BrainPort sounds extremely cool. How does the brain decide to interpret them as visual input, though?
[1]http://www.thinkgeek.com/product/f358/ (sorry, I couldn't find a better source - but the product description explains it)
It's not so far from that
Once you've managed to fully adapt to the new mapping, is it just as jarring to revert and go back to normal, or have you learned how to handle both?
Say you rotated for an entire year - or longer - on a weekly schedule between normal vision, vertically mirrored vision, and horizontally mirrored vision. Do you gain full training in all three to the point that you could transition between normal/vertical/horizontal at any time without any disorientation or readjustment period? Or can the brain really only handle one mapping at a time? This would be the ultimate question to answer.
I suspect the results would be similar to how we handle multiple languages. Your primary vision (ie: the one you learned first, or the one you have used exclusively for a decade or more) would remain the easiest to work with, while acquired alternatives may approach the "fluency" of the primary, while not being perfect.
Later on in the video, he mentions that having gotten used to the backwards bike, a regular bike was nearly impossible to ride until he adjusted to it again.
[1] https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/feelspace-follow-your-gut...
Nicknamed 'batbelt' in-house.
I dropped it after looking into insurance requirements and ADA compliance.
Before I ditched the idea, I was going to put the vibrator belt as a second belt worn under the clothing, but there was no Bluetooth or WiFi or easily accessible way of going wireless between the belts in a practical fashion.
I had my neighbor, blind man who had a guide dog, trial it. He was a great guy, and helped me quite a bit to 'see' past my vision biases. Unfortunately, he passed away. He used to work for the IRS, and we would joke about me getting my deductions past him! He did like what I had accomplished, but many blind people do not have the money for something that is not subsidized, and then you get caught up in the compliance insurance issues. Not sure if that has changed much nowadays.
It was a great maker project before the 'maker' movement. Too bad there was no startup, or crowd-funding web sites back then!
I've actually been collecting the vibration motors from disposable electric toothbrushes to build my own belt; as they were designed to run form a single AA battery powering them should be easy.
I've tried a prototype version of this belt once (for a couple of hours), it worked surprisingly well. But integrating the vibrations as a "new sense" into your brain (so that your subconscious can use it) takes at least some days.
Fascinating stuff.
The thing basically scanned a line across the image, and produced sound based on the brightness. So, with your eyes closed you could quite easily imagine a basic shape of the image from the sound.
Maybe someone would recognize the description.
I understand that the rest of your brain 'trains' this pathway to occur. So because you know that there is a sound source and you can see it move in space, and you 'feel' this on your tongue as well, you are capable of correlating the two senses together and associating them with each other.