[Artbeyondsightmuseums] Camera-to-sound app lets blind people 'see'

[Lisa Yayla]

Hi,
Two articles about seeing with sound. One with vOICe and the other via an app.
Question about the last statement about object recognition in the visual cortex - think that this has been show before with Esref Armagon?
Regards,
Lisa

Camera-to-sound app lets blind people 'see'
excerpt
People who have lived in the dark from birth have now found they don't need their eyes to see. A new device developed by Amir Amedi<http://brain.huji.ac.il/default.asp> from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel and colleagues is giving congenitally blind adults the ability to interpret visual information from sound.
By monitoring the neural activity of blind people using the device, Amedi and his team found that even though the users weren't using their eyes, their visual cortex was activated by the soundscapes. This shows, for the first time, that specialised areas responsible for object recognition or reading can still be triggered later in life even if they have never been exposed to normal visual information.
http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/nstv/2012/11/seeing-with-sound.html?cmpid=NLC|NSNS|2012-1211-GLOBAL|seeingwithsound&utm_medium=NLC&utm_source=NSNS&utm_content=seeingwithsound
excerpt

Sensory hijack: rewiring brains to see with sound

CLAIRE CHESKIN used to live in a murky world of grey, her damaged eyes only seeing large objects if they were right next to her. She could detect the outlines of people but not their expressions, and could just about make out the silhouettes of buildings, but no details. Looking into the distance? Forget it.

Nowadays things are looking distinctly brighter for Cheskin. Using a device called vOICe, which translates visual images into "soundscapes", she has trained her brain to "see through her ears".
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20727731.500
Vennlig hilsen



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