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BrainPort Allows People To Reclaim Damaged Senses
Karma Star writes "There is a news article on a new device called a BrainPort, which is special device that
is worn like a helmet, with a strip of tape containing an array of 144 microelectrodes
hanging off the headset which is placed on the tongue. The BrainPort then sends signals
to the tongue which are then picked up by the brain, allowing the user to regain otherwise
lost sensory input.
More at the NY Times
(soul stealing subscription required)."
Synaesthesia is quite common actually.
In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is. - Yogi Berra
For people buy into that paragraph bullshit.
New Tools to Help Patients Reclaim Damaged Senses
By SANDRA BLAKESLEE
Published: November 23, 2004
Cheryl Schiltz vividly recalls the morning she became a wobbler. Seven years ago, recovering from an infection after surgery with the aid of a common antibiotic, she climbed out of bed feeling pretty good.
"Then I literally fell to the floor," she said recently. "The whole world started wobbling. When I turned my head, the room tilted. My vision blurred. Even the air felt heavy."
The antibiotic, Ms. Schiltz learned, had damaged her vestibular system, the part of the brain that provides visual and gravitational stability. She was forced to quit her job and stay home, clinging to the walls to keep from toppling over.
But three years ago, Ms. Schiltz volunteered for an experimental treatment - a fat strip of tape, placed on her tongue, with an array of 144 microelectrodes about the size of a postage stamp. The strip was wired to a kind of carpenter's level, which was mounted on a hard hat that she placed on her head. The level determined her spatial coordinates and sent the information as tiny pulses to her tongue.
The apparatus, called a BrainPort, worked beautifully. By "buzzing" her tongue once a day for 20 minutes, keeping the pulses centered, she regained normal vestibular function and was able to balance.
Ms. Schiltz and other patients like her are the beneficiaries of an astonishing new technology that allows one set of sensory information to substitute for another in the brain.
Using novel electronic aids, vision can be represented on the skin, tongue or through the ears. If the sense of touch is gone from one part of the body, it can be routed to an area where touch sensations are intact. Pilots confused by foggy conditions, in which the horizon disappears, can right their aircraft by monitoring sensations on the tongue or trunk. Surgeons can feel on their tongues the tip of a probe inside a patient's body, enabling precise movements.
Sensory substitution is not new. Touch substitutes for vision when people read Braille. By tapping a cane, a blind person perceives a step, a curb or a puddle of water but is not aware of any sensation in the hand; feeling is experienced at the tip of the cane.
But the technology for swapping sensory information is largely the effort of Dr. Paul Bach-y-Rita, a neuroscientist in the University of Wisconsin Medical School's orthopedics and rehabilitation department. More than 30 years ago, Dr. Bach-y-Rita developed the first sensory substitution device, routing visual images, via a head-mounted camera, to electrodes taped to the skin on people's backs. The subjects, he found, could "see" large objects and flickering candles with their backs. The tongue, sensitive and easy to reach, turned out to be an even better place to deliver substitute senses, Dr. Bach-y-Rita said.
Until recently sensory substitution was confined to the laboratory. But electronic miniaturization and more powerful computer algorithms are making the technology less cumbersome. Next month, the first fully portable device will be tested in Dr. Bach-y-Rita's lab.
The BrainPort is nearing commercialization. Two years ago, the University of Wisconsin patented the concept and exclusively licensed it to Wicab Inc., a company formed by Dr. Bach-y-Rita to develop and market BrainPort devices. Robert Beckman, the company president, said units should be available a year from now.
Meanwhile, a handful of clinicians around the world who are using the BrainPort on an experimental basis are effusive about its promise.
"I have never seen any other device do what this one does," said Dr. F. Owen Black, an expert on vestibular disorders at the Legacy Clinical Research and Technology Center in Portland, Ore. "Our patients are begging us to continue using the device."
Dr. Maurice Ptito, a neuroscientist at University of Montreal School of Optometry, is conducting bra
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Here's a basic summary, in case the site gets slashdotted or in case you lost your senses of reading:
The method used is called sensory substitution.
That is, one sense can be used to emulate the input that is usually provided by another sense. The tongue is one of the best places for input.
You have to wear the substitution device for it to work, although it is speculated that by training the brain areas for the lost sense, the working of that area can be improved, so it just might help restore a sense in the situation where the organ not working is parts of the brain.
I'd like to add that I heard blind people can go mad when you try to feed them visual stimuli through the eye nerves, probably because these brain parts have taken on other roles. I'd therefore like to suggest that babies born blind are provided with artificial visual stimuli, so that this part of the brain learns to work and can later operate fully, when there is the technology to provide fully working artificial eyes.
I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
This doesn't use taste, it uses electrical impulses. As long as you still have feeling on your tongue, you're ok. Well, you're not necessarily ok, but you are able to use this apparatus. If you lose feeling in your tongue, this technology has been proven with sensors on subject's backs, chests, and foreheads.
"The object of war is not to die for your country, but to make the other bastard die for his." - Patton
Older version of tongue interface.
University of Montreal news release
But wait, there's more cooler brain interfacing going on! Mystic Visions
I see, in the very near future, big wads of $100 bills moving into my pocket from users of the APE(TM) helmet. A Psychedelic Experience! Users don the APE helmet and the core moderating frequencies of the brain are modulated to produce everything from the mystic experience (sans the nasty side effects of peyote, psylocibin, or X) to a full blown emulation of a trip on the finest of Dr. Hofmann's concotions.
Franchise options available NOW!
Now I'm the grandest Tiger in the Jungle!
I call B.S. on this unless you have a serious complex.
m l
While I have no idea if this guy is telling the truth about his own condition, "synesthesia" is a real neurological condition. It can be brought on by drugs, such as LSD, or it can occur naturally...
http://web.mit.edu/synesthesia/www/synesthesia.ht
ZuluPad, the wiki notepad on crack
What the hell are you talking about? It applies small signals to the tongue, like licking a tiny battery. Nothing to do with cattle prods or applying electricity to the brain.
If you want to torture someone, stick them with a regular old cattle prod.
"Oh god no! Please stop making my tongue tingly! It's so unbearable!"
The nerve bundles do, according to my Neurologist, regenerate over time. "Time"being" being years and decades. Supplements of Zinc are thought to help.
In four years, I've gone from smelling the same thing (burning blood, oh so wonderful) to faintly sensing almost everything. Part of it is probably brain re-training, and part of it is nerve regeneration.
Unfortunately, I don't think that this technology will function in the manner you hope. The Glands of Bowman and olfactory bulb that function as our sense of smell are screamingly complicated electro-chemical analytic systems. You'd have to cart around a full chemical assay lab on your back to equal these amazing biological systems. I believe that our best hope is for superior nervous tissue regeneration, which currently has its best hopes in the highly politicized "Stem Cell" arena.
Good luck, I know what you're feeling, and 'smell ya later'.