IdC : Conférence - BrainPort technology : electrotactile sensory substitution.

Conférence IdC - 13 Octobre 2005 - Amphi 8 - Carreire

Yuri Danilov, Director of Clinical Research
BrainPort Technologies, Wicab, Inc.
8476 Greenway Bouleward - Middleton, WI, 53562, USA

Brain Computer Interface (BCI) technology is one of the most intensely developing areas of modern science; and has created numerous significant crossroads between neuroscience and computer science. The goal of BCI technology is to provide a direct link between the human brain and a computerized environment. The vast majority of recent BCI approaches and applications have been designed to provide the information flow from the brain to the computerized periphery.
The opposite or alternative direction of flow of information (computer to brain interface – CBI) remains almost undeveloped. The BrainPortTM is a Computer Brain Interface that offers an alternative symmetrical technology designed to support a direct link from a computerized environment to the human brain- and to do it non-invasively.
The ultimate goal of the BrainPortTM technology is to introduce the possibilities offered by changing the direction of information flow - from a computerized environment to the brain. The Electrotactile Vestibular Substitution System (EVSS) based on BrainPort TM technology is an example of the highly efficient fusion of advanced electrical engineering, computer science and progressive developments in neuroscience and rehabilitation medicine, to recover one of the most “unrecoverable” disabilities – those of the vestibular system.
Training with the EVSS leads to greatly improved posture, not only during use of the system, but for increasing periods of time after training sessions. The EVSS system combines the information transmission capacity of the human skin (the largest human sensory organ and the most evolutionarily advanced and histological sophisticated tissue that is saturated with multiple modality sensors), with the human brain plasticity.