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How do our brains adapt to control an extra body part?

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Re: How do our brains adapt to control an extra body part?

#141

Post by Terretta »

deaddodo wrote: post #87
Taniwha wrote: post #29

I broke my Achilles tendon - had to have a FULL reconstruction - they took a tendon that used to help waggle my big toe (the muscle is in my leg) wrapped around my heel and back up my leg and rebuilt my achilles around that - now I have a muscle that used to wiggle my toe than moves my entire foot. How hard was it to relearn? at first I'd try to move my toe and something else would move, it felt weird - but doctor's…

I think if you just exit your subjective perspective, this type of adaptation becomes obvious. What is using a game controller, keyboard + mouse, bicycle handlebars, snowboard, etc but augmentation. Yeah, it's designed to be ergonomic from the outset, but that doesn't change the fact that it is an augment.

> what is using a game controller ... but augmentation

Yes.

After 30 years of exclusively "joystick must be inverted Y" I got tired of being able to help other people play a tough spot of a game using their controller, and switched cold turkey. It took 2 - 3 weeks before I didn't randomly aim the wrong way, and 2 months to regain full accuracy.

Similar on the inverted scroll switch that Apple did when they married up scroll on iPad and Magic Trackpad. For several OS versions I stayed with the old way, then too many new users were a direction I couldn't handle, so switched. That switch took maybe 3 days to grok.

One of the weirder tricks you can do is hang upside from jungle gym or over the edge of a top bunk bed and "toss" a ball to your friend, which means you have to throw the ball "down" to them instead of toss it up. You can invert gravity much faster than you'd think!

Re: How do our brains adapt to control an extra body part?

#142

Post by LoganDark »

rm445 wrote: post #69

I can imagine exactly what that thumb would feel like if it was integrated with my nervous system. Wondering how common this is. When I was a very small child, I was fascinated by the sensation of different body parts - the way touching each finger in turn compares to the next, and the way the opposite side has a similar range of sensations. It feels like I know exactly how it would feel to have a sixth, seventh fing…

I wouldn't say it's particularly common but I can do it myself and know others that do it too. However the common theme for me is that the reason it happens is species dysphoria (lack of tail, etc). It's easy to imagine having different parts from reality once I've been trying to imagine myself that way for years.

Re: How do our brains adapt to control an extra body part?

#143

Post by Taniwha »

hanniabu wrote: post #108
Taniwha wrote: post #29

I broke my Achilles tendon - had to have a FULL reconstruction - they took a tendon that used to help waggle my big toe (the muscle is in my leg) wrapped around my heel and back up my leg and rebuilt my achilles around that - now I have a muscle that used to wiggle my toe than moves my entire foot. How hard was it to relearn? at first I'd try to move my toe and something else would move, it felt weird - but doctor's…

So can you not move your toe anymore?

I can, there are multiple muscles/tendons that move it, I believe this was one that pulls it up and there must be others that do the same - I really have not noticed any change in functionality there

Re: How do our brains adapt to control an extra body part?

#144

Post by djtango »

divan wrote: post #132
djtango wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes constraints are great. My piano teacher would basically just repeat to me like mantra: - was it legato? - were you playing free from tension? - was your tone even? - were you in time? Very rarely would he actually ever tell me anything. And whenever I'd ask for more or feedback he'd just loop back to the questions and ask if I was actually listening to myself play. It was a very frustrating start but eventually i…

Great points! I've seen a couple of papers on CLA for music learning, but CLA is a subset of so-called "non-linear pedagogy", so maybe music education has its own "branch" of it, so to speak. > I held the belief there was a "perfect way to play" the piano Yes, CLA is actively debunking the myth of a "perfect technique" which is very popular in sports. Like a coach/teacher is one who knows the "perfect" way, and their…

So much of this resonates and articulates fragmented anecdata I've accumulated via lots of learning.

I love the concept of increasing the error - it definitely helps. Makes me think of reductio ad absurbum for the body. Do it more wrong to prove the opposite.

I totally get the idea of the learning having to come from the self and have held the belief that is why taichi and yoga use very poetic metaphors to describe their movements. This was a solution our extremely smart predecessors came up with to be prescriptive without being prescriptive to teach motor skills.

Just like my singing teacher telling me to stop thinking and just be a parrot and copy the pitch (which worked almost instantly)

I will definitely be digging into CLA thanks for sharing!

Re: How do our brains adapt to control an extra body part?

