What does the first sentence have to do with the topic?

Question

The passage concerns sensory substitution, but I have no idea of why the author wrote the first sentence.

To be sure, one could try to interpret the unfiltered activity of another person’s brain. At first it would seem like incomprehensible
static, but with practice and experience a person who is visually
handicapped would learn that certain kinds of “static” mean one thing,
other kinds other things. The brain is remarkably good at extracting
patterns from seeming noise. For example, blind people can learn to
“see” with a lollipop-shaped device resting on the mouth. It converts
input from a video camera into electrical pulses; it maps the visual
world onto the tongue. (The electrical charge is said to feel like
popping candy or champagne.) At first the user just feels weird
sensations in her mouth, but gradually she learns to associate
specific sensations with objects in front of her. After a little
practice users can “see” doorways and elevator buttons, pick out items
at the dinner table, and even read letters and numbers. Though the
input is oral and tactile, after a while the user starts to feel as
though she is actually seeing.

World Wide Mind: The Coming Integration of Humanity, Machines, and the Internet

Anton · Answer

This is a case of anticipatory parallel proposition. The first sentence proposes and emphasises (with could standing in opposition to an implied could not) that uninterpreted raw information from another brain is capable of being interpreted by a second brain. The sentence concisely anticipates the longer parallel to follow.
The remainder of the prose demonstrates the truth of the proposition by developing the parallel and more detailed example of how a brain can learn understanding of previously unknown sensations (the tongue device). Hence, it is implied that a second brain is capable of learning to see pattern and to understand seemingly incomprehensible (on first encounter) information coming from the activity of a first brain.
It may be argued that another example may be seen in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, which starts with “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife”. With this anticipatory proposition Austen parallels it with much of the following book!

What does the first sentence have to do with the topic?

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