Device Trains Blind People To 'See' By Listening
How The vOICe Sees This image is reinterpreted as sound by the vOICe. Seeing With Sound Seeing without sight Researchers have found that newly blind people can learn to "see" with their ears. The key: technology called sensory substitution devices (SSDs) that can convert visual stimuli into aural representations of the surroundings, allowing users to reacquire lost abilities; a blind man who drops his keys might be able to locate them. The devices could eventually duplicate "the phenomenological experience of vision" in blind and partially blind patients, the researchers say, and could obviate the need for costly eye surgeries and other treatments. Previous studies have shown that SSDs help congenitally blind people navigate their environments. This most recent study, led by Michael Proulx from the University of Bath and published in Frontiers In Cognitive Science, instead tested how quickly and effectively blindfolded, sighted people could use one such device, the vOICe....