Snakes have a poor sense of vision, but they use their tongues to help them see. So, too, one of our most beneficial technological advances lets war veterans blinded in action visualize what’s around them by using their tongues.

The arrangement seems simple enough: the unsighted Iraq or Afghanistan War vet puts a small white gizmo into his mouth. This “lollipop” is hooked up to a pair of sunglasses and an electronic device that transmits pixilated images of what surrounds the blind vet to his tongue. The producer states that the vet experiences these pixels as “tingly champagne bubbles.” Although the image of sparkling wine is interesting to contemplate, it’s hard to know how bubbles evoke shapes in the vet’s brain. Obviously the “lollipop” and its pixel-producing apparatus, known as a BrainPort, require a lot of getting used to. Even so, BrainPort allows its users to visualize a mere sixty-five percent of their environment. That’s not too bad when you think of how much visual info a snake’s tongue conveys. I’m not quite sure how sunglasses figure into the equation.

Another minor confusion: the producer refers to an organization related to the Center for Visual Restoration. Twice she pronounces an acronym as either UPNC or UPMC. Neither does she spell out what the acronym means.

Nonetheless, this is an important cutting-edge piece. It spends roughly half its seven and a half minutes specifically describing how two vets got blinded – chilling war stories – as well as how blindness is, for any sighted person, an unimaginable horror. For example, fewer than three percent of blind or severely vision-impaired people leave their homes. They’re prone to depression, suicide.

Nearly four minutes into this piece things begin to lighten up, though not in any Conan O’Brien sense. BrainPort is certainly not the three-D Technicolor version of reality we see when we look out a window. But in due time it may allow GIs who have sacrificed their sight for our country to walk outside at night and, to a degree, like snakes, see in the dark.