7
views
0
recommends
+1 Recommend
0 collections
    0
    shares
      • Record: found
      • Abstract: found
      • Article: not found

      Navigation with a sensory substitution device in congenitally blind individuals.

      Read this article at

      ScienceOpenPublisherPubMed
      Bookmark
          There is no author summary for this article yet. Authors can add summaries to their articles on ScienceOpen to make them more accessible to a non-specialist audience.

          Abstract

          Vision allows for obstacle detection and avoidance. The compensatory mechanisms involved in maintaining these functions in blind people using their remaining intact senses are poorly understood. We investigated the ability of congenitally blind participants to detect and avoid obstacles using the tongue display unit, a sensory substitution device that uses the tongue as a portal to the brain. We found that congenitally blind were better than sighted control participants in detecting and avoiding obstacles using the tongue display unit. Obstacles size and avoidance strategy had a significant effect on performance: large obstacles were better detected than small ones and step-around obstacles were better avoided than step-over ones. These data extend our earlier findings that when using a sensory substitution device, blind participants outperform sighted controls not only in a virtual navigation task but also during effective navigation within a human-sized obstacle course.

          Related collections

          Author and article information

          Journal
          Neuroreport
          Neuroreport
          Ovid Technologies (Wolters Kluwer Health)
          1473-558X
          0959-4965
          May 11 2011
          : 22
          : 7
          Affiliations
          [1 ] Chaire de recherche Harland Sanders en Sciences de la vision, École d'Optométrie, Université de Montréal, Montréal, Canada.
          Article
          10.1097/WNR.0b013e3283462def
          21451425
          e8f40e2c-2b2b-4af7-a670-3de915ca751b
          History

          Comments

          Comment on this article