[optacon-l] Seeing with your tongue.
- From: "H & C Arnold" <4carolyna@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <optacon-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 26 May 2009 09:14:48 -0400
Seeing with your tongue.
>>>>
>>>> By RON SEELY, 608-252-6131, rseely@xxxxxxxxxxx
>>>>
>>>> Roger Behm lost his sight at 16, the victim of an inherited disease
>>>> that
>>>> destroyed his retinas. Both of his eyes were surgically removed.
>>>>
>>>> Now 55, Behm has made himself at home in a sightless world. He started
>>>> his own
>>>> business in Janesville selling devices that help the blind cope with
>>>> day-to-day tasks. He and his wife have raised five children and just
>>>> adopted another child from China who is also blind. He fishes, canoes,
>>>> camps and scuba dives.
>>>>
>>>> But Behm can remember seeing. Which is why he couldn't believe it when,
>>>> three
>>>> years ago, he slipped a device over his head, turned it on, and was
>>>> once
>>>> again
>>>> able to discern light and dark, shapes and shadows, letters and
>>>> numbers,
>>>> and even a rolling golf ball.
>>>> "I could look down and and see the ball, white on black, and I could
>>>> see myself
>>>> swinging my putter," Behm said. "And, of course, I missed. But I could
>>>> reach
>>>> down and pick up my ball, like any other sighted person."
>>>> The device is called BrainPort and, though it seems like a gadget from
>>>> Star Trek, it may be available commercially by the end of the year.
>>>>
>>>> It works by converting images from a video camera to electrical
>>>> impulses
>>>> that are transmitted via the tongue to the brain of the blind person
>>>> and
>>>> turned again
>>>> into black-and-white images that the user sees.
>>>> It takes advantage of groundbreaking work by a UW-Madison scientist
>>>> that showed
>>>> the brain will reprogram itself to accept and use different sensory
>>>> signals - in
>>>> this case touch instead of sight - to replace signals that can no
>>>> longer
>>>> be received due to injury or disease.
>>>> The device, which consists of a miniature camera mounted on a pair of
>>>> sunglasses, a tongue sensor and a small control unit, was developed by
>>>> Wicab of Middleton. It builds on another of the company's devices that
>>>> uses the same underlying ideas to help restore users' balance.
>>>> The company is applying to the federal Food and Drug Administration to
>>>> get
>>>> approval for a marketable version of the vision device that could be
>>>> available
>>>> by the end of the year, Wicab CEO Robert Beckman said.
>>>>
>>>> Trying circumstances.
>>>>
>>>> Few have tested BrainPort under more trying circumstances than Erik
>>>> Weihenmayer,
>>>> the only blind man to reach the summit of Mt. Everest. Weihenmayer,
>>>> totally
>>>> blind since the age of 16, has used the device to help him hike in the
>>>> woods,
>>>> even ascend climbing walls. But he has most appreciated it for letting
>>>> him do
>>>> such simple but rewarding tasks as playing tic-tac-toe with his
>>>> daughter
>>>> or reaching down to pet his dog.
>>>>
>>>> "I have a climbing friend who didn't believe me when I told him about
>>>> this,"
>>>> Weihenmayer said. "So he put a Pepsi can on my table in my kitchen
>>>> while
>>>> I was
>>>> out of the room. Then he called me back in and told me to grab it. I
>>>> reached out
>>>> and grabbed the Pepsi can. He was blown away. He was speechless. He had
>>>> tears in his eyes.
>>>> "I mean, it may not seem like a real big deal to people, but to be able
>>>> to
>>>> see your coffee cup ... ."
>>>>
>>>> Neither Behm nor Weihenmayer are paid consultants to Wicab, although
>>>> the
>>>> company pays some of their expenses.
>>>>
>>>> The late Paul Bach-y-Rita, a UW-Madison physician and specialist in
>>>> rehabilitation, first came up with the ideas that inspired BrainPort in
>>>> the 1960s. The technology was patented by UW-Madison in 1998, and
>>>> commercial
>>>> development has been under way for more than 10 years.
>>>>
>>>> New ways to work.
