If I hadn’t been digging around, attempting to learn about something else entirely, I may never have learned of the vOICe. And what fun is that? The more you learn, the more you can do. The more you can do, the more you can learn. I’m glad you decided to join me.
If you wanted to use brain stimulation to increase the usefulness of, or decrease the training time for, sensory substitution; where would you stimulate the brain? According to the model developed in today’s reference, it would be more effective to turn up the sound, rather than to stimulate and cause random activity within the area of the brain associated with vision.
In episode 13 we talked about brain stimulation, using electrical and magnetic stimulation of the brain, without having to cut into the skull, in order to improve certain types of skills. Starting in episode 17, we talked about sensory substitution, using one sense to deliver the missing information that would normally be delivered by a missing or impaired sense. That culminated in episode 19, when I demonstrated the vOICe.
An obvious question is, can brain stimulation improve sensory substitution?
Brain stimulation has been used to treat amblyopia, commonly known as lazy eye. Not all the results have been very encouraging, but here’s a paper that suggested longer term results might be possible.
Lastly, from the website of those who developed the vOICe, we have an article where they very briefly mention the possibility of using brain stimulation to help vOICe users better integrate the visual information that is being turned into sound. There is much more there and it’s worth the read for those interested in learning more about sensory substitution and synesthesia.
Continuing the subject of sensory substitution, we have the vOICe. In this episode, I explain what it is, how it works, and let you listen in as I do an exercise from the vOICe manual.
If you’d like to know more about the vOICe and/or download a free copy of the software for your very own, you can visit the “seeing with sound” website.
Today we have the sad story of the optacon, a cautionary tale that is the reason I prefer the vOICe over the brain port for my sensory substitution needs.
Here’s some rather old films that explain what the optacon is, or rather was, and how it works, or rather worked.
Today we learn of Paul Bach-y-Rita, and his work with sensory substitution, including the tongue stimulator used to provide visual information to the blind.
Here’s a YouTube video about Paul Bach-y-Rita and his work.
If you read the following article, you’ll note that the person using the robotic exoskeleton is getting sensory feedback via his skin. Can we really use one sense in place of another?
In our last episode, we saw attempts to deal with spinal cord injury by use of a robotic suit directed by the subject’s brain. This time, we have a different approach. From monkeys to rats, here is a paralyzed rat that walked.
Checkout a roughly fifteen minute tedtalk on the subject.
This 15-minute tedtalk covers many years of his work, including how monkeys have been connected to a virtual world, with both input and output running directly to and from the monkey’s brain.
During today’s episode, I became confused as to the date at which thing got published when. I got it now. If only I’d had one of these devices to help.
Here’s the first article I read on Allan Snyder’s work, published in 2003. It’s an article in The New York Times, and a quick but enjoyable read. I don’t have a link to the first actual academic paper of his that I went through.
And last but not least, a company that provides completely unregulated devices that you can use at home to stimulate your brain for somewhere between roughly 150 and 600 dollars American. If you don’t mind that nobody has any idea what the long-term effects might turn out to be, and that no one is regulating these devices.