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

cam.ac.uk

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

#31

Post by superb_dev »

extheat wrote: post #26
BurningFrog wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It works by pressing a button under your big toe.

I'm not sure if it's intentional or not, but this seems to be barely discussed, and the page reads more like an slick advertisement. There is a paragraph expert about it and it's mentioned at start of the video but I don't see anywhere showing how the full device is setup or how it looks. From the images/video b-roll alone it seems almost as if the wrist bad is what's controlling it and not your toe. Not to nitpick o…

> There is a paragraph expert about it and it's mentioned at start of the video…

So you got told up front? Doesn’t sound very misleading

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

#33

Post by [deleted] »

ndriscoll wrote: post #21
clipsy wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but these make the cut much worse for anything with wheels. Worse than the original curbs? Not in my experience.

I found that whatever material they used in San Francisco for those bumpy curb ramps was incredibly slippery when it rained. Wouldn't surprise me if someone ends up disabled because of them at some point.

[deleted]

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

#34

Post by tonynator »

teeray wrote: post #24

I wonder if they don't even need to be like traditional body parts like thumbs. Perhaps like octopus tentacles with claws on the end...

How would you build a controllable tentacle? Here they control the thumb with two toes. An octopus tentacle would be way more complicated. Maybe with a Neuralink

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

#35

Post by whoistraitor »

readams wrote: post #11
CobrastanJorji wrote: post #9

There's this thing called the "curb-cut effect," where you make a change in order to accommodate people with a specific disability, and it turns out that the change is way more broadly useful than you anticipated. It's named after the ramps at intersections that were mandated by the ADA for folks in wheelchairs, but they turned out to be really good ideas in general and helped folks with strollers, on bicycles, and m…

There are some lucky circumstances where this is true, but most such accommodations are not like that. Usually some trade-off must be made, in cost or in functionality. For example, with those same cut curbs, we now need to put a bumpy panel to allow blind and visually impaired people to feel the transition from curb to street, but these make the cut much worse for anything with wheels.

I would say actually in the vast majority of cases of accessibility interventions, it benefits everyone. Everyone is, at various points in their lives, a varying degree of disabled (defined in terms of functional deficits). Whether injured, pregnant, chronically ill, a wheelchair user, elderly, or — heh — even intoxicated, thinking broadly about users of the spaces and tools we design is always going to yield more positive than negative externalities imho.

In cases where this is not true, I’d challenge designers and engineers to find more novel designs that can genuinely be used by anyone and not cost too much inconvenience. This can sometimes mean starting from scratch and questioning our assumptions. Eg. Even the need for a curb-to-street indicator presupposes a street that is used by both big metal vehicles and pedestrians, whereas perhaps there’s a solution that means those paths never cross. Ie. More fundamental urban and transport design instead of band-aiding atop legacy systems.

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

#37

Post by saulrh »

CobrastanJorji wrote: post #9

There's this thing called the "curb-cut effect," where you make a change in order to accommodate people with a specific disability, and it turns out that the change is way more broadly useful than you anticipated. It's named after the ramps at intersections that were mandated by the ADA for folks in wheelchairs, but they turned out to be really good ideas in general and helped folks with strollers, on bicycles, and m…

This is absolutely the case - in software, accessibility features are in many cases identical to power user and engineering quality features. Color-theme support is necessary functionality for color vision deficiency modes, labels and tags on UI elements enable screen-readers just as much as they enable automated testing suites, configurable keybindings make it easier to get your app working with assistive input devices. It's such a strong relationship that even bigcorps know it's a thing; I got talks about it during Google employee trainings.

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

#39

Post by sebazzz »

tonynator wrote: post #34
teeray wrote: post #24

I wonder if they don't even need to be like traditional body parts like thumbs. Perhaps like octopus tentacles with claws on the end...

How would you build a controllable tentacle? Here they control the thumb with two toes. An octopus tentacle would be way more complicated. Maybe with a Neuralink

Isn't our tongue a similar thing?

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

#40

Post by sebazzz »

labster wrote: post #7

This doesn’t seem like an unusual finding considering how good humans are at tool use in general. Picking up objects and using them as if they were part of our own body is pretty standard for us. I remember that learning how to drive a car was actually quite difficult, but by now, even rental cars seem like an extension of my body that I can control mostly unconsciously. (Operating vehicles while entirely unconscious…

Isn't it also like gaming, especially with a controller? How "good" you are with gaming is at least a function of how well your brain is able to remap desired actions into necessary controller input muscle movements.
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