Hacking Our Five Senses 232
zdude255 writes "Wired is running an article exploring several studies of giving the human brain 'new input devices.' From seeing with your sense of touch to entirely new senses such as sensing direction intuitively, the human brain seems to be capable of interpreting and using new data on the fly. This offers many applications from pilots being able to sense the plane's orientation to the potential recovery of patients with blindness or ear damage. (which helps balance).'It turns out that the tricky bit isn't the sensing. The world is full of gadgets that detect things humans cannot. The hard part is processing the input. Neuroscientists don't know enough about how the brain interprets data. The science of plugging things directly into the brain -- artificial retinas or cochlear implants -- remains primitive. So here's the solution: Figure out how to change the sensory data you want -- the electromagnetic fields, the ultrasound, the infrared -- into something that the human brain is already wired to accept, like touch or sight.'"
Related (Score:4, Interesting)
See taste (Score:5, Interesting)
-nB
Remember the experiment? (Score:5, Interesting)
wired (Score:2, Interesting)
But these changes through experience are fairly permanent and coupled with the brains finite computational power this would mean devoting brain resources to specific extra-sensory processing. This, firstly, takes processing power from existing processes and, secondly, means any upgrades would need to be relearnt over time. In other words, by the time you've learnt how to use smelly-vision(tm) version 1, version 2 will be released and you'll have to start the whole learning thing all over again.
There's less here than meets the eye (Score:3, Interesting)
This sort of sensory augmentation is hardly a new idea.
The thing I want to know is: is there any way to increase the bandwidth with which the brain can process incoming information? I seriously doubt it.
It seems to be increasingly evident that a cell phone that makes no use of ones' hands nevertheless consumes attention that would otherwise be allocated to driving, and I suspect this is true of every other input modality.
Attentionis a limited resource. You might as well present the information on an ordinary viewing screen that occupies part of the field of view. However you present it, you can't add more information without blocking your "view" of information you'd otherwise be processing.
Re:I am not so sure I would want (Score:5, Interesting)
A guy wore it for a year, iirc, and his body adapted to the new "sense" to such a degree that he had a little freak out break down when he removed it, and now walks around with a handheld gps all the time, to try and make up for the "sense" of direction he lost. He says he developed a kind of spacial sense, which gave him a firm sense of spacial orientation...he stopped getting lost...and just sort of knew little directional tidbits like "my house is in that direction" etc.
One of the most interesting things about the articles, is the thread that all our senses are capable of processing more data than we give them credit for...Another article talked about a limited visual sense that interfaced through the tongue, and worked almost without any training at all.
It's some cool stuff, and it definitely opens up some possibility for some interesting sensory "prosthesis" to give information that isn't processed by our natural senses.
Re:Related (Score:4, Interesting)
It seemed like a really interesting concept. Similar to how your sense of direction works by using magnetic north.
This also reminds me of an element of this book I just read (Rant by Chuck Palahniuk). In the future, people have ports that enable them to plug in and experience a recorded neural episode. In the story, you could get a large-breasted girl high on heroin and sit her in a train watching the scenery go by, the whole time playing with herself and output that to a new recording that you could rent and experience yourself without the dangers of actually doing heroin.
It was quite an amazing concept.
Seriously, not such a bad idea. (Score:3, Interesting)
For example, right now there are a lot of cars with sonar sensors to aid in back-in parking. Rather than turning that into audible output that requires a lot of processing to make sense of ("three feet
Many cars also have inflatable air bladders located in the back of the driver's seat, for lumbar support. Imagine if we connected the parking sensor to the lumbar support, so that as you backed the car in, you'd feel pressure against your back as you got closer and closer to the obstacle. (You'd still want an alarm when you got too close, something that triggered the brain's "abrupt onset" threat response.)
A more complicated system might use multiple bladders, one in the center of the back and smaller ones on either side, to let the driver know approximately how close they are to the car in back, and to the curb, when parallel parking.
Such a system would probably require minimal training and be quick to subliminalize, because it's pretty close to what we experience naturally. (If you're carrying a heavy box and walking backwards, and you feel something contact your back or the back of your legs, even lightly, you're going to immediately stop moving.)
I hope that this research leads to new kinds of output devices that use more of the brain than today's systems, which tend to present everything as predominantly visual, with a smattering of auditory, data.
