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Re: tasting what's around you?	Easy Talk
	May 19, 2009 02:48 PDT

Sounds like an opticon for the tongue. I doubt it is cheep.

Robert

----- Original Message -----
From: "Chip Orange" <Cora-@PSC.STATE.FL.US>
To: <TA-@topica.com>
Sent: Monday, May 18, 2009 3:11 PM
Subject: RE: [TABI] tasting what's around you?

Yes, I've read of many studies that show if you lose your sight at an
early enough age, your brain reuses all the areas that would have been
used for visual processing, for other tasks.

I've also read that the navy seals are already using this device, or an
adapted version, to provide them with needed information underwater,
where they have no light, and sometimes need access to a lot of
information about passive sonar, location of other seals underwater,
direction and depth and time information, etc. I don't know what all
they ended up using it for, the article I read just said they were sure
they were going to use the tongue input because it was perfect for the
underwater environment.

Chip

------------------------------

Chip Orange
Database Administrator
Florida Public Service Commission

Chip.O-@psc.state.fl.us
(850) 413-6314

(Any opinions expressed are solely those of the author and do not
necessarily reflect those of the Florida Public Service Commission.)

-----Original Message-----
From: Barbara Lineberry [mailto:bkb-@nettally.com]
Sent: Monday, May 18, 2009 3:02 PM
To: TA-@topica.com
Subject: Re: [TABI] tasting what's around you?

Gee what an awesome invention. I remember reading somewhere
long ago that
we normally use only 10% of our brain and that it can adapt
readily. I hope
with all my heart that this can be available to all who want it at a
reasonable price (free is too much to hope for) in the near future.

Barbara

----- Original Message -----
From: "K4NKZ Jim" <k4n-@comcast.net>
To: <TA-@topica.com>
Sent: Monday, May 18, 2009 1:42 PM
Subject: [TABI] tasting what's around you?

----- Original Message -----
Sent: Monday, May 18, 2009 10:11 AM
Subject: Fw: [H N L] tasting what's around you?

Seeing with your tongue.

By RON SEELY, 608-252-6131, rse-@madison.com

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.

Check out the TABI resource web page at:
http://acorange.home.comcast.net/TABI/

(be sure and make suggestions)


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