Tasting the Light: Device Lets the Blind "See" with Their Tongues

Legally, a blind person is one "who is incapable of recognising the object( in terms of colour perception )." But, in today's technology, there has been a lot of inventions to restore the vision of the blind , apart from the conventional eye transplant . So, the new technology in the town is a device called "BrainPort"  which helps partially restore vision for a person with the help of his tongue. Confused? , let's see it,

Reality is, 

Neuroscientist Paul Bach-y-Ritahypothesized in the 1960s that "we see with our brains not our eyes." Now, a new device trades on that thinking and aims to partially restore the experience of vision for the blind and visually impaired by relying on the nerves on the tongue's surface to send light signals to the brain.

So, how does "Brainport" actually function?

About two million optic nerves are required to transmit visual signals from the retina—the portion of the eye where light information is decoded or translated into nerve pulses—to the brain's primary visual cortex. 

• With BrainPort, the device being developed by neuroscientists at Middleton, Wisc.–based Wicab, Inc., visual data are collected through a small digital video camera about 1.5 centimeters in diameter that sits in the center of a pair of sunglasses worn by the user. Bypassing the eyes, the data are transmitted to a handheld base unit, which is a little larger than a cell phone. This unit houses such features as zoom control, light settings and shock intensity levels as well as a central processing unit (CPU), which converts the digital signal into electrical pulses—replacing the function of the retina.
• From the CPU, the signals are sent to the tongue via a "lollipop," an electrode array about nine square centimeters that sits directly on the tongue. Each electrode corresponds to a set of pixels. White pixels yield a strong electrical pulse, whereas black pixels translate into no signal. Densely packed nerves at the tongue surface receive the incoming electrical signals, which feel a little like Pop Rocks or champagne bubbles to the user.
• It remains unclear whether the information is then transferred to the brain's visual cortex, where sight information is normally sent, or to its somatosensory cortex, where touch data from the tongue is interpreted, Wicab neuroscientist Aimee Arnoldussen says. "We don't know with certainty," she adds.

The challenge of "rehacking" vision

The key to the device may be its utilization of the tongue, which seems to be an ideal organ for sensing electrical current. Saliva there functions as a good conductor, Seiple said. Also it might help that the tongue's nerve fibers are densely packaged and that these fibers are closer to the tongue's surface relative to other touch organs. (The surfaces of fingers, for example, are covered with a layer of dead cells called stratum corneum.)

"Many people who have acquired blindness are desperate to get their vision back," Nau says. Although sensory substitution techniques cannot fully restore sight, they do provide the information necessary for spatial orientation. Along with the blind, the BrainPort could help people with visual defects such as glaucoma, which leads to the loss of peripheral vision, and macular degeneration, which degrades sight at the center of the visual field.

A Typical Video showing a blind man using BrainPort and recognising the world around him.

 Hope you liked this post too.....Please feel free to comment in the comment section below.
 For more posts and updates subscribe to our newsletter and Like Us on Facebook: Studience