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Dr. Michael Oberdorfer's motto mimics Aristotle's famous declaration: "The brain abhors a vacuum."

A program director at the National Eye Institute at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Oberdorfer has worked for years to find ways to overcome loss of vision, and is currently supporting groundbreaking research into an unlikely detour to get visual signals to the brain: the tongue. And he has one of the world's bravest adventurers to help him.

The BrainPort uses a camera mounted on a person's head to send electronic signals to a small flat surface attached to a person's tongue. The tongue then sends visual cues to the brain that includes sizes, shapes and relative distances.

"It is exquisitely sensitive to touch," Oberdorfer said, noting that the tongue's sensitivity is about equal to that of a person's index finger.

The idea, Oberdorfer said, is to employ the "plasticity of the brain," namely its ability to seek other avenues of obtaining and processing information. This idea of "sensory substitution" is used for other systems such as Braille. The BrainPort requires training the brain incrementally using daily practice sessions, and has been under development for roughly the past 10 to 12 years.

It is currently being developed by the Wicab company with approval pending from the Food and Drug Administration and further review needed by NIH.

To help test the device and provide user feedback, Wicab and NEI have been utilizing the enthusiasm, experience and courage of Erik Weihenmayer, the only blind man to summit Mt. Everest and who traversed 460 miles through the Sierra Nevada mountain range in nine days.

He has also climbed vertical rock faces and stood on top of Mt. McKinley on Helen Keller's birthday, leaving no doubt about whether he has succeeded in challenging himself to the utmost despite his apparent disadvantage that he said makes him "like a Jamaican bobsledder."

"I see a vision as being deeper than a goal," Weihenmayer said.

Despite losing all of his sight when he was a teenager, Weihenmayer still describes himself as a visual learner. He was the first person to test the BrainPort in his home about five years ago, and within a few minutes he was able to snatch up a ball rolling along the ground. In a video documenting his use of BrainPort, he played tic-tac-toe with his daughter (going down to defeat) and climbed an indoor rock wall, confidently grasping handholds above him.

Weihenmayer said being able to play games with his children, look at pictures and perform other routine sight-based activities made the BrainPort something that could "bring you through that brick wall" that sightless people often feel they confront.

Scientists and researchers such as Oberdorfer hope that eventually, the device will allow people walking down a city street to read signs, or walking down a trail to follow someone. He also hopes that with research, BrainPort could be used in conjunction with other devices, such as a personal digital assistant, to help people identify which store sells books and which one sells coffee.

"We could use pre-existing wireless technology to do this, like a Blackberry," Oberdorfer said.

"I'm just lucky to be able to use it," Weihenmayer said.