Latest Sensory substitution Stories
When you walk into a darkened room, your first instinct is to feel around for a light switch. You slide your hand along the wall, feeling the transition from the doorframe to the painted drywall, and then up and down until you find the metal or plastic plate of the switch. During the process you use your sense of touch to develop an image in your mind of the wall’s surface and make a better guess for where the switch is. Sliman Bensmaia, PhD, assistant professor of organismal biology and...
[WATCH VIDEO: Examples of Visual Stimuli Used in SSD Training] Lawrence LeBlond for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online It has been long believed that blindness in early infanthood makes sight restoration later in life next to impossible as the brain’s visual cortex has been deprived of visual information. But some researchers have shown that blind people, even those with lifelong blindness, can learn to process visual input using sound. Working from the Hebrew University of...
Research results reported in Restorative Neurology and Neuroscience Sensory substitution devices (SSDs) use sound or touch to help the visually impaired perceive the visual scene surrounding them. The ideal SSD would assist not only in sensing the environment but also in performing daily activities based on this input. For example, accurately reaching for a coffee cup, or shaking a friend's hand. In a new study, scientists trained blindfolded sighted participants to perform fast and...
A method developed at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem for training blind persons to "see" through the use of a sensory substitution device (SSD) has enabled those using the system to actually "read" an eye chart with letter sizes smaller than those used in determining the international standard for blindness. The eight congenitally blind participants in the Hebrew University test group passed the conventional eye-exam of the Snellen acuity test, technically surpassing the world-agreed...
"Perhaps when we get hurt, we should not only "˜rub it better' but also cross our arms," said Dr. Giandomenico Iannetti, the lead author of a study at the University College London.The study, published in the journal PAIN, details how scientists used a laser to generate a four millisecond pin prick of "pure pain" "“ which is pain without touch "“ on the hands of a small group of eight participants, which was repeated with the arms crossed over the midline "“ an imaginary line running...
The part of the brain that uses hearing to determine sound location is reorganized in deaf animals to locate visual targets, according to a new study by a team of researchers from Virginia Commonwealth University and the University of Western Ontario in Canada.These findings propose a new theory for cross-modal plasticity: loss of one sensory modality is substituted by another while maintaining the original function of the brain region.It is known that persons who have suffered major sensory...
(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- The brain can process sensory information in a fraction of a second, but in special cases it can be processed quicker. A recent study from the Journal of Neuroscience found that those who are born blind can process tactile signals quicker than those with unimpaired vision.Daniel Goldreich, PhD and his research team at McMaster University tested the tactile aptitude of 89 non-blind subjects against 57 vision-impaired subjects by tapping each individual's index...
Finding explains why the blind can hear and feel with greater acuity than the sighted canPeople who have been blind from birth make use of the visual parts of their brain to refine their sensation of sound and touch, according to an international team of researchers led by neuroscientists at Georgetown University Medical Center (GUMC).Published today in the journal Neuron, the scientists say this finding helps explain why the blind have such advanced perception of these senses "“ abilities...
Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Tübingen, Germany have showed that the integration of auditory and touch information takes place in the 'hearing centre' of the brain "“ the auditory cortex "“ and thus at an earlier point than has traditionally been assumed (Neuron, October 20, 2005). Everyday, the brain accesses information from various sense organs simultaneously to create a "žpicture" of its...
