BrainPort Vision Device

Revolutionary Assistive Technology Helps Blind See with Their Tongue

Oct 20, 2009

BrainPort collects visual data using a tiny, glasses-mounted video camera, translating images into electrical patterns on the surface of the tongue.

Those who have used the prototype say it feels like pictures drawn on the tongue with champagne bubbles. This is the BrainPort Vision Device, an assistive prosthetic being developed Wicab, Inc. (Middleton, Wisc.) that promises to open new worlds of perception to the blind and visually impaired.

Neuroscientist Dr. Paul Bach-y-Rita pioneered the concept of “sensory substitution,” BrainPort’s underlying principal, in the late 1960s. Since it is the brain, and not the eye, that processes vision, Bach-y-Rita proposed that visual perception (i.e. the electrical impulses the brain interprets) could be delivered through a secondary sense such as touch. BrainPort sends electrical impulses to the brain through nerves in the tongue rather than the optic nerve.

How BrainPort Vision Device Works

BrainPort consists of a base unit, a digital video camera, and postage-stamp-sized (3cm by 3cm) electrode array for the top surface of the tongue, worn in the mouth much like a retainer.

The camera collects visual information in the form of white, gray, and black pixels and sends it to the base unit, whose processor translates the data into patterns of gentle electrical impulses that it sends to electrode array on the tongue. Strong vibrations represent white pixels, medium-strength represent gray, and no vibrations represent black pixels. Newer models have 400 to 600 electrodes and deliver data at approximately 30 frames per second for an information-rich image stream. The base unit enables users to invert contrast when appropriate.

“They tingle,” said blind mountaineer Erik Weihenmayer, describing the device to students at the Lyme School in New Hampshire. “Certain combinations of dots turn on to form lines, shapes. I’m looking at a 3D world and it’s translating it into a picture I’m feeling with my tongue.”

Weihenmayer, the first blind climber to scale Mount Everest, has been BrainPort’s most visible champion, demonstrating the device on a video featuring him playing tic-tac-toe with his daughter.

What BrainPort Users See

With the current prototype (arrays containing 100 to 600+ electrodes), study participants have recognized the location and movement of high-contrast objects and some aspects of perspective and depth. In most studies, participants use the device for between two and 10 hours, often achieving the following milestones:

The device provides a new sensory language with which users learn to translate the impulse patterns on the tongue to objects in space. Neuroimaging research suggests that using BrainPort stimulates the visual regions of the brain in blind individuals.

At present, BrainPort is an “investigational prototype” and not commercially available. A number of academic and research institutions have had or will have studies using the BrainPort Vision Device with specific participation requirements. Contact Wicab for more information.

While BrainPort does not replace vision, it enhances the overall sensory experience and gives users information on the size, shape, and location of objects—perception that will no doubt help blind and visually impaired persons move with greater independence and lead fuller lives.

The copyright of the article BrainPort Vision Device in Accessible Recreation is owned by Andrew Leibs. Permission to republish BrainPort Vision Device in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.