Motherboard

A Wisconsin based company, Wicab Incorporated, seems to have found a new way to help blind people see… sort of. Their device called The BrainPort (a name which, altruistic aims or not, I firmly believe science should only bequeath to a machine that switches one person’s brain with another person’s body and visa versa) utilizes a pair of sunglasses with mounted cameras, a CPU the size of an MP3 player and a lollipop. OK, so this idea all of a sudden doesn’t sound so promising, but stick with me here. The cameras pick up optical stimuli surrounding the wearer (i.e. the stuff you see), while the CPU first reduces the visual data down to greyscale, and then translates that information so that it lays a matrix made of tiny electric impulses across the tongue. The areas being shocked correspond with areas of light, un-zapped portions of the palette match with dark regions in the line of sight. The electrical impulses feel like champagne or Pop Rocks to the nerve-dense tongue.

While researchers are uncertain whether the tactile info goes to the visual cortex or somatosensory (touch) cortex, the bizarre instrument appears to work; within 15 minutes blind people using the eyeball lollipop will start to make spatial sense of the info. Wicab’s President, Robert Beckham, hopes to have FDA approval at the end of the month and BrainPort on pharmacy shelves late 2009. The price tag for this hi-tech mouth zapper? A mere $10,000.