Word: krieg
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Unfortunately, most of the would-be guinea pigs had read into Krieg's cautiously worded study a promise that was not there-i.e., the prospect of an immediate cure for their specific afflictions. What the carefully qualified report did suggest was the exciting possibility that experiments in the direct application of electrical stimuli to the brain or peripheral nerves may one day enable some of the blind to see, the deaf to hear and the lame to walk again-after a fashion, anyway...
...Krieg's research indicates that even when the transmission stations are permanently damaged, the brain is still capable of receiving and translating electrical impulses artificially applied. Thus, Krieg says, if a certain point at the back of the brain is stimulated, the patient will "see" a flash of light in a precise part of his visual field...
Switchboard Movement. What Krieg cautiously proposes is a lengthy inquiry into the possibility of building substitute transmission stations, i.e., electrical apparatuses which would be worn, perhaps, on the head, through which controlled and meaningful signals could be sent electrically to the brain of a blinded man. A group of electrical contacts touching the surface of the subject's brain, says Dr. Krieg, might enable him to read. A pattern of such impulses coming through the electrodes of the apparatus might be controlled to appear as words, moving across the blind man's visual consciousness like the letters...
...Krieg wants to try the same technique with deafness and paralysis. In some kinds of paralysis, he theorizes, the patient could be equipped with an apparatus (as a substitute transmission station for damaged nerves), worn at the hip or knee and turned on or off by the patient. A manually operated switchboard might select such a desired motion as walking...
Before any real and lasting benefits for humans can be realized in this field, Krieg warns, man must first enlarge the horizons of his knowledge of the brain itself, until he knows exactly what part each tiny area plays in motor activity or sensory perception. After that, some of the great possibilities might become a reality for the lame, the deaf and the blind...