My first time with TVSS

(Republished from My Favorite Things)

I had an opportunity to try a Trans Visual Substitution System (TVSS) by Eye++. Their representatives were visiting New York and were demonstrating it for blind people. I watched blind users trying this device for the first time navigate through a space freely and in complete control.

The stimulator is located on your forehead. The signal is a unique feeling, really nothing like I've felt before so I won't even try to describe it. I closed my eyes and the trainer presented a two dimensional test stimulus. I moved my head to scan it and felt the changing sensation on my forehead. It was a line. Next shape. "Can you guess?" I scanned it, I could tell it was a squarish or maybe a circle. I opened my eyes. Circle. Next, two squares, I could feel the two shapes. So with my eyes closed I could sense the two dimensional stimulus in front of my face.

What is profound about this device is that in order to use it you must move. Only through movement and exploration can the changing sensations delivered by the device become a signal that the user can interpret as significant for information about the surrounding environment. This really then is the best way to think about vision, a systematic skilled exploration of the world around us using tactile means. Moreover, the plastic nature of the brain suggests unknown ways of knowing. Reports from users say that the "buzzing" sensation the stimulator delivers eventually disappears and a kind of vision emerges. I did not have enough time to reach that point. My brain, so set in it's current configuration, did not have a chance to mold itself to the new condition. There are no fMRI studies to investigate how the brain responds to this kind of device because the TVSS device interferes with the scanner. In other words, no one knows for sure how (or even if) primary visual cortex is responding.

This device is a powerful demonstration of the argument that vision is a learned skill. People with normal vision are good at it and we learn it so early in life that we take for granted that the vivid, immediate sense of the world around us that we get when we open our eyes. I wish I had more time to practice.

Calling all angels: this technology will help the blind, but it will take an effort to get it on the market in the United States. It will appear in other countries first. Contact Eye++ directly if you have something to offer.