Taken verbatim from SG's front page...
For those interested in further reading, you can find the actual news article here (NY Times - Username: sgnews / Password: sgnews).
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Cheryl Schiltz vividly recalls the morning she became a wobbler. Seven years ago, recovering from an infection after surgery with the aid of a common antibiotic, she climbed out of bed feeling pretty good."Then I literally fell to the floor," she said recently. "The whole world started wobbling. When I turned my head, the room tilted. My vision blurred. Even the air felt heavy."The antibiotic, Ms. Schiltz learned, had damaged her vestibular system, the part of the brain that provides visual and gravitational stability. She was forced to quit her job and stay home, clinging to the walls to keep from toppling over.But three years ago, Ms. Schiltz volunteered for an experimental treatment - a fat strip of tape, placed on her tongue, with an array of 144 microelectrodes about the size of a postage stamp. The strip was wired to a kind of carpenter's level, which was mounted on a hard hat that she placed on her head. The level determined her spatial coordinates and sent the information as tiny pulses to her tongue.The apparatus, called a BrainPort, worked beautifully. By "buzzing" her tongue once a day for 20 minutes, keeping the pulses centered, she regained normal vestibular function and was able to balance.
There are a number of devices that use technology like this to provide similar results. Strapping a camera to such a helmet and tongue strip can allow the blind to see, so can a Dutch technology that converts video information into audio waves, allowing people to 'hear' images. The Navy are also looking into ways the technology can be used to allow their divers to see underwater, and one man who lost his fingers from leprosy was able to once again feel the sensation of touching his wife's face thanks to a special glove that attached electrodes to his forehead.
"We see with the brain, not with the eyes," Dr. Bach-y-Rita said. "You can lose your retina but you do not lose the ability to see as long as your brain is intact."Most important, the brain does not seem to care if patterns come from the eye, ear or skin. Given the proper context, it will interpret and understand them.
Now consider the virtual reality opportunities, if the brain can be taught to interpret electrical signals from these devices as it would real images captured by the eye, or real sensations from the fingertips, surely a computer could fake those signals instead. Fancy feeling like you're really experiencing the front lines in Medal of Honor? Feel like jacking-in to a real Matrix, where it really does feel like you know kung-fu?
And yes, I know what you're thinking...
Woah.
For those interested in further reading, you can find the actual news article here (NY Times - Username: sgnews / Password: sgnews).
---
Cheryl Schiltz vividly recalls the morning she became a wobbler. Seven years ago, recovering from an infection after surgery with the aid of a common antibiotic, she climbed out of bed feeling pretty good."Then I literally fell to the floor," she said recently. "The whole world started wobbling. When I turned my head, the room tilted. My vision blurred. Even the air felt heavy."The antibiotic, Ms. Schiltz learned, had damaged her vestibular system, the part of the brain that provides visual and gravitational stability. She was forced to quit her job and stay home, clinging to the walls to keep from toppling over.But three years ago, Ms. Schiltz volunteered for an experimental treatment - a fat strip of tape, placed on her tongue, with an array of 144 microelectrodes about the size of a postage stamp. The strip was wired to a kind of carpenter's level, which was mounted on a hard hat that she placed on her head. The level determined her spatial coordinates and sent the information as tiny pulses to her tongue.The apparatus, called a BrainPort, worked beautifully. By "buzzing" her tongue once a day for 20 minutes, keeping the pulses centered, she regained normal vestibular function and was able to balance.
There are a number of devices that use technology like this to provide similar results. Strapping a camera to such a helmet and tongue strip can allow the blind to see, so can a Dutch technology that converts video information into audio waves, allowing people to 'hear' images. The Navy are also looking into ways the technology can be used to allow their divers to see underwater, and one man who lost his fingers from leprosy was able to once again feel the sensation of touching his wife's face thanks to a special glove that attached electrodes to his forehead.
"We see with the brain, not with the eyes," Dr. Bach-y-Rita said. "You can lose your retina but you do not lose the ability to see as long as your brain is intact."Most important, the brain does not seem to care if patterns come from the eye, ear or skin. Given the proper context, it will interpret and understand them.
Now consider the virtual reality opportunities, if the brain can be taught to interpret electrical signals from these devices as it would real images captured by the eye, or real sensations from the fingertips, surely a computer could fake those signals instead. Fancy feeling like you're really experiencing the front lines in Medal of Honor? Feel like jacking-in to a real Matrix, where it really does feel like you know kung-fu?
And yes, I know what you're thinking...
Woah.
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