(no subject)
For six weird weeks in the fall of 2004, Udo Wachter had an unerring sense of direction. Every morning after he got out of the shower, Wachter, a sysadmin at the University of Osnabruck in Germany, put on a wide beige belt lined with 13 vibrating pads - the same weight-and-gear modules that make a cell phone judder. On the outside of the belt were a power supply and a sensor that detected Earth's magnetic field. Whichever buzzer was pointing north would go off. Constantly.
"It was slightly strange at first," Wachter says, "though on the bike, it was great." He started to become more aware of the peregrinations he had to make while trying to reach a destination. "I finally understood just how much roads actually wind," he says. He learned to deal with the stares he got in the library, his belt humming like a distant chain saw. Deep into the experiment, Wachter says, "I suddenly realized that my perception had shifted. I had some kind of internal map of the city in my head. I could always find my way home. Eventually, I felt I couldn't get lost, even in a completely new place."
Read the full story.
This is an extraordinary article for several reasons. Certainly, the idea of restoring senses to the disabled is appealing; adding extra "senses" to the general population doubly so. More significant (and the crux of this essay) however, is the discovery that this can be done without complex neurosurgery.
Researchers have been experimenting with numerous brain-computer interfaces for various prosthetic tasks, such as restoring sight to the blind or giving amputees control over electromechanical prosthetics. These designs generally involve implanting computer chips either in the brain or at the junction of a set of important nerves, and then using a computer to interface with the brain by producing a carefully mapped out set of impulses. However, the techniques described in the article cited above rely on the brain's plasticity - that is, it's adaptability - to provide an interface using one of the other senses.
Brain surgery has come a long way, and there are a number of diseases and injuries for which it is the best solution. However, it is still a major surgery involving one of our most important organs, if not the most important, and as such should be avoided when possible.
The sense of touch is almost universally used to map "new" senses onto our brain in this article. The brain either learns to decode vibrations or electrical impulses in the skin. The remarkable part of this is that after prolonged exposure, the brain truly seems to adapt and decipher these signals the same way that sight, sound, and our other senses are deciphered now. Sound is the best analogue, as it literally functions by translating vibrations on a membrane into what we describe as "hearing."
The downside of this is disorientation; the brain literally seems to work these additional senses into its operation, and expects them even when taken away. Unfortunately, the article doesn't go into much depth here, there is no indication of whether the brain eventually remaps itself without the sense, or whether the traditional senses are strengthened the way a blind or deaf person describes their other senses compensating. In fact, the only example we have seems to demonstrate the opposite: a man who had a compass-style belt that constantly made him aware of north purchased a GPS unit and obsessively checks it to compensate for the loss when the experiment ended and his equipment was relinquished.
"It was slightly strange at first," Wachter says, "though on the bike, it was great." He started to become more aware of the peregrinations he had to make while trying to reach a destination. "I finally understood just how much roads actually wind," he says. He learned to deal with the stares he got in the library, his belt humming like a distant chain saw. Deep into the experiment, Wachter says, "I suddenly realized that my perception had shifted. I had some kind of internal map of the city in my head. I could always find my way home. Eventually, I felt I couldn't get lost, even in a completely new place."
Read the full story.
This is an extraordinary article for several reasons. Certainly, the idea of restoring senses to the disabled is appealing; adding extra "senses" to the general population doubly so. More significant (and the crux of this essay) however, is the discovery that this can be done without complex neurosurgery.
Researchers have been experimenting with numerous brain-computer interfaces for various prosthetic tasks, such as restoring sight to the blind or giving amputees control over electromechanical prosthetics. These designs generally involve implanting computer chips either in the brain or at the junction of a set of important nerves, and then using a computer to interface with the brain by producing a carefully mapped out set of impulses. However, the techniques described in the article cited above rely on the brain's plasticity - that is, it's adaptability - to provide an interface using one of the other senses.
Brain surgery has come a long way, and there are a number of diseases and injuries for which it is the best solution. However, it is still a major surgery involving one of our most important organs, if not the most important, and as such should be avoided when possible.
The sense of touch is almost universally used to map "new" senses onto our brain in this article. The brain either learns to decode vibrations or electrical impulses in the skin. The remarkable part of this is that after prolonged exposure, the brain truly seems to adapt and decipher these signals the same way that sight, sound, and our other senses are deciphered now. Sound is the best analogue, as it literally functions by translating vibrations on a membrane into what we describe as "hearing."
The downside of this is disorientation; the brain literally seems to work these additional senses into its operation, and expects them even when taken away. Unfortunately, the article doesn't go into much depth here, there is no indication of whether the brain eventually remaps itself without the sense, or whether the traditional senses are strengthened the way a blind or deaf person describes their other senses compensating. In fact, the only example we have seems to demonstrate the opposite: a man who had a compass-style belt that constantly made him aware of north purchased a GPS unit and obsessively checks it to compensate for the loss when the experiment ended and his equipment was relinquished.