Dr. David Eagleman

No, they were sitting in this dental chair.

And that's exactly it.

In 1969, the technology was really clunky and heavy and got hot and whatever, and there was no way to make it portable in a meaningful way.

But as time has gone on, we've been able to do that now.

And so Paul Bakirida's research – he passed away some years ago, but his research has continued –

with something called the brain port, which is, again, for blind people.

So with the brain port, the way this works is you're wearing this little camera on your head on glasses, and you've got this little electrical grid on your tongue.

And so whatever the camera is seeing, you feel that on your tongue.

It feels like pop rocks.

So if I'm looking at the coffee cup in front of me, I'm feeling the outline of the coffee cup.

And blind people can get so good at this.

They can do things like, you know, throw a ball into a basket or navigate a complex obstacle course.

Whoa.

It sounds crazy.

But the thing to remember is the way you normally see is your eyeballs are, you know, these devices embedded in your skull here that are capturing photons and turning that into spikes.

that race into the darkness of your brain.

Electrical signals.

Electrical signals, exactly.

And so this is just turning what your tongue is feeling into spikes, these electrical signals that race into the darkness of your brain.

And you can figure it out.