[blindza] "We Don't See with Our Eyes" - Device Pushes the Limits of Vision.
- From: "Jacob Kruger" <jacob@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "BlindZA" <blindza@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 19 May 2009 07:20:59 +0200
Another nice article about the brain port device, giving a bit more info.
Jacob Kruger
Blind Biker
Skype: BlindZA
'...fate had broken his body, but not his spirit...'
---article content---
"We Don't See with Our Eyes" - Device Pushes the Limits of Vision.
By Allyson T. Collins, NEI Science Writer/Editor.
Erik Weihenmayer wears sunglasses often. He was wearing them to protect his
eyes
when he reached the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro in 1997. He had them on when
he
completed the 2003 Primal Quest, the world's toughest multi-sport adventure
race. And, he put on a pair during a recent visit to the National Eye
Institute
(NEI).
But this last set is no ordinary pair of Oakley sunglasses.
Weihenmayer looks through them, peering down at a white note card on a
table. He
silently moves his head back and forth, up and down. After a few moments, he
says, "Is that a 12?"
Richard Hogle, sitting next to him, nods his head. "Yep," he confirms, "and
you
were still well zoomed out." The sunglasses are wirelessly connected to
Hogle's
laptop, so he can monitor Weihenmayer's view. "I'm amazed," Hogle comments.
Weihenmayer laughs. "How could I make money off this device?" he asks.
"Doing
some kind of card trick at a party... I could really freak people out!"
He is one of only 40 people ever to use this specially outfitted type of
sunglasses, but all have one thing in common: they're blind.
The sunglasses are part of a breakthrough vision device known as BrainPort,
under development by the NEI-supported researchers of Wicab, Inc., for which
Hogle serves as director of product development. BrainPort is built on the
concept of sensory substitution, which means that when one sense
malfunctions,
another sense can compensate, serving as a stand-in.
"Even a blind person walking down the street with a cane is basically using
a
form of sensory substitution," says Michael D. Oberdorfer, Ph.D., of the NEI
extramural research program.
With BrainPort, the tongue ultimately replaces the eyes in transmitting
visual
input to the brain. But first, a small video camera on the nose bridge of
the
sunglasses acts as "eyes" to gather visual information. The images are
transmitted in black, gray and white to a handheld computer, slightly larger
than an iPod, which translates the visual information into electrical
signals.
Next, these signals are transformed into gentle electrical impulses that end
up
on the tongue when BrainPort users place a lollipop-sized electrode array in
their mouths. The white portions of images become strong impulses, the gray
become medium impulses, and the black result in no impulses. The tongue
sends
these impulses to the brain, where they are interpreted as sensory
information
that substitutes for vision.
This process works in much the same way that the optic nerve in the eye
transmits visual information to the brain. Thus, this device supports the
idea
that we may not need our eyes to maintain our "vision." As BrainPort
inventor
Paul Bach-y-Rita, M.D., was known to say: "We don't see with our eyes, we
see
with our brain."
Adapting to Darkness.
When Weihenmayer was a toddler, his parents took him to an ophthalmologist
after
noticing that he had abnormal eye movements. Doctors ruled it a temporary
condition, but a year of additional testing revealed that he had
retinoschisis,
a genetic disease in which small cysts grow within the delicate retinal
tissue
in the back of the eye.
In time, the layers of Weihenmayer's retina would begin to split apart. By
his
teenage years, doctors warned, he would go blind.
To this day, no treatment or cure exists for retinoschisis. In Weihenmayer's
case, doctors recommended that he avoid contact sports, as a blow to his
head
could lead to earlier blindness.
"What was I going to do, live in a bubble?" Weihenmayer asks. "You can't.
Even
at that age I knew, if I'm going to go blind a year earlier, I'm still going
to
live my life."
Like a typical boy, he wrestled and played football. By the time he was 8,
however, he had trouble following the action during basketball games. His
parents would yell, "ball change," when a pass was made, and Weihenmayer
could
track his position on the floor only by following the painted lines.
Even so, he says he didn't notice he was different until other kids did
simple
tasks that eluded him. "That was frustrating and sometimes lonely,
especially
being a boy in gym class," he says.
Still, his father, Ed, remembers, "Erik was fighting to stay in the sighted
world up to a point." He put off using a cane and learning Braille until he
couldn't function without them. But soon he learned that with them, he could
finally participate in class and interact with friends more easily.
"The very things that he thought were going to separate him by making him
different actually kept him closer," Ed Weihenmayer says.
There was no dramatic moment when Erik Weihenmayer realized he was blind.
Some
days he woke up in darkness, but could see by the afternoon. Eventually when
he
became a teenager, however, he realized that the light would never turn back
on.
"My brain had to adjust [to going blind], and that was much more difficult
than
actually going blind," he says.
His family had to adjust as well. "There wasn't anything that we could do
about
the blindness," Ed Weihenmayer says. "What we could do is embrace the
challenge
with him as a new adventure. His problem led to more curiosity, more
innovation
and more fulfillment for everyone around him."
