"Hypnogogic Ideas"

[aliothsan]

Last night, while I was having this neural-plasticity epiphany, I got so excited that I did something I'm always meaning to do. I turned on the light, pulled a random pen and a random notebook, and got to writing my ideas down. I gave the notebook the very pretentious title "Hypnogogic Ideas", and started recording the random little things I

Comments

[aliothsan]

There was some kind of article on adding an extra sense--teaching people to always recognize where north was with the aid of specialized belts. Wired, Scientific American, or something like that. My boyfriend would know, I think; if you're curious, go ask him.

Ooh, another one to add to my list.

I've heard of a woman who implanted magnets into her fingers to be able to sense magnetic fields. Only word-of-mouth among fellow psych majors; I've got no reference.

Yeah, saizai pointed me to an article she wrote. She went to a BM "surgeon" to get it done, and had fun with it for a while, but there were complications and she had to get it removed -- IIRC the magnet fragmented in her finger, and maybe it got infected? Don't remember. Anyway, I've been trying to think of a better way to implement that.

There's also a blind boy who uses echolocation to navigate. I think that one was in the Washington Post; could look further if you're interested.

Blindsight-by-echolocation is fairly well documented I think (though pretty much all the evidence is anecdotal). I remember reading about one guy who learned to tongue-click his way around, and then designed a little clicker device he could wear. *heads off to reread that Dawkins passage about bat echolocation*

I've thought of making up a danced conlang.

Ooh, that would be really interesting. And, I bet, very information-dense. Good luck making an IPA for it :-P I've thought of making a touch-conlang, where (I suppose) you basically poke the other person in the appropriate places.