For all the wonderful uses of technology, none is more wonderful than when it can be used to improve the lives of the handicapped. Thanks to technology, amputees can beat Olympic Sprinting records, and Cochlear Implants allow the deaf to hear music. But where the heck are cyber-eyeballs for the blind already?
We may now have them. A device called the BrainPort is a sixth sense for the blind, translating images from a video camera to electrical impulses that are transmitted via the tongue to the brain of a blind person.
The test patient is Roger Behm, a man who lost his sight at the age of sixteen when an inherited disease destroyed his retinas and they had to be surgically removed. Now, thanks to the Brainport, he can slip a device over his head and see — albeit in black and white — nearly as well as a sighted person, and all through his mouth.
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. The science behind it is in the brain’s remarkable ability to reprogram itself to accept and use different sensory signals if one is removed.
It’s incredible technology: Erik Weinhenmayer, another blind man, climbed Mount Everest a few years ago using the Brainport. As a sighted man, my only regret is the technology can’t be adapted to work on senses the brain doesn’t already have: I’d love to install a sixth sensory module into my tongue just the way the blind can install the Brainport.