DEATH: Paul Bach-y-Rita

Paul Bach-y-Rita died on November 20,2006. He was recognized by many in the field as the father of sensory substitution and brain plasticity, commonly accepted concepts that were novel ideas when he first conceived of them in the 1960s. Dr. Bach-y-Rita began medical school at the Universidad Autonoma de Mexico at age 17. He eventually dropped out of medical school and worked as a laborer, was trained as a masseur, and taught anatomy and physiology to veterans with visual impairments in the same massage program. He returned to and graduated from medical school, and became the first and only physician in Tilzaptla, a small Mexican village that had no roads or electricity. Dr. Bachy-Rita moved on to a position at the SmithKettlewell Institute of Visual Sciences in San Francisco, California, and became a full professor at age 37. Inspired by his father's recovery from a major stroke, Dr. Bach-y-Rita left SmithKettlewell to complete a residency in rehabilitation medicine at the Stanford University School of Medicine in Santa Clara, California, and went on to chair the Department of Orthopedics and Rehabilitation Medicine at the University ofWisconsin-Madison. While a professor for both the medical school and the Department of Biomedical Engineering, Dr. Bach-y-Rita realized that other researchers were validating the findings he had been working on since 1962: the existence of nonsynaptic diffusion neurotransmission as a complementary mechanism of information transmission, which may play multiple roles in the brain, including in normal and abnormal activity and brain plasticity. In 1998, Dr. Bach-yRita founded Wicab, a corporation focused on the commercialization of BrainPort, a platform technology that is designed to enable the transfer of information from machines to humans via the tongue, the application of which indues vision sensory substitution for people who are blind. Dr. Bach-y-Rita's survivors expect to establish a fund in his name so that children may benefit from the application of his neuro-rehabilitation concepts. For more information, contact: Cress Funeral Service, 3610 Speedway Road, Madison, WI 53705; phone: [phone]; e-mail: <[email protected]>; web site: <www.cressfuneralservice.com>.