Aid for blindness on the tip of your tongue
A British solider has become the first person in the country to use a device which allows him to “see” using his tongue. The BrainPort system the picture from a camera into electrical impulses which the brain then interprets as visual information.
Lance Corporal Craig Lundberg lost his sight while in action in 2007. The device has allowed him to “see” his new girlfriend for the first time. However, he is only able to see very crude outlines of an image, similar to an extremely low resolution monochrome display; he describes the images as like a very young child’s drawings.
The system requires the brain to be retrained to learn how different signals on the tongue correspond to different parts of an image. The information is carried from a camera built into a pair of glasses and is then sent to electrodes attached to the tongue. This is done partly because the tongue is densely packed with receptors and partly because saliva helps maintain a strong enough electrical signal.
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