Vest Project: Acoustic Information Acquired by a Hearing Impaired Person Using Vibration

Currently, technology has gone so far ahead that it allows even people whose hearing aids / hearing nerves are damaged to return hearing. Not so long ago, special prostheses were created that deliver electrical signals to the human brain, bypassing the damaged auditory nerves.

However, the installation of such a prosthesis requires invasive neurosurgery. In addition, the cost of an invasive hearing prosthesis + operation is approximately 40 thousand US dollars. It is clear that not everyone with hearing problems can afford this.
')
However, the other day an interesting project was announced that allows you to literally perceive sounds with your whole body (or rather, with your torso).

The system proposed by neuroscientist Dr. David Eagleman David Eagleman and his graduate student Scott Novich (Scott Novich) is a vest with tactile response modules equipped with miniature vibration motors.

The system connects to the microphone. The sound is converted by a microphone (scientists are now using a smartphone) into electrical signals, which through special microcontrollers are fed to the vibration modules of the vest, and start up the work of vibration motors. Depending on the strength of sound, frequency, pitch, vibration modules work differently.

Of course, wearing such a vest, a person will not understand what and why he hears, it will be just a chaotic vibration. But scientists have developed a two-week course of study, after which the human brain begins to perceive such vibrations already "meaningfully." In this case, the person begins to directly "hear" the body.



The system and the very idea of ​​the project may seem somewhat strange, but scientists argue that such a system is quite real, because the human brain does not "hear" in the direct sense of the word. The brain receives from the organs of hearing an electrical signal of a certain type, analyzes them, and after that we begin to hear a certain sound. The vibration felt by the body also provokes the appearance of an electrical signal that enters the brain. And after some training, the brain begins to perceive such signals as sound. Of course, there is some difference, but experiments have already shown that a person, after training, really starts to hear with his whole body.

Now scientists have launched a project on Kickstarter , in order to raise money for a more advanced prototype of the Vest system (Vibrotactile Extra-Sensory Transducer).

By the way, they are already thinking about using such a project to help people with normal hearing begin to perceive additional information through signals perceived by the body. For example, it can be stock information, or news broadcast in one way or another from the Network to a Vest-type system. So far this is only a hypothesis, but scientists will try to create a working prototype with a system for learning to perceive such information.



It sounds, of course, unusual, but the world has previously conducted studies that prove the possibility of replacing missing organs of sense with other signals. There are also people who perceive information not like everyone else. Some mathematical geeks (people-counters) during complex calculations feel smells, taste, music or various colors, the combination of which gives the desired result. The human brain is the most complex tool, it has yet to be studied for many decades, during which it will reveal new and new secrets about its work.



And Vest is one of the projects that help to use some features of the human brain and nervous system in favor of the latter. The project has a video on the same Kickstarter, do not insert it here, the code cuts the hackraparser, so you can see this link .