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Comment by wespiser_2018 | Hacker News Reader

wespiser_2018

There's as similar vibro-tactile device, which is a belt you wear and always vibrates strongest in the direction of north, and over time the user would learn or improve their internal navigation.

A quick search reveals a company, feelSpace, tried to bring this idea market for the purposes of navigation: https://newatlas.com/feelspace-navigation-belt/43571/ If I knew, I probably would have bought the belt for learning better navigation just as a fun little project!

Cool stuff! As we start to have more devices constantly around us, it will be interesting to see how haptic feedback can provide a more intuitive to our devices as we move through space.

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It's worth noting that, anecdotally, your sense of direction becomes WAY worse when you stop using the device. It seems that your brain encodes it as a piece of input to its navigation and deemphasizes more instinctive way finding, which hurts you when you no longer have the input.

The whole idea reminds me of those people who got magnets inserted underneath their skin on their fingers so the tactile response allowed them to feel magnetic fields. It’s neat how our brains seem to rewire and adapt to new sensory input like that

There's a whole field of related experiments called "sensory substitution", and similar "brain rewiring" experiments that include wearing vision inverting goggles for extended periods.

They're all really interesting, but tricky to do controlled experiments with, and impossible to do double blind experiments with. All the papers in this area make for fascinating reading.

There's also a cool paper that shows these adaptations happen quicker than can be attributed to "rewiring". (I get that the parent used the term informally in their post, but it's important to me!)

There are also some DIY versions of this, often in the form of ankle bracelets.

Lehpt Anonym, a 'biohacker' even planned to implant a similar device in their leg[1], though I don't know if they succeeded.

[1] https://www.wired.com/2010/12/transcending-the-human-diy-sty...

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