On-Body Circuits Create New Sense Organ

destinyland writes "In 'My New Sense Organ,' a science writer tests 'a new sense' — the ability to always know true north — by strapping a circuit board to her ankle. It's connected to an electronic compass and an ankle band with eight skin buzzers. The result? 'I had wrong assumptions I didn't know about ... I returned home to Washington DC to find that, far worse than my old haunt San Francisco, my mental map of DC swapped north for west. I started getting more lost than ever as the two spatial concepts of DC did battle in my head.' The device also detects 'the specific places where infrastructure interferes with the earth's magnetic fields.'

This is the future...

[ohsmeguk]

I've heard of people implanting tiny rare earth magnets in their fingers so they can sense current flowing through wires and magnetic fields. I would like to try it when I can be certain they won't break when they're under my skin... :P

Don't need electronics for that

[Haxamanish]

When I was a teen, I always consciously kept track where the North was. Every time I made a turn, I would adjust my imaginary compass - yeah I was some kind of freak. I would also make note of the orientation of some landmarks in every city. After a while, it became an automatism, now (over 20 yrs later) I often amaze people by pointing where the North is with very good accuracy without using a compass. It always works, but if I have been a passenger in a car (or other transport) it takes about half an hour after arriving before I know where the North is. Extra bonus: if the sun is visible, I can read the time of day from its position. I guess everybody can train it with a little bit of effort.

Re:What qualifies for new sensory organ?

[joocemann]

The body is an amazing thing. The brain, too. I was recently reading about a camera device that sends signal data to a 'lollipop' that is placed on the tongue of blind people. In short time, the people's brains began to interpret the signals (which are not the same as optical signals at all) as to what it truly was --- and the patients began to see. http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/08/22/2035256 [slashdot.org]

It really amazes me at the ability of the brain to start with some from of stimulus (beit natural or induced) and decipher its relevance.

The difference in what qualifies 'sensory organ' may well be semantics; or maybe we need new definitions to describe these novel apparatus.

In contrast, neurons are not in direct connection, either; neurotransmitters span a space between them called the synaptic cleft. Those neurotransmitters are chemical stimuli; these 'buzzers' are electronic stimuli. There are some differences and none are very clearly understood, but as far as I know we might accomplish the same by 'buzzing' with small and rapid doses of neurotransmitters instead of buzzing.

Saskatoon

[Relden]

I've lived in Southern Ontario most of my life and have a fairly good sense of direction. I usually know where north is.I wonder if this is more a function of memory than an innate ability: if I am a passenger in a car and fall asleep, I'll be lost when I wake up until I see enough visual cues to reestablish my knowledge of where north is. The same happens if I'm driving through a subdivision with lots of curved streets. A couple of decades ago I moved to Saskatoon in western Canada. I was lost. It wasn't the kind of random sense of being lost you get when you move to the new place. My sense of direction was completely reversed. I'd go south instead of north, east instead of west, not east instead of north or south instead of west. One day, I realized that this probably had to do with the rivers. I have usually lived near rivers, in places where I can actually see the river most days. In Southern Ontario, most of the rivers flow north-to-south. In Saskatoon, the river flows south-to-north. I think I had come to use rivers as mnemonic cues for direction. As soon as I realized this, my mental map of Saskatoon reoriented itself and I was never lost again.

Re:What qualifies for new sensory organ?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is why I think a lot of the hopes and research into "reading the mind" as a form of brain-machine-interface are off the mark. Forget about trying to decipher what the brain is doing, just wire some sort of I/O system, which we already have in chips that talk to nerves, in place and let the brain figure out what to do with it. It will take training and practice to get used to it, but it will be a lot simpler than trying to figure out how the brain works.

Re:Mental maps...

[onkelonkel]

You are likely an exception. My wife uses landmarks to navigate, I prefer addresses. She'll tell me to pick up my daughter at Suzy's house, assuming that I know exactly where that is because I was there once a year ago. If I ask where is that, she'll say "it's on the street by the golf course in the green house on the same side as where Bob and Judy used to live", which still hasn't conveyed any useful information to me. What I want to hear is "1234 Trent Avenue" which uniquely identifies the house. That way I'm not standing there like a dumbass in front of the wrong green house.

