April 3rd, 2007 @ 8:45 pm
Mixed Feelings
Wired 15.04: Mixed Feelings
See with your tongue. Navigate with your skin. Fly by the seat of your pants (literally). How researchers can tap the plasticity of the brain to hack our 5 senses — and build a few new ones.
They are doing some awesome stuff with providing extra senses, from seeing via electrical impulses to the tongue, to adding the ability to sense the earth’s magnetic field via a belt with vibrating pads.
The weirdest / coolest part of the article is towards the end where it talks about how people feel once they get used to that extra sensory data and it is taken away. They feel lost when their ability to “sense” direction is taken away; even though before the experiment they never had that ability in the first place.
via /.
