About This Project

Blind and low-vision readers read and write text using braille, a tactile system of raised dots. In this project, we will monitor braille readers' hand movements and electroencephalographic (EEG) brain activity to understand how they build meaningful text from dot patterns. We expect our unique approach to reveal the richer processing of letters and words when they are part of continuous language and read in a more naturalistic context, compared to being read in isolation.

Ask the Scientists

What is the context of this research?

Braille is a tactile reading and writing system using raised dots to represent text, primarily for blind and low-vision people. Braille readers sweep their fingers across the dots, transforming them into meaningful concepts. This remarkable transformation from fingertip to brain has been studied for nearly 30 years, suggesting that braille has a lot in common with visual reading: it activates brain regions typically used for vision and visually processed language. Still, we have a very incomplete understanding of braille reading as it actually happens in the real world.

Most controlled neuroscience studies of braille reading use small bits of text, even single letters, to unpack the process. They also discourage motion, such as the back-and-forth sweeps of braille-reading hands. Here, we will tackle these limitations for a first-of-its-kind EEG data set, generating previously impossible insights into language processing during active naturalistic reading.

What is the significance of this project?

Braille literacy is a predictor of professional and educational success for blind and low vision readers. However, as one of the very few examples of touch-based language in humans, it is far less well understood than visual reading or auditory speech perception. Our project aims to narrow this gap with modern experimental setups and analysis techniques. For example, we will be able to explore the brain activity we measure with machine-learning models, giving us an unprecedented understanding of dynamic touch perception. Eventually, results from this work would also help shape future studies — for example optimizing learning strategies, or mitigating the challenges of ADHD and dyslexia among braille readers.

What are the goals of the project?

Our overall goal is to advance the understanding of braille text perception by examining and modeling reading performance, hand movement patterns, and brain signals elicited by reading. In this project we'd like to examine how the brain represents different levels of text, from the low-level sensory representation of individual dot patterns to higher-level information like parts of speech and sentence structure. Building on early proofs of concept, we will use the funds we raise to recruit up to 15 blind braille readers, each of whom will undergo several hours of experimental testing. Successfully completing this project will shed light on both the braille reading process and the experimental approach we've devised to study it. The data will help us run longer-term funded studies, study more complex interactions (like reading with both hands), and potentially lay the groundwork for future braille training interventions and studies of touch perception in blindness.