Livewired Brain #4: Sensory Enhancement, Sensory Addition

In an earlier blog, we looked at sensory substitution capabilities of the brain. In Livewired, David Eagleman next looks at the brain’s capability to deal with sensory enhancement, even addition of entirely new senses.

 

He cites the case of a lady who lost her sense of balance (due to an inner ear problem). So a helmet that read the tilt of her head was placed on her head that would send tilt/balance signals via her tongue (her ear channel wasn’t working, remember?), and voila! Her brain learnt to “understand the strangely routed information” and her ability to balance improved tremendously.

 

In another instance, a color blind artist attached a device that converted color to sound signals delivered via “bone conduction behind his ear”. Now he can “see” and differentiate colors. Even better, he can see colors beyond the normal spectrum that us regular mortals can see, because the range of his color detection sensors are better than our eyes!

 

Impressive, but you’d have noticed the above were examples of existing sense signals being sent through new channels. What would happen if we send enhanced signals that no human has ever experienced?

 

Well, scientists created a helmet mounted set of cameras that would scan in every direction, i.e., 360 degrees, then “compresses it to a display in front of the user’s eyes”. As you might have expected, test subjects initially found the experience nauseating. But within 15 minutes, “a user can grab an object held anywhere around him, dodge something sneaking up on him, and sometimes catch a ball thrown to him from behind”! The brain had learnt to incorporate the new information remarkably fast.

 

In 2005, scientists created a belt with motor vibrators that could detect the earth’s magnetic field. The vibrator corresponding to North would vibrate. Initially this felt annoying, but soon “it becomes spatial information: a feeling that North is there”. And over a few weeks:

“Their orientation improves… they gain a higher awareness of the relationship between different places… the locations of places can be remembered more easily.”

A bird-like sense of orientation and navigation…

 

All of these examples show the brain can learn to interpret new signals, new forms of data, and even develop new sensory capabilities:

“Whatever data the brain receives, it makes use of.”