[Nfbj] Sight through sound

Thu Feb 4 18:09:11 UTC 2010

Dear list,
I want to forward you an article I found on the net. This is amazing! The 
link is www.cfhu.org/node/738
You can also listen to a video on Youtube, but I cannot find the link, 
unfortunately. But if you enter "Sight through sound", you'll find it.s
I wonder whether they might still need testers! That would be a good excuse 
to finally travel to Israel.;-)
I have copied the article below this email.
Best,
Feli

press x to close

ec Science Article: "The Sound of Sight"

The sound of sight                                  November 2009

Blind people are finally emerging from the darkness-thanks to their ears.

Click here for the French version of the article

By Pascale Millot

Dorit Chen can read Hebrew and English. She can draw simple pictures. She 
can find her shoes and locate many other objects. She is even able to teach 
her 5-year-old son the alphabet. Nothing so unusual there: most 31-year-old 
women can do these things, but Dorit has been blind from birth. Until very 
recently, she lived in total darkness. Then, she met Amir Amedi.

A researcher at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a member of the 
recently founded IMRIC (Institute for Medical Research Israel-Canada), Amir 
Amedi has invented a device that can literally make the blind see. And, 
although this is happening in the Holy Land, it is not a repeat of the 
miracle Jesus performed 2000 years ago when he healed the blind man at 
Jericho.

Instead, Amedi's so-called vOICe device is the result of many years of 
cutting-edge research at the crossroads of neuroscience and computer 
engineering. The vOICe system is comprised of a webcam that captures images, 
and software that uses a complicated algorithm to convert those images into 
sounds. "The images become sounds of varying frequency, volume, length and 
strength. Together, these sounds form a mathematical, three-dimensional 
representation of the objects," Amedi explains.

In just a few weeks, Dorit has learned to decipher this sound code. Now, as 
she listens to the strange noises coming through her headphones, she is able 
to interpret their meaning and draw the corresponding shapes and letters on 
a piece of paper.

Would one therefore be justified in saying that she can see? "It is hard to 
say if, by using our system, her perception of objects is the same as that 
of a sighted person. But another patient, Beth Fletscher, who lost her sight 
when she was 20, has said that, as far as she can tell, what she perceives 
through the vOICe system is quite similar to what she used to see."

This is exactly what the Israeli researcher wanted to achieve. Even so, when 
using imaging equipment to examine the brain of their subjects, Amedi and 
his team were amazed to see that the sound code they had devised was 
processed by the subjects' visual rather than auditory cortex, where sound 
information is usually processed. "Conversely," continued Amedi, "there was 
no evidence of activity in their visual cortex when we had them listen to a 
cat meowing or a cock crowing." The conclusion is that Amedi's sounds are, 
in fact, processed by that part of the brain usually devoted to object 
recognition. For this particular neuroscientist, it merely serves to confirm 
the extraordinary adaptability of the human brain.

At the Université de Montréal's School of Optometry, Maurice Ptito and 
Franco Lepori were among those who discovered that tactile information can 
be relayed to a blind person's visual cortex. This means they can be said to 
"see with their tongue," just as Amedi's device enables them to "see with 
their ears." "Our studies have clearly shown that a blind person's visual 
cortex performs other functions, specifically those associated with verbal 
memory," explains Amedi. This is equally true for people who are blind from 
birth as for those who became blind later in life.

The results of Amedi's research have been published in collaboration with 
American and Dutch researchers in the prestigious journal Nature 
Neuroscience. Eventually, Amedi hopes to develop high-tech glasses that 
would convert visual information into auditory signals. For the 
approximately 45 million blind people in the world, that would be a real 
miracle!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Institute for Medical Research Israel-Canada (IMRIC) opened in June 2009 
at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Québec Science was invited by the 
Canadian Friends of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem to meet Israeli 
researchers on this occasion. One of the centre's goals is to facilitate 
collaboration between Canadian and Israeli researchers.

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