Abstract
Since the percentage of the elderly has been increasing at an unprecedented rate, the number of people with physical disorders has likewise increased. The need for assistive technology has greatly increased in order to avoid an increasing burden for the Japanese government. The author has developed one basic research approach for assistive engineering over a period of 34 years, designing several intelligent tools for people with communicative and perceptual disorders. Moreover, he has also found some research problems concerning cognitive physiology, which are hurry up to be solved for designing the tools. The research problems to be solved are as follows, (1) "plasticity" in the human brain, of which findings are useful for designing artificial hearing as well as artificial vision. (2) "association" from somatosensory cortex to auditory/visual cortex for transmitting sounds or images via the somatosensory cortex.(3) "compensation ability" of the visually impaired as well as the hearing impaired for designing sensory substitute devices.(4) "interruption" when two sensory channels are used simultaneously for substituting the lost sensory function.(5) "sensory feedback" to obtain functions of speaking and writing for the sensory impaired using the tools. To obtain the findings for these research problems are not only necessary for designing the assistive tools but also useful for constructing computer pattern recognition, virtual realty environment and sensory system for robot. [Jpn J Physiol 54 Suppl:S2 (2004)]
