By Alexian Heynez, C2ST Intern, Waubonsee Community College

According to the American Optometric Association (AOA), an estimated 12 million people over the age of 40 are victims of uncorrectable vision loss. Nearly 1 million Americans are blind. This figure is only predicted to increase in the coming years, alongside the increase in diabetes and other diseases that affect the elderly population. There are a few options other than learning how to live life without the information we all receive from our eyes for those with severe vision loss. Or are there? Join me in an exploration of a developing technology called BrainPort, which uses an electric lollipop to help blind people see!

Wicab Inc., a company based in Middleton, Wisconsin, is where BrainPort is being developed by neuroscientists. BrainPort is a device that uses a pair of camera sunglasses to take visual data and transmit information to a handheld device. The information is taken and converted into electrical pulses that are transmitted through an electrode located on the user’s tongue. Back-y-Rita, a co-founder of Wicab Inc., expressed that vision is a function of the brain, not the eyes, which is a message these scientists took to heart. By bypassing the retinal optic nerve systems that usually allow us to receive and interpret visual stimulation, the BrainPort sends information to the visual cortex or somatosensory cortex, where touch sensory information is interpreted. 

It works by extrapolating three different types of pixels from the camera: white, black, and grey. Then, this information is used to send impulses to electrodes that generate vibrations on a patient’s tongue. A strong vibration for white pixels, a weak vibration for grey pixels, and no vibrations for black pixels. This technology doesn’t allow people to see the way the rest of us do, but it allows patients to learn a new “language” of sensory information, as Dr. Aimee Arnoldussen explains. Similar to blind people using a cane to interpret their surroundings, blind people can use the new information they receive through their tongue to inform themselves on what the environment looks like around them. It offers a new tool that blind people can learn to use to derive information about the size, shape, or location of different objects. It can help people like Erik Weihenmayer, the first and only blind person to reach the summit of Mount Everest without others telling him where to go. He used the technology to climb a wall at a gym without having to feel around for holds, as he normally would. BrainPort allows people who are visually impaired to use the sensation on their tongue to identify objects or orient themselves within an environment.

Although it might not be as superhuman as Daredevil’s echolocation from Marvel Comics, BrainPort proposes a very cool and, so far, effective sensory experience for blind people to interpret visual information. As Dr. Fabian Hutmacher puts it, “Vision is our most important and most complex sense”, and this device could help blind people regain some of that information from an alternative method. Stay posted on developing technology like this on the C2ST pages and social media.