light- induced electrical signals corresponds with the image recorded by the camera. With practice, the visual cortex interprets this alternate sensory input as a visual image. As one of the investigators who developed this technique claims, a person sees with the visual cortex, not with the eyes. Any means of sending signals to the visual cortex can be perceived as a visual image. For example, one blind participant in the study saw the flickering of a candle flame for the first time by means of this tongue device. The tongue is a better choice than the skin for receiving this light-turned-tactile input because the saliva is an electrically conducive fluid that readily conducts the current generated in the device by the visual input. Further-more, the tongue is densely populated with tactile receptors, opening up the possibility that the tongue can provide higher acuity of visual input than the skin could. This feature will be important if such a device is ever used to help the visually impaired. The researchers’ goal is to improve the resolution of the device by increasing the number of in-the-mouth electrodes. Even so, the perceived image will still be crude because the acuity afforded by this device can never come close to matching that provided by the eyes’ small receptive fields. Although using the tongue as a surrogate eye could never provide anywhere near the same vision as a normal eye, the hope is that this technique will afford people who are blind a means to make out doorways, to see objects as vague shapes, and to track motion. Even this limited visual input would enable a sightless person to get around easier and improve the quality of his or her life. The device’s developers plan to shrink the size of the unit so that it will fit inconspicuously in the users’ mouth and be connected by a wireless link to a miniature camera mounted on eyeglasses. Such a trimmed-down unit would be practical to use and cosmetically acceptable.
Oculopathy: Disproves the orthodox and theoretical bases upon which glasses are so freely prescribed, and puts forward natural remedial methods of treatment for what are sometimes termed incurable visual defects