>>>> Bach-y-Rita's earliest thinking about the brain's ability to adapt to
>>>> new ways
>>>> of receiving and processing information - its "plasticity," as it is
>>>> known now -
>>>> was likely sparked by the dramatic struggle of his father, Pedro, to
>>>> recover from a devastating stroke in the mid-1960s, Beckman said.
>>>> Neurologists in those days believed brain damage could not be reversed.
>>>> But
>>>> Bach-y-Rita's brother, George, soon put their father to work doing
>>>> chores such
>>>> as sweeping the porch of the house. Forced to accomplish more and more
>>>> difficult
>>>> tasks, their father eventually recovered completely and even went back
>>>> to
>>>> his job teaching.
>>>> He died at the age of 73 of a heart attack while climbing in the
>>>> mountains of
>>>> Columbia.
>>>> Remarkably, studies of Pedro's brain after his death showed massive
>>>> damage to his brain from the stroke. Yet he recovered. Somehow, his
>>>> brain had found new ways to work.
>>>> At the UW-Madison, Bach-y-Rita focused his studies on sensory
>>>> substitution, the idea that the brain can learn how to use other
>>>> senses
>>>> to replace one that has been lost or damaged. He concentrated on the
>>>> power of touch, studying what happens in the brain when visual cues
>>>> come from the sensitive nerves of the
>>>> skin, such as those on the fingertips.
>>>>
>>>> Perfect organ.
>>>>
>>>> Those studies buttressed others that showed the brain can indeed learn
>>>> how to use nerve impulses, delivered through touch, to create images.
>>>> Exactly what happens remains somewhat of a mystery. But more recently,
>>>> MRI images taken of the brain while it is working do show the visual
>>>> cortex of the brain
>>>> lighting up when receiving sensory data retrieved through touch.
>>>> "The information does get to the area of the brain that is responsible
>>>> for vision," said Kurt Kaczmarek, a UW-Madison engineer and scientist
>>>> who was involved in the early work on BrainPort.
>>>> The tongue is the perfect organ for the task, Beckman said, because it
>>>> is moist
>>>> and an excellent transmitter of electrical signals, and it has more
>>>> tactile nerve endings than any other part of the body except for the
>>>> lips.
>>>>
>>>> Though one can read the science over and over again, it still requires
>>>> somewhat
>>>> of a leap of faith to grasp the idea of "seeing" through the tongue.
>>>> Simply, the
>>>> patterns of light picked up by the camera are converted by a tiny
>>>> computer into
>>>>> electrical pulses across 100 stainless steel electrodes. Users say it
>>>>> feels similar to touching a weak battery to your tongue, a bubbly or
>>>>> tingling sensation.
>>>>
>>>> The pulses are spatially encoded, meaning the person receiving those
>>>> signals on the tongue can perceive depth, perspective, size and shape.
>>>> That information is translated by the brain into images - fuzzy
>>>> images, because of the low resolution, but images nonetheless. Those
>>>> who have used the device explain
>>>> that they perceive the objects in front of them, separate from their
>>>> own
>>>> bodies. A milestone of sorts. Weihenmayer recalled how when he first
>>>> tried BrainPort, the researchers sat
>>>> him down at a table, fitted him with the device, and then rolled a ball
>>>> toward
>>>> him.
>>>> "It's a hard thing to wrap your brain around," said Weihenmayer. "But
>>>> when they
>>>> rolled a white tennis ball toward me, I could feel the ball rolling.
>>>> First I could feel the ball starting at the back of my tongue and
>>>> getting bigger and bigger, coming toward me. And then I reached out
>>>> and
>>>> grabbed it."
>>>> When he ascends a rock climbing wall with BrainPort, Weihenmayer said,
>>>> he
>>>> can see the handholds, their differences in shape and the contrast in
>>>> light between
>>>> them and the background. What he sees, he explained, is largely shapes
>>>> and light
>>>> variations, sort of an out-of-focus image.
>>>> Last month, Weihenmayer joined Beckman at the National Eye Institute's
>>>> 40th
>>>> anniversary celebration to demonstrate BrainPort and some of its
>>>> powers.
>>>> It
>>>> seemed a milestone of sorts.
>>>> But the man whose genius led to the creation of such a useful invention
>>>> was not present. Bach-y-Rita died of cancer in November of 2006.
>>>> "He would have loved to have been there," said Beckman.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>
-
In God We Trust,
Carolyn
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