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Mixed Feelings

wired.com

46 pointsgeuis7 comments

Thankyou for this article.. One of the better ones I've read on HN in a while.

Something I'd never considered before about how our senses work.. And the fact that you would use the tongue to "see" even partially is incredible.

This has actually had my brain buzzing for a while today. I think there are some interesting business ideas in here to make n-sense products for disabled and non-disabled people. I say "n-sense" as in "n-number of extra senses".

The "visual tongue radar" (allows psuedo vision via an electrical impulse grid on the tongue) interface is intriguing. The reporter describes:

"Thinking back on it, I don't remember the feeling of the electrodes on my tongue at all during my walkabout. What I remember are pictures: high-contrast images of cubicle walls and office doors, as though I'd seen them with my eyes."

This article reminds me of a 2003 story (that made the cover of Wired) about a prototype brain implant artificial vision system and its hopeful Canadian patient, Jens Naumann. Here's a link: http://www.cbc.ca/sunday/sight/story3.html.

Does anyone know the eventual outcome of Jen's story? I can't find any follow-up stories about him.

The tongue interface seems like a less invasive alternative to Jen's system; although, you probably can't speak while it's active.

Dobelle died a few years ago. The FDA would never give approval for the experimental surgeries so he ended up moving his operations to Portugal. There were only a handful of patients that ever had this procedure done, Jens and Cheri Robertson that I know of. Dobelle's company was supposed to provide life-long support for Jens and Robertson but that has ended. The company ran out of funding within the last 2 years. Cheri's equipment no longer works, and she had to send it to one of the technicians who helped design it personally to try and have it fixed. I'm not sure if that has ever happened.

Cheri has had continuous problems with the implants since they were done. Her's never healed correctly and she has constantly been leaking blood and brain fluids from one of the cortical shunts.

In a recent interview where Cheri met Jans in person, he has been having many problems with his implants over the years and is thinking about having another surgery to have it removed. His equipment had stopped working several years ago and was never repaired. Overall, he ultimately said he was disappointed with the entire thing and probably would not do it again. Cheri remain(ed|s) more optimistic, but currently there is no long-term plan for continued improvement or support for the patients that underwent this experiment.

Thanks for responding. Based on the lack of follow up press, I had suspected less than hoped for results. Jens and Cheri were courageous for volunteering, and hopefully their data can be used to someday improve the technology.

The airplane system intrigued me. Most aircraft these days (save light aircraft that really only get flown in day VFR) already have a digital notion of pitch and bank, which is trivially repeated around the cockpit to the indicators and flight management system, among others. It would be simple (compared to most avionics upgrades) to add a pitch and bank port that you could plug something like that into. Two signal channels plus a few watts of 28 VDC aircraft power in some kind of standard interface.

I think wearing that would make it much easier to trust your instruments, the first and hardest challenge of instrument flying. Once disoriented, it takes an awful lot of discipline to ignore what your inner ear is telling you and steer by the needles. Even on a bright clear day with a beautiful horizon, looking to the side when you roll out of a turn a little too fast, maybe with a slight sub-1G pushover, and straight-and-level flight feels like a weird turn. At night, you end up with unfortunate accidents (like John Kennedy Jr's) that claim an awful lot of lives just because the horizon isn't visible and you don't trust the instrument that is proven to be wrong much less often than you are.

The FAA would be suspicious of such instruments, and rightfully so, but I think in time it would be an invaluable addition to a pilot's awareness. There would of course have to be a constant low-level stimulation, to make it immediately obvious that the device is powered, and an instant indication that the device is not receiving reliable information from the aircraft's attitude system (such as maybe "blinking" the pilot's wrists) as well as visible indicators on the instrument panel. With normal aviation precautions, and an injunction not to rely solely on such "newfangled contraptions", I think this would be a very valuable system. There would be less cockpit voice recordings of pilots who couldn't quite figure out why their instruments were "all screwed up."

http://www.allthelyrics.com/lyrics/death_by_chocolate/the_ls... (Yes, I know it's only a cover...)

    I fly to the land
    Where my hands can see
    And my eyes can walk
    And the mountains talk

    I hear with my knees
    Run with my nose
    Smell with my feet
    My mouth is a rose

Just as much modern tech is attributed to pop culture sci-fi (id est Star Trek), stuff like this make me wonder if the drug culture was also an influence...

EDIT: I'm surprised this discussion hasn't mentioned synesthesia yet, which is the "natural" precedent of senses misdirecting themselves in the brain.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesthesia

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