Seeing with your tongue

I just read a really amazing article about how people can learn to see things via electrical impulses to their tongue. This is because what we experience as “seeing” is something our brains do from external inputs, not something our eyes do.

The tongue-seeing device is available for purchase for the visually impaired, but it’s low resolution, gray-scale and very expensive. And it takes a long time for the brain to learn to understand the input.  So it’s hard work to learn to use it. But it’s been invented, is in production, and now all it needs is improved and refined.

There’s another device that allows people to “see” things through sound. And one in production that will allow people to “hear” speech using vibrations in something they are wearing on their torso, which is never connected to their ears in any way.

This new science is called “sensory substitution.”

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/05/15/seeing-with-your-tongue