"'Video Goggles' to help Blind see through sound  Researchers have developed new 'video goggles' that can allow the blind to 'see' through sound and even teach them to read. A new study has found that blind people can learn to 'see' through sound as areas of the brain, even in those born blind, can be trained to recognise objects and 'read' through visual input. The sounds are used as substitutes for light to activate the visual cortex of the brain, the 'Daily Mail' reported. The findings challenge the common belief that if the visual cortex of the brain is deprived of information in early life it may never develop functional specialisation. ""The adult brain is more flexible than we thought,"" senior author Professor Amir Amedi of the Hebrew University Medical School, Jerusalem, said. Researchers taught congenitally blind adults, those who were born blind, to use sensory substitution devices (SSDs), which are non-invasive sensory aids that provide visual information to the blind via their existing senses. For instance, when a person uses a visual-to-auditory SSD, images from a video camera are converted into 'soundscapes' that represent the images. This allows the user to listen to and then interpret the visual information coming from the camera, in that way 'seeing' with sounds."
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