As a teenager, Weihenmayer enrolled in rock climbing classes through a
school
for the blind. "I thought [rock climbing] was an awesome sport for a blind
person," he says. "Maneuvering myself up the rock face was unbelievably
engaging."
As an adult, he transitioned from a once-a-year climber to a "weekend
warrior"
who soon became the only blind person to summit the highest peak on every
continent. Though he can't see the vistas at the top, Weihenmayer says he
still
appreciates the scenery.
"The crunch of the ice under my feet or hands, the pattern within the rock
that
I'm connecting with... It's all my body in relationship to the rock face or
the
mountain," he explains.
And when he reaches the top? "I can hear space."
A Different Vision.
When Ed Weihenmayer learned that his son would go blind, he says that one
thought kept passing through his mind: "Let me please learn how to help him
so
that he can live a life that is meaningful to him."
It was Ed who read a newspaper article about BrainPort in the early 2000s
and
contacted Bach-y-Rita to ask if Erik could test the device.
Bach-y-Rita had thought of the concept for BrainPort nearly 40 years
earlier,
around the time Erik Weihenmayer was born. His first sensory substitution
device
consisted of a chair with pins that popped out in shapes against a person's
back. Much like the guessing game in which one person draws words on
another's
back, the person in the chair could feel and identify the shape through
touch
instead of sight.
Bach-y-Rita, who received his first NEI research grant in 1993, later found
that
the fingertips were even more sensitive to touch than the back. But in
trying to
create an electrical device, he realized that fingertips lack a moist
environment to conduct a charge, and layers of dead skin prevent vibrations
from
having a strong impact. However, the tongue, which is exquisitely sensitive
to
touch, circumvented both of these problems.
Aimee Arnoldussen, Ph.D., worked with Bach-y-Rita to develop BrainPort until
the
inventor passed away in 2006. Though the device does give users visual
input,
she cautions that it does not allow them to "magically see the way you see
with
your eyes."
"It's much more akin to a language in that you develop a skill," says
Arnoldussen, a neuroscientist and current leader of the research.
After five minutes with BrainPort, users can learn to operate the device,
she
explains. Within an hour, they can identify the location and size of small
objects. In a few more hours, larger objects and an obstacle course may
become
visible.
Weihenmayer vividly remembers his first experience with BrainPort. He tested
an
early prototype, a bulky device hooked to a desktop computer that relied on
a
webcam for visual input. He says he could feel the electrical impulses move
along his tongue as a ball rolled across the floor in front of him.
"It took just five minutes before I was reaching out and grabbing it," he
says.
"I just thought it was so cool how my brain caught on to what I was feeling
with
my tongue."
Next, BrainPort researchers went to his home in Colorado to test the
second-generation device, one that had three cameras for different fields of
view and more electrodes to create a better image resolution.
Over several hours, Weihenmayer played tic-tac-toe with his daughter, built
a
snowman, and scaled a rock wall at his local gym. "I started learning how to
climb like a sighted person," he remembers.
To date, no one, including Weihenmayer, has used BrainPort for more than 10
hours total. In the near future, Wicab researchers plan to apply for device
approval from the Food and Drug Administration, so the general public could
gain
access to the device, in addition to those who have been testing it in
clinics.
"We want to get this device into the hands of as many people as possible
because
that's the way that we'll be able to develop the technology and optimize it
for
the most possible blind [people]," says Robert A. Beckman, president and CEO
of
Wicab, Inc.
Everyday Living.
Back in the room with Hogle, Weihenmayer finishes testing the
third-generation
BrainPort, which allows users to select custom-designed image modes for use
indoors, outdoors and while reading. Hogle repacks the device into its
lunchbox-sized case, which is smaller than the entire first-generation
version.
"You can take it with you," Hogle says. And with that, Weihenmayer will
become
the first blind person to take BrainPort home and use it on his own, as part
of
Wicab's latest clinical testing of the device.
Weihenmayer says he hopes to try the device on the ski slopes someday soon,
but
as he has already adapted to living as a blind person, the device won't be a
life-changing element.
"It's not like I'm sitting in suspended animation, waiting for some new
technology that's going to bring my life back," he says.
Still, Beckman reminds people that the device was primarily created for
users
to perform everyday tasks that may seem simple to the sighted, such as
reading
street signs and searching for empty seats on a bus. BrainPort is not meant
to
replace the cane or guide dog for the blind, but to add "an additional bit
of
information to make their lives a little bit easier and a little safer," he
says.
However, even the world's most famous blind adventure athlete, and father of
two, has something modest in mind when he returns home with the device.
After he switches the BrainPort to 8-year-old Emma's "Dora the Explorer"
lunchbox for fashion purposes, Weihenmayer says he'll take a trip to a
prestigious art museum - located in his basement - where he'll "have the
kids
draw pictures for me to see."
Source URL:
http://www.nei.nih.gov/eyeonnei/insight/
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