New Senses for Humans: An Evening with David Eagleman
“The slice of reality that we can see is limited by our biology.” — David Eagleman
This past Friday, NeuroCollege had the pleasure of hosting Professor David Eagleman — neuroscientist, New York Times bestselling author, and CEO of Neosensory, a company which aims to aid and augment the human sensorial experience.
During his time with us, Eagleman touched upon his company, Neosensory, his latest book, LiveWired, and the future of neurotech. His talk primarily centered around sensory substitution, a non-invasive technique for circumventing the loss of one sense by feeding its information through another channel. To illustrate this innovative approach, he described a vest developed by Neosensory which converts auditory information into small vibrations. This essentially allows individuals experiencing hearing loss or deafness to “hear” through their skin. This is possible because of the brain’s remarkable plasticity, which allows for the dexterity and flexibility needed for interpreting diverse signal inputs.
Eagleman went on to explain the most immediate application for sensory substitution to be restoring sensory deficits, such as blindness or deafness. Nevertheless, he remained enthused about the incredible future potential of this technology in the creation of novel senses. For example, he speculated about the formation of a ‘sense’ for the stock market through the continual absorption of market information through the skin. He asserted overtime the brain would learn to interpret these signals and be able to make predictions about a stocks’ trajectory without much conscious intervention. This is akin to how you eventually learn to see as a child through experience and amassing of visual input.
After the talk, NeuroCollege members were invited to stay for an afterparty to debrief our evening with Eagleman and share our own takeaways and ideas. Below you’ll find a knowledge graph and list highlighting our most discussed themes, spotlighting member quotes and opinions.
Sensory Substitution
- David Eagleman’s work is focused on the idea of “sensory substitution” — the creation of new “super-human” senses so that “old humans” can detect new phenomena around us that were not available to our original five senses.
Why do we care:
- If you think about the difficulty of trying to describe vision to someone who is unable to see, it somewhat puts into perspective how drastically different a new perceptual experience might be — unfathomable to us now.
- So what if we can use ultrasonic waves to determine our locations like bats, help blind people restore vision by teaching them how to interpret sound waves like dolphins, or open up a huge range of “superhuman abilities”…
Examples:
- U.S. Navy Seals can utilize this technology to obtain 360 degrees, unobstructed vision at night and to also sense sonar waves while underwater
- Instead of using our traditional eyes, blind people can use other inputs to help them see again. Brainport is a leader in this field. They even helped some blind people see fireworks for the first time in their life.
Quotes:
- “Nothing special about our senses — it’s just what we’ve inherited. Not necessarily what we have to stick with” — David Eagleman
- “There is much freedom in the sort of signals that we input in it, which hints that our processing capabilities are equivalent to any other animal with different sensory inputs.” — Edoardo Contente [NeuroCollege Member]
How it works:
- The brain cannot see, hear, feel, smell, or hear anything. It can only learn to read the different electrical signals coming from different parts of our bodies.
- So if we figure out a way to supply the brain with the same electrical signal with an implanted device instead of our traditional limbs or senses, then our brain can also learn to interpret the new signals. Thus, we are teaching our brains to develop a new “sense”
Future Food for Thoughts:
- “Interesting to think about the sheer potential for expansion of perceptual experience and the choice we might have in that. Thus far, the choice has not been ours. But in the future we will truly get to look at the world and ask ourselves how we want to experience it. We will be able to construct the nature of our own realities.” — Rio McLellan [NeuroCollege Member]
- “Tongue is a good port to access the brain” — Shivani [NeuroCollege Member]
- “Could you use this neuro tech to study mechanical allodynia and test if the perception of normal stimuli as noxious is related to aberrant sensory integration. This is an extension of how the tech has been used to help patients with tinnitus.” — JFranco [NeuroCollege Member]
Nanorobots
- Extremely, tiny, fluid nano-bots are just as important to the future of neurotech as our traditional understanding of invasive and non-invasive neuro-electrical-engineering methods.
Quotes:
- “People, in general, are not very eager to (and understandably) recur to surgery to increase measurement sensitivity of their cortex. A shift of paradigm seems to be required for Neurotech to become something that is part of everyday life. Nanorobotics seems a promising avenue. “ — Edoardo Contente [NeuroCollege Member]
How it works:
- A few far-sighted companies are working on 5 to 10-year solutions where nano-bots can come in and interfere with the electrical firing between neuron synapses. This can be used to alter our motor control and how our brains communicate electrical signals within the brain.
Maximum bandwidth of bit/second information we can exchange with computers
- Biggest challenge of building neurotech devices: (1) we don’t know enough about the brain, and (2) Limited bandwidth of brain signals that are transferrable between the brain and computational devices
- (1) Our eyes send roughly around 10,000,000 bits/second to the brain, our skin 1,000,000 bits/second, our ears and smell are both around 100,000 bits/second, and our taste is around 1000 bits/second.
- But these roughly 11 million bits are compressed to only 50 bits/second.
- Many researchers expected that the human brain would show a tremendous information processing capability. But when researchers measure our information processing capabilities during “intelligent” or “conscious” activities, such as reading or piano playing, they came up with a maximum capability of less than 50 bits per second.
- If you read roughly 300 words per minute, that averages out to around 5 words per second, and assuming around 5 characters per word, and 2 bits per character, we get to roughly the aforementioned 50 bits per second.
- (2) David Eagleman’s company, NeoSensory has measured the bits per second that are transferable from the brain to the neurotech devices, and they weren’t that high.
- This means that our current technology doesn’t give us enough bandwidth to obtain a “perfect image” of the brain, or have enough power to send “perfect electrical signals” to influence the brain.
Non-Invasive technology is the future
- David Eagleman believes that only non-invasive neurotech devices can change the lives of everyday people.
- David Eagleman does not believe in the mass-adoption of implantable chips in the brains of everyday people because of surgery risks, infection risks, and degradation risks…
- The benefits do not outweigh the cost… at least not yet.
- It will be up to us to build safe invasive neurotech devices for our kids in the future.
Security & Ethical Risks
Potential Security & Ethical Risks of Neurotech:
- “The security risks are inherent in creating direct electronic access to what will constitute humans’ experiential worlds in the future” — Yuli Jadov
- “How will children who grow up with peripheral sensory tech adjust biologically/neurochemically?” — Yuli Jadov
If you’re interested in learning more, you can view the link to the full talk here.