Wouldn't that be just as 'bad' as the real thing? (Score:5, Interesting)
I mean, heroin works because it causes certain chemicals inside the brain to change. If you don't release those chemicals, it's not going to feel the same. So a completely honest recording of a heroin trip would necessarily have to produce the same physiological response in your synapses as the real thing.
I suspect, that if such a technology were available, that "recordings" of people doing drugs would quickly become just as illicit as the drugs themselves, because they'd be just as addictive. (Although, it's not as though the drug laws in the U.S. have ever had any real correlation to harm, so it might matter more who was making money by selling said recordings and how many Senators they owned.) There are quite a few novels that I've read where the idea of addictive neuro-stimulus was discussed; off the top of my head I think it comes up in Neuromancer, Snow Crash, and the Otherland series by Tad Williams.
Re:I am not so sure I would want (Score:5, Interesting)
Your body adapts fast to new supplimentary input (Nicotene for example) and does not want to give it up after it has gone.
I strongly reading his research papers for anyne interested in this technology and subject.
Imagine you had a sense that nobody else had (Score:5, Interesting)
It turns out there are other senses, other than the five Aristotelean ones. Proprioception, for one: the awareness of body positioning. People who have proprioceptive disorders because of things like brain damage don't really have convenient and commonly understood language to describe their impairment to other people, other than to say they have brain damage that makes them clumsy.
But language or not, at least people share the sense of proprioception, so there are shared experiences that could form the basis for communication. But imagine you had some ability most other people didn't have, say the ability to detect electric current or to feel when somebody was observing you. I'm not sure you would necessarily even be aware when the sense was operating, other than feeling a kind of "intuition".
Re:I am not so sure I would want (Score:4, Interesting)
They did FMRI scans of people in various situations, some addicts, some not.
What they showed was actual differences in their brain activity in various centers... changes that happened slowly over time. Use the drug over and over, and your brain adapts to that input, it changes in response to it.
Of course this is assumed to be an unequivicolly bad thing, though, I am not sure we really can put a value judgement on it... its one of those "it is what it is" things, we still don't know quite what to make of it... its still very very high level.
Of course, we should expect this with all things. I was born epileptic. I spent the first half of my life (up to this point) on anti-seizure drugs like tegratol. Look at what tegratol does, imagine a brain being exposed to it on a daily basis during its most formative years.... wow.
There has been only very very limited study into the area. I found a few articles in some recent searches on the subject. Some evidence that kids who grow up on these meds have lower incidence of marriage, lower overall achievement, etc. Overall, from my interactions with others, I have come to realise... my brain works differently in ways that actually makes it really hard to relate to alot of people in some ways.
How much of that is genetics? how much of that is upbringing? How much of that is changes made over years by exposure to brain fucntion altering drugs? How much of my formative experiences were colored or directly influenced?
Don't get me wrong... I am not trying to make a value judgement here, or say "hey look, they broke me" just that, more fascination with how the brain works and how changeable it really is. I would love to have such a "space belt". I wonder wat FMRIs of people who wore one for a year or two would differ from others.
This stuff just fascinates me.
-Steve
Re:I am not so sure I would want (Score:3, Interesting)
I went to GT, and even took a class of his. You could always see him walking around with all kinds of things attached to him. Some of his PhD students are the same way, too. Although, the continuous clicking and buzzing does get to you after a while.
Both Starner and Mann have done some very pioneering work in this area.
Although, to be fair, Mann has done significantly more and has been at this a lot longer. IIRC, he was once stopped at an American airport for carrying this stuff. They refused to believe that he was dependent on them (he's Canadian). I remember a talk by him where he said that he now drove, instead.
Re:I am not so sure I would want (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:That's the "glass half empty." (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Sense of Smell and the cold (Score:4, Interesting)
It's very strange you mention this. I have the same ability, which most people I tell about it claim is 'in my head'.
The strangest part, in a botched medical procedure when I was 3 years old, I fully lost my sense of smell (Called 'anosmia'.)
Yet to this day, about 12-18 hrs before I notice the first symptoms of a cold or flu, I too can smell this strange odor and know to associate it with having caught a cold.
Unfortunatly due to not having a sense of smell, I've never been able to compare the cold catching smell with any other odor, but both due to the fact my smell receptors are physically damaged, and no one else i've mentioned this to knows what i'm talking about (plus you are the first person i've ever heard describe also having it), I tend to think either most people don't have this sense, or if they do it's percieved on such a low level that it's not realized it's even a sense or 'smell' and gets processed in another way by the brain.