[QuarianRex]

Originally posted by atari_eric:

quote:

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Originally posted by Suicide Junkie:
One good thing is that for people who have not been blind from birth, the brain is already wired and trained to process colour, depth perception, word shapes and all sorts of similar skills.

Simply providing a bridge over some damage to a brain that is ready and waiting for visual info is a much simpler prospect than trying to give someone a sense they have never had the use of before.

I'm not so sure. I think if you gave such a device to someone who didn't have eyes, their brain would learn to use the device using techniques optimized for the device, instead of adapting previous techniques from another organ...

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This is half true. The brain can adapt to just about anything, if you get to it fast enough. If the brain doesn't achieve certain key milestones during development it never will (or at least not up to a completely functional state). An example of this ould be "phantom limbs". Where an amputee can still feel their missing limb. This is quite prevalent among adult amputees because their brains have adopted a configuration that includes the missing limb. The brain essentially still has a 'slot' open for it. Child amputees, on the other hand, never have phantom limb. Their brain is still in development and so the unused portion of the brain devotes itself to other things. Simply, the brain edits out that the limb was ever there. This may mean that adult amputees would be eligible or cybernetic limp replacement but a now-grown child amputee would not.

Of course there could always be workarounds. Using unrelated motor impulses to stimulate the new limb would be posible but awkward (imagine having to control all of your leg movements using kugi-kiri hand gestures).