coyote: researchers at the university of wisconsin-madison, led by the late neuroscientist paul bach y rita, pioneered a breakthrough therapeutic device harnessing the power of plasticity to address loss of balance. this research led to the development of the brainport balance device which converts information about body position into electrical stimulation on the tongue. skinner: when you use the brain port, it provides that information for you, so you get trained to use that information as if it were your vestibular system. doidge: what you would do is take a piece of plastic about the size of a piece of chewing gum that had about 100 different little dots on it which were electrodes and you'd put it on your tongue and they'd give you the tiniest shock so that when you tilted forward you would feel as though there were champagne bubbles on your tongue sort of running to the front part of your mouth and when you tilted back they would move back and to the left and to the right and so on. coyote: a user of the brainport balance device trains their brain to understand where they are in space