Extended Data Fig. 9: Visual and balance sensory substitution tasks.

a–h, Visual sensory substitution task. Confusion matrix of participant performance on object identification task (n = 7), with the colour map indicating the frequency of occurrence. The P-value was P = 0.0178, testing the null hypothesis that selections were made at random between six possible choices (Wilcoxon signed-rank test; n = 7). The effect size was large, r = 0.896, according to rank-biserial correlation. a, Experimental setup of the visual sensory substitution task. b, Subject 1, female, age 21 years. c, Subject 2, female, age 23 years. d, Subject 3, female, age 19 years. e, Subject 4, male, age 37 years. f, Subject 5, male, age 32 years. g, Subject 6, male, age 30 years. h, Subject 7, male, age 31 years. i–s, Balance sensory substitution task. Participant performance on sharpened Romberg task, measured as the time duration before losing balance. The P-value across repeated trials and subjects was P = 0.00103, testing the null hypothesis that that no differences exist in group means. The vertical bars indicate standard deviation, shaded boxes indicate the interquartile range, the horizontal lines above each box indicate medians and filled circles correspond to the means. i, Stimulation patterns superimposed on smartphone display during rotation around the forward axis for the balance sensory substitution task. The virtual mesh highlights the LiDAR-reconstructed surface. j, Subject 1, female, age 35 years. k, Subject 2, female, age 35 years. l, Subject 3, female, age 20 years. m, Subject 4, female, age 29 years. n, Subject 5, female, age 32 years. o, Subject 6, male, age 36 years. p, Subject 7, male, age 20 years. q, Subject 8, male, age 34 years. r, Subject 9, male, age 33 years. s, Subject 10, male, age 24 years.