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Reading letters with my tongue: BrainPort testing video.Click on the youtube video to see me testing the brainport vision device to read
with my tongue: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDvDgysmKLsToday, i tested a device called a Brainport. It allows blind people to perceive objects using a camera mounted on glasses which sends the image to an electrode held on the tongue. The tongue receives the pixels of the image as current which the brain sends to the visual cortex to decipher. Still at the research stage of the development, today i took part in a trial of the device which is about to be put forward for FDA approval and hopefully commercial availability. It wasn't like normal seeing, but it was similar to the alternative sense of vision that i get from touching things. The difference is i could see a letter on a card that i couldn't feel with my hands. I'm in the U.S. at the moment taking part in an intensive physical therapy program at Project Walk in southern California to try
and regain feeling and movement in my paralysed legs. This program and theBrainport use the principles known as neuroplasticity - that the brain and the
nervous system is plastic, that it can adapt and re-learn new ways to behaveafter such catastrophic injurie. Five weeks in america and i'm leaving with hope
for both my vision and chances of getting out of my wheelchair eventually. Exciting! Source URL: http://markpollock.posterous.com/reading-letters-with-my-tongue-brainport-test ---------- 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
