Seeing With Your Tongue

There is some new age wo wo stuff going on, but if you get past the spacey music and see what is going on, there is a core of an idea there that makes sense. From the article:

• Watch as Erik Weihenmayer, the first blind person to climb Everest and the Seven Summits, experiments with the Brainport Vision Device, a revolutionary new technology enabling a blind person to see with his tongue. Mounted on Erik's head is a small video camera which translates visual information to a credit card-size tongue display. Four-hundred tiny pixels present electrical patterns on his tongue, which Erik's brain then interprets as a visual picture in three-dimensional space. He uses the device to read words and numbers on note cards, to play tic-tac-toe and stone-paper-scissors with his daughter, and to rock climb.
  

To learn more about Erik, go to www.TouchTheTop.com.

New Implant allows Blind to See

I know, we have done this one to death, but in truth, most "blindness reversing technology" is still in the experimental stages and years away from implementation. That's what makes this new tech from developers in Germany so exciting. But as this Dvice article states a sub-retinal chip has

• already given sight back to three individuals who have a previously incurable form of blindness.

The tech is not perfect and the implant only works on those who suffer from retinal dystrophy. But even so, patients who have received the implant were able to find objects placed on a table in front of them, walk independently around a room, read a clock and other abilities that they were previously incapable of doing.

read the complete Dvice article here

Trials for 'bionic' eye implants

A bionic eye implant that could help restore the sight of millions of blind people could be available to patients within two years.

US researchers have been given the go-ahead to implant the prototype device in 50 to 75 patients.

The Argus II system uses a spectacle-mounted camera to feed visual information to electrodes in the eye.

he new devices work by implanting an array of tiny electrodes into the back of the retina.

A camera is used to capture pictures, and a processing unit, about the size of a small handheld computer and worn on a belt, converts the visual information into electrical signals.

These are then sent back to the glasses and wirelessly on to a receiver just under the surface of the front of the eye, which in turn feeds them to the electrodes at the rear.

The whole process happens in real time.

posted by Shaun A. Saunders