Re:What qualifies for new sensory organ?

[dzfoo]

>> Technically this is a computer-brain interface. The device is just using convenient, pre-existing inputs to the brain.

So, does that mean that reading a regular compass in the old-fashioned way, say, by using your eyes, qualifies as a computer-brain interface, since the device (the compass) is just using a convenient, pre-existing input mechanism to the brain (the eyes)?

>> So what the difference if this relies on someone's sense of touch?

The difference then is that the actual "sensoring" is done by the body's old hardware, so nothing new. Would you say then that a pager set on "vibrate" is a "new sensory organ" just because it communicates alerts via stimulation of touch sensors?

Kids nowadays, they are so easily amused.

        -dZ.

Re:Mental maps...

[clone53421]

True.

I suspect it is also related to the generality that men are better communicators, while women are better listeners.

Men want to understand (and to be understood). Women want to feel (and want you to feel the same way). We've probably all heard the saying, "If a woman tells you about her problem, she doesn't want you to solve it, she wants you to listen". Of course it's not always 100% true, but it's still an accurate generalization.

This is completely ordinary in some cultures

[Estanislao Martínez]

When I was a teen, I always consciously kept track where the North was. Every time I made a turn, I would adjust my imaginary compass - yeah I was some kind of freak. I would also make note of the orientation of some landmarks in every city. After a while, it became an automatism, now (over 20 yrs later) I often amaze people by pointing where the North is with very good accuracy without using a compass. It always works, but if I have been a passenger in a car (or other transport) it takes about half an hour after arriving before I know where the North is. Extra bonus: if the sun is visible, I can read the time of day from its position. I guess everybody can train it with a little bit of effort.

There are several cultures, most famously Australian Aborigines, where you can't even speak the language correctly if you don't have this skill. A quick example is from this article by Lera Borodistky [edge.org]:

Follow me to Pormpuraaw, a small Aboriginal community on the western edge of Cape York, in northern Australia. I came here because of the way the locals, the Kuuk Thaayorre, talk about space. Instead of words like "right," "left," "forward," and "back," which, as commonly used in English, define space relative to an observer, the Kuuk Thaayorre, like many other Aboriginal groups, use cardinal-direction terms -- north, south, east, and west -- to define space. This is done at all scales, which means you have to say things like "There's an ant on your southeast leg" or "Move the cup to the north northwest a little bit." One obvious consequence of speaking such a language is that you have to stay oriented at all times, or else you cannot speak properly. The normal greeting in Kuuk Thaayorre is "Where are you going?" and the answer should be something like " Southsoutheast, in the middle distance." If you don't know which way you're facing, you can't even get past "Hello."

Re:This is the future...

[sp332]

Here's a presentation from a woman who did it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=voA7Uz7uABE [youtube.com] She coated the magnet with gold + a layer of bio-inactive plastic, but in the end it still disintegrated.

Re:Mental maps...

[smoker2]

It's only really americans who give directions in points of the compass like east and west. You would have to tell me which way was west if I was in a city. On the open road is different, especially if you have ever looked at a map or atlas, but in enclosed areas compass points are generally useless. I can miss a turn and take an unknown later one that heads in the same direction, and still know roughly how far off course I am, and how to get back on track. None of that is to do with maps or compass directions. Its called having a sense of direction. Most women would turn around and go back to the first turning because their mental "map" is inflexible. And of course, navigating by landmarks is useless unless you already know the landmarks, and if you miss one you're lost.

I am a truck driver, so I do this navigating thing a lot. Strangely, 95% of truck drivers are men, probably because we actually have to get there on time.

Just for a laugh, can you imagine America being discovered by women ? Yes, head out on that blue stuff, keep an eye out for a really big wave then turn right until you see a whale. After that just go straight on until you get really hungry.