Helen Keller once said – “The only worse than being blind is having sight but no vision”, though she indicated to ignorance of people, the quote is correct even in the sense of scientific context. Blind people cannot detect the visual stimuli, but they can use their visual cortex of brain.
A study by neurobiologists from Hebrew University of Jerusalem has experimented a sensory substitution device which shows a connection between the auditory stimuli and visual cortex that results in blind people seeing objects with their ears. Scientists hypothesized that to replace information from a missing sense by using input from a different sense can work for a blind person, just like bats and dolphins use sounds and echolocation to see using their ears.
Researchers taught the blind participants to first perceive simple dots and lines and then gradually complex shapes. With less than 70 hours of training, subjects were able to not only recognize the shape of human body but also detect and mimic the exact posture.
Their brain scans were taken that showed during the tasks the visual cortex showed activity and scientists reached the conclusion that with the help of certain algorithms that translate the visual info to sounds, blind people can see.
So instead of just being a secondary machine that responds to sensory input, the brain is a flexible task machine that adapts and learns to response to any stimulus with time and practice.
Seeing this research scientists think the time has come to rehabilitate sight of blind individuals using sensory substitution devices like the lab’s app ‘EyeMusic’ which scans the images and transforms them into sounds for blind people to perceive.
[Source: Cell Press | Image Original Source: Unknown, Seen On Various Websites]
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As someone who was born totally blind, I would like to try this technology. That being said, I’m not sure it’s application would be worth the time and expense that would seem to be involved. Blind people would benefit more from resources being allocated to accessible pedestrian signals, braille displays, and other things that have obvious ability to assist us in our daily lives. I’m not sure what I would gain from knowing the shapes of everything around me. Also, I don’t want to perceive exactly the same types of information sighted people do. I think the diversity of experience makes the world a richer place.
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I have a blind aunt who lives in my house. It would be very helpful for her if this is mass produced.
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Yeah.The researchers say it’s already in market, if it’s not hopefully it soon will be and lives of blind people will become easy. Thank you for the comment.
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Reblogged this on 4t4m4t4.
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The brain seems to be a lot more than just a lump of gunk. It’s almost as though there was an underlying operating system which attempts to self-repair damage, while optimising all of the available resources. Seeing someone recover from a bad stroke shows just how powerful the brain’s underlying operating system must be. Speech, when you have no speech centre is a neat trick.
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Yeah, you are right, scientists are just beginning to understand how brain learns to adapt to any stimulus and response to it the same way everytime it happens.
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I love your Helen Keller quote! It’s so true.
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Thank you, Barbara. 🙂
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