This is once again related to The VOIC (Seeing with Sound), where the software is free - both PC version, and a 'smaller' version that can run off of certain cellphones.
Cheers Jacob Kruger ---original message--- Monday, July 2, 2007. Seeing with your ears? Here is a little insight into the sorts of experiments I do. My previous research has mostly focused on the brain finds things visually. For example, how we can find an apple mixed in with other fruit (plus an example of how neurons in the parietal lobe might respond when faced with such a task, from a mini review in J Neuro): < image deleted; from URL http://www.jneurosci.org/cgi/content/full/26/49/12631 > Nowadays I have moved beyond vision to take a look at our other senses, such as how we hear and feel the world, and in particular, how all of this visual, auditory, and tactile information comes together. There are two ways we are doing this. First, we are using a program designed to aid the blind by transforming images into sound called The vOICe. The hope is that, with sufficient training, this device could allow the blind to "see" again, but by using their ears to receive visual-spatial information about the world. Here is what this basically looks like from a NY Times Magazine article on Peter Meijer's device: < image from New York Times deleted > (This picture tries to show how a small spy camera takes a picture of the area in front of the user, then transforms the picture into a soundscape. With practice one can learn to interpret these soundscapes in terms of what objects are in the field of view, and where they are, and in a sense "see" again. That is the end-goal at least!) Secondly we are also studying synaesthesia (also spelled synesthesia), whichis a special "cross-wiring" in the brain that certain people have that allows
them to perceive something through a different modality than normal. For example, some persons see colors when they hear music. Others always see black-on-white text like this in different colors that are not there such as you see here <colored letters rendering deleted>. Both of these routeswill allow us to better understand how the brain puts all of this information
from different sources together into one coherent experience. Source URL: http://reversingthebraindrain.blogspot.com/2007/07/seeing-with-your-ears.html ---------- To send a message to the list, send any message to blindza@xxxxxxxxxxxxx ---------- To unsubscribe from this list, send a message to blindza-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with 'unsubscribe' in the subject line --- The 'homepage' for this list is at http://www.blindza.co.za
