The brain: a user's guide

[Jim__]

9. I'd love to know if Eric Weihenmayer is using his visual cortex ...

... to process the input from these electrodes as he climbs Mount Everest.

... It concerns Eric Weihenmayer who, in 2001, became the first blind person to climb Mount Everest. Today he climbs with a grid of more than six hundred tiny electrodes in his mouth. This device allows him to see with his tongue. Although the tongue is normally a taste organ, its moisture and chemical environment make it a good brain-machine interface when a tingly electrode grid is laid on its surface. The grid translates a video input into patterns of electrical pulses, allowing the tongue to discern qualities usually ascribed to vision such as distance, shape, direction of movement and size.