Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

cam.ac.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 155 posts

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

#81

Post by bsza »

> The Third Thumb is worn on the opposite side of the palm to the biological thumb and controlled by a pressure sensor placed under each big toe or foot

IANAD, but I wonder what it would feel like to control it with the palmaris longus [0] instead. From what I understand, it doesn't really have an important role (14% of people don't even have it), and it's close to the skin, so an EMG could pