Interesting Bit of the Day – Sight for the Blind
Is this what comes to mind when you think of prosthetic sight?
The keynote speaker for the “All Hands” meeting today was Erik Weihenmayer. Erik gave an amazing and inspirational talk about overcoming adversity and achieving great things when others believe you can’t.
This is often the topic of various motivational “You Can Do Anything” speakers. If I remember correctly, we had a few of these in middle school and high school mixed in with the “Say no to drugs” and “Avoid Peer Pressure” speakers. Usually, the “You Can Do Anything” speakers were (maybe) recovered Meth addicts or high school drop outs who got their GED and started their own auto salvage company. Obviously, a massive company like AOL can get a higher quality of speaker, and they struck gold with Erik. What makes Erik so great is that he is blind, and among other things, a rock climber. His feats include reaching Everest’s summit. Pretty amazing.
If that was not interesting enough on its own, Erik showed a new technology called BrainPort allowing visually impaired people “sight”. A textured mouth piece is placed on the tongue of the user. Cameras worn by the user translate video into a sort of pixelated image that is then translated into the texture of the mouth piece. The texture triggers signals to the brain that are then interpreted as visuals. I envision it to be like those pin art toys you see at Spenser gifts, etc.
A video on the device can be seen on the Brain Port Website. From the video “Your brain is what really sees not your eyes. When your eye’s don’t work, you create another portal into your brain”. In the video, Erik can be seen retrieving objects with confidence and even discerning numbers. Very cool.
Other therapies have been researched including “seeing through your skin” but the BrainPort technology makes a lot of sense and seems similar to the development of smart prosthetic limbs using nerve connections.
My thought is that your brain is like the CPU of a computer (usually the metaphor is reversed). Your input devices and peripherals are your sensory organs (eyes, ears, skin, etc). These are connected to your brain through nerves and chemical paths within the brain. The devices (eyes for example) detect an object (say a lovely member of the opposite sex) and send a signal to the brain to process it. Your brain receives the signal and processes as needed (perhaps sending signals to other parts of the body). Visually impaired people typically have a problem with only their eyes (the sensory device) yet their brain and nerves are fine. We have not yet been able to simply replace eyes (like you would with a broken scanner), but, as seen with BrainPort, perform a similar function using a different set of tools (perhaps using a digital camera in the computer metaphor).
Lots of interesting bits come to mind (synaesthasia, phantom limbs, etc), but I’ll save that for another day. Have a great weekend. Hopefully, you have enjoyed my posts this week.
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About Me
Blaine Garrett is a Minneapolis-based web designer, fine artists, and general jack of all trades. When he is not designing next-generation web applications or feverishly painting away, he dabbles in other creative endeavors as well as enjoying the fruits of the luscious Twin Cities.
