Hacking New Senses
Summary #
The sensory cortex is the main region for processing tactile senses. Yet, recently, the sense of touch has been repurposed to provide additional information such as sight, direction, and other new senses.
(Photo: Calsidyrose at Flickr)
Commentary #
Hacking the human brain to add new senses seems like only a matter of time. Sufficient neuroplasticity should allow us to add, fuse, repurpose, and restore sensory experiences. One possible consequence is that people will have such drastically different experiences (e.g., xkcd's "Umwelt"), that they will increasingly disassociate from each other.
On the other, things could be really awesome if we jointly produced a more accurate description of the world by combining our various sensory information.
See Also #
- Mixed Feelings at Wired for a longer discussion.
- Cyborgization - Extra Senses for a more detailed explanation.