The BrainPort

For the last decade or so, a number of companies have been attempting to market devices which would give sight to the blind. Unfortunately, unlike in the New Testament, these products had varying degrees of effectiveness, and often, they could become more of a hindrance than a help.

For example, several years ago, experiments were conducted in which a camera was implanted in the eye. Wires from this camera connected to different parts of the brain, allowing blind individuals to regain some measure of sight. This sounds, I freely admit, lovely in practice; I was absolutely thrilled when the first reports came trickling in, because I had always wanted to see. And then, I began hearing the other reports. Wires were disconnecting, requiring reparative surgery, and often, the reparative surgery was unsuccessful, leaving the person totally blind again.  And then, there were the incredibly frightening reports about lack of depth perception.  Participants in the experiments who were incautious enough to abandon their canes were likely to collide with people, and sometimes, they had more deadly run-ins, especially with flights of stairs or glass doors.  

Subsequently, my consciousness as a blind person evolved. I realized that by using alternative techniques, I ensured that sight no longer became a requirement for living a normal fulfilling life, having a rewarding career, finding a partner to spend the rest of my life with, maybe even having children someday. Even after I realized these things, there were a number of activities in which I wished to participate that would have been much simper if I had sight. For instance, when I wish to read a book, and it is unavailable from any of my usual resources, I must buy it, scan it, edit it to the best of my ability, and then read it. I often thought how wonderful it would be to go to the bookstore, purchase a book, come home, curl up in a chair and begin to read. However, these were minor inconveniences and once I was relatively content with my blindness, I found no reason to follow the continuing struggle to give us sight.

However, within the last few weeks, I have been apprised of an interesting product which may soon be coming onto the market called BrainPort. BrainPort is marketed by a company called Wicab, which is currently applying to the FDA for permission to make it commercially available by the end of the year. A number of aspects about BrainPort interested me. The aspect however that immediately caught my attention was its ingenious concept.

The concept which sparked the idea for BrainPort was postulated by Dr. Bauch-Y-Rita, a former scientist of the University of Wisconsin Madison, who postulated that the brain can be retrained so that one organ may take over the function that would have been performed by another. People were skeptical, even condescending of his ideas, and it was not until 2004, two years before his death of stage four lung cancer, that he was able to gain enough international notoriety and grants to explore his idea more fully.

After his death, Wicab took Dr. Bauch-Y-Rita’s concept and began work on BrainPort. The device consists of a pair of sunglasses with a camera mounted on them, a small control unit and a tongue sensor. The company decided on the tongue as the organ which would take over the functions of the eye because it is incredibly moist, making it an excellent conduit for electrical transmissions to the brain.

Aside from the concept, the sheer scope of BrainPort’s abilities fascinated me. The image transmitted by the tongue is fuzzy because of the low resolution, but it does allow depth perception of those things which are directly in front of us, which is quite an improvement over the initial experiments described at the beginning of the article. The scope of peripheral vision is difficult to determine, but the mere fact of the addition of depth perception makes this product a milestone. I’ve read a number of firsthand accounts of successful blind individuals taking joy in seeing for the first time in years, even if to a limited degree.

One such account was from Erich Weihenmayer, the first blind man to successfully climb Mount Everest. He has used BrainPort to help him in hiking through the woods, rock climbing and scaling walls. He has also used it for many more mundane activities that he has taken joy in performing for the first time. For instance, he can now play Tick Tack Toe with his daughter or lift his coffee cup by sight and not by feel. I am slowly but surely being convinced that this can become a wonderful tool to augment already full, prosperous lives.

I think, however, we do need to be cautious.  People are already proclaiming that, as BrainPort progresses, it may become possible that blind people will not require a cane or the other alternative techniques currently employed by the blind. And yet, even if BrainPort or something like it progresses to the stage where our vision is almost as good as our sighted counterparts, what happens if something on the device breaks? Even if dispensing something like this product to children born blind became standard procedure, they would still need to be taught alternative techniques so they are not completely helpless if the device malfunctions. I also believe that we as a community need to remember that the civil rights struggle for the blind will continue, even with the advent of such products. Even if we were able to leave behind the white cane and other visible symbols of blindness, all of society would know we could not see without a special product. By many members of society, we would still seem inferior and far less competent than our sighted counterparts.

However, even keeping these things in mind, I cannot express how much I am looking forward to the advent of this device and the wealth of new experiences it will make possible for me. The thought that I might finally know what objects or colors look like leaves me breathless. And the feeling I get when I think I may finally see faces, even fuzzy faces, is absolutely indescribable.