[blindza] Fw: The blind can walk thanks to an eye on the tongue

----- Original Message ----- Hi All, 

For your information. An article with this toe-curling title
appeared last December in the Forum Express of the University
of Montreal. The article text is appended.

Best wishes,

Peter Meijer


Seeing with Sound - The vOICe
http://www.seeingwithsound.com/winvoice.htm


Neuropsychology: The blind can walk thanks to an eye on
the tongue.

12 décembre 2007.

'The only limits with this device are the ones set by the
researcher': Daniel Chebat.

“It’s the first time I make my way across a cluttered
course of several meters without the help of my cane,”
explains 35-year-old M.L. who has been blind since birth.
He accomplished this thanks to a device mounted on his
tongue, which creates a mental image of the space around
him.

In a video recorded by Daniel Chebat, PhD student in
experimental neuropsychology at the Université de
Montréal School of Optometry, M.L. is seen making his way
down a hallway while avoiding a block on his left, a pipe
on his right and the low wall by his feet. This is
possible thanks to a camera mounted on his glasses which
transmits images to a 144-pixel unit on his tongue.

The Tongue Display Unit (TDU) was tested for the first
time in the summer of 2006 on a 14-meter course in
Montreal. It proved to be remarkably efficient. “The 15
blind people from birth we tested showed extraordinary
ability after just a few hours of training,” explains the
28-year-old Chebat. M.L., an engineer himself, said he
looked forward to having a similar device, while other
test subjects added that such a device could eventually
replace their white cane.

Chebat explains that this is not about making the blind
see. The vision of the blind is not modified by the TDU
and remains at approximately 1/90. But the TDU allows
them to recognize simple shapes in their surrounding
environment thanks to the electrical charges transmitted
on their taste buds.

“We are doing basic research and our experiment confirms
what we intended to demonstrate regarding the activation
of the visual cortex. It’s fascinating: the brain of the
blind processes the data coming from the TDU as if it
were visual data,” explains Chebat who works under the
supervision of Professor Maurice Ptito who is well known
for his work on neuronal plasticity.

The device used for this experiment was developed by
Professor Paul Bach-y Rita of the University of
Wisconsin-Madison and it quickly interested Professor
Ptito. The success Ptito obtained won him international
acclaim as well as substantial funding.

Ptito is the recipient of the Colonel Harland Sanders
Chair in Vision Sciences. The funding allowed him to set
up research labs and to build testing courses at the
School of Optometry in Montreal and at the Hvidovre
University Hospital in Denmark where teams of four people
work under his supervision.

Chebat is currently leading three research projects in
Canada and Denmark, which will eventually be the focus of
scientific articles. The project in which M.L.
participated is about to be published while the two other
projects are still at the experimental stage.

In the second project, he wants to explore the sensory
acuity of the blind within the confines of a complex
course made up of five corridors. The third project,
intends to immerse users of the TDU in a video game. The
test subject will be asked to maneuver inside a virtual
environment transmitted onto his taste buds while a
scanner observes his brain.

The observation of the brain during use of the TDU has
yet to be done. “The only limits with this device are the
ones set by the researcher,” says Chebat who is thrilled
by the development of his research.

Source URL:
http://nouvelles.umontreal.ca/content/view/768/260/

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