#145

Post by abhpro »

divan wrote: post #132
djtango wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes constraints are great. My piano teacher would basically just repeat to me like mantra: - was it legato? - were you playing free from tension? - was your tone even? - were you in time? Very rarely would he actually ever tell me anything. And whenever I'd ask for more or feedback he'd just loop back to the questions and ask if I was actually listening to myself play. It was a very frustrating start but eventually i…

Great points! I've seen a couple of papers on CLA for music learning, but CLA is a subset of so-called "non-linear pedagogy", so maybe music education has its own "branch" of it, so to speak. > I held the belief there was a "perfect way to play" the piano Yes, CLA is actively debunking the myth of a "perfect technique" which is very popular in sports. Like a coach/teacher is one who knows the "perfect" way, and their…

This is fascinating, can you expand on the section about seeing the world as actionable items?

Re: How do our brains adapt to control an extra body part?

#146

Post by [deleted] »

DenisM wrote: post #130
smokel wrote: post #53

I once saw a documentary on a haptic compass, built from some rumble packs. It allowed people to improve their way-finding skills, and if I recall correctly, people accustomed to the idea of having this extra sense after about a week or so. I can’t easily find the original research (somewhere in the 1990s), but several hackers and artists have rebuilt or rediscovered the idea. See for example https://blinry.org/compa…

Would be cool to build one into a baseball hat. Or even put an array of car parking proximity sensors into that hat. https://www.kit.edu/kit/english/pi_2016_003_feeling-spaces-w...

[deleted]

Re: How do our brains adapt to control an extra body part?

#147

Post by divan »

abhpro wrote: post #145
divan wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great points! I've seen a couple of papers on CLA for music learning, but CLA is a subset of so-called "non-linear pedagogy", so maybe music education has its own "branch" of it, so to speak. > I held the belief there was a "perfect way to play" the piano Yes, CLA is actively debunking the myth of a "perfect technique" which is very popular in sports. Like a coach/teacher is one who knows the "perfect" way, and their…

This is fascinating, can you expand on the section about seeing the world as actionable items?

Yes, the core idea here is that our perceptual system wasn't evolutionarily designed to just scan the world around us and reconstruct it inside our heads. It evolved to keep us in contact with action-relevant properties of the world we're acting in. I.e. we're not just looking for the shapes/objects/textures, we're looking for the things we can action upon ("_affordances_") and that heavily depends on what actions you can perform.

We don't see the chair as a 3D object, we see it as an affordance to sit (along with a wide windowsill or gym ball). The wall is a barrier for an elderly person, but an affordance to the parcour performer. The pole dancer perceives the lamp post very differently from the non-pole dancer. An experienced tennis player sees the ball in mid-air as much bigger than the newbie player. Fatigued hiker perceives the hill as much steeper than full-of-energy hiker. If an athlete is more capable, objects like a baseball or tennis ball, or basketball hoop look bigger.

Gibson's theory on affordances started with his 1979 book "The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception". My understanding is that it has some criticisms, but still considered as one of the leading theories in perception studies and is heavily used in the design community.

Re: How do our brains adapt to control an extra body part?

#148

Post by kjkjadksj »

ocschwar wrote: post #13

Marshal McLuhan's book Understanding Media had the full title "Understanding media: the extensions of man." And he had a chapter about the automobile. If you've ever had the chilling experience of a skid, the terrifying adrenaline surge during that second where it is clear the car is no longer under your control, you know the dude was onto something. The car is an extension of our bodies. An extra body part.

Its kind of baffling how good at driving and thinking of other things at the same time we are. Henry Ford really lucked out that we’d so readily adapt having never seen something like a car in our evolutionary history before.

Re: How do our brains adapt to control an extra body part?

#149

Post by kjkjadksj »

koolala wrote: post #42

I started wearing a bath robe belt as a tail and my brain quickly starts telling me I am wearing it when I am not. I also had a phantom watch ⌚ on for a week after losing it.

I tend to get a vibration notification in my pocket from the phantom when my phone is elsewhere.

Re: How do our brains adapt to control an extra body part?

#150

Post by kjkjadksj »

cromulent wrote: post #116
motohagiography wrote: post #91

they should test these augmentation techs on people who ride horses as it requires using thought and micro gestures to operate an entire second body in real time using each limb independently.

This is an excellent observation. Dressage (for example) is a set of evolutionary constraints about controlling a 600kg similarly trained million dollar animal through tiny movements (mostly in your thighs and buttocks) in order to win prestigious prizes including Olympic medals. The horses react with puzzlement if you are not trained to a similar level - if you are a junior rider, expert horses are incompatible.

How does an ‘easy’ horse react to these movements? Not at all? Is this what they meant in westerns/literature by “a good horse?”
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