
Phoneme- and Word-Based Learning of English Words Presented to the Skin - godelmachine
https://research.fb.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/a-comparative-study-of-phoneme-and-word-based-learning-of-english-words-presented-to-the-skin.pdf?
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myth_drannon
I was reading about a research lab somewhere in Madison that would attach
electrodes to the tongue and send electric impulses based on real time cemara
feed. The blind's person brain would then adapt and start seeing with the
tongue. The general idea was that the eyes are just the gates that transform
light into electric impulses so why not use tongue to send the electric
impulses. They did achieve pretty amazing results.

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jjjensen90
I vaguely recalled reading something like that before as well, this is where I
read it initially: [https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/device-lets-
blind...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/device-lets-blind-see-
with-tongues/)

As a person suffering from a disease which often causes blindness, I am
particularly keen on the sensory-replacement science that we are dipping our
toes into.

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myth_drannon
Looks like it's not a research anymore but a commercial product. PONS device.
[http://heliusmedical.com/index.php/divisions/neurohabilitati...](http://heliusmedical.com/index.php/divisions/neurohabilitation/the-
pons-device)

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tsukikage
This thing has been having trials since at least 2009, yet apparently hasn't
gone mainstream yet. More suspiciously, the scope seems to have shifted from
"provides a means for people to 'see'" to "helps people reacquire motor
control in tenuous and difficult-to-assess ways". Has it actually been shown
to do anything or is it just modern snake oil? A quick Google search finds
lots of hype but nothing conclusive...

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myth_drannon
Well I read about the lab and neurostimulation in Norman Dodge's book "The
brain's way of healing". I checked his website and the message about the
device that FDA might approve it in the end of 2018.

Here is the message:

PoNS UPDATE, January, 2018. Information on availability of the PoNS will now
be through the manufacturer of the device, Helius Medical Technologies. In
brief, some good news is that the final patients in the studies required for
FDA approval finished their treatment in May and July 2017. The two studies
which are the necessary prerequisites for FDA approval have now been
completed, and a final package with the results, is currently being prepared
by Helius for FDA submission. But the PoNS can not be made available to the
public until FDA approval comes through. The latest guestitimate we have heard
is that it could take until the end of 2018 for the FDA to release its
decision. This may seem confusing, because the PoNS was available to patients
who were in the well-known studies (for instance, the U.S. Military study of
its use for treating traumatic brain injury and the Montreal Neurological
Institute study for use for Multiple Sclerosis patients). But now that the
studies are complete, the PoNS cannot be available to anyone until approved by
the FDA. We know this is frustrating for those hoping to get access to a PoNS,
and who had hoped it would be available by now, but this pace is not unusual
in approval of new cutting-edge devices. Other news is that there is a
migration of PoNS development activity to Helius. Because the PoNS studies
have been completed, the Tactile Communication and Neurorehabilitation Lab
that opened in 1992 and developed the PoNS and many other inventions, has been
closed and the three scientists who invented the PoNS, Yuri Danilov, PhD, Kurt
Kaczmarek, PhD and Mitch Tyler PhD, are now consulting for Helius on how to
refine it. The TCNL lab website still has 50 research papers related to the
PoNS posted on it, here.

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_emacsomancer_
This looks very interesting. I was amused on my first skim-through to see:

"One-hundred common English words were selectedfor the present study (see
Table 1; the 8 groups are explained later in Sec. Error! Reference source not
found.)"

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mankyd
Is this study referring to something other than braille, or is braille
inclusive under "English Words Presented to the Skin".

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twic
AIUI, the ultimate goal of this work is to present spoken, rather than
written, words to the skin. The idea is that you can process spoken language
into phonemes, and then present those to the skin, although in this study, the
phonemes were generated directly.

I assume that the belief is that it's more easier to reliably encode speech to
phonemes in real time than it is to encode it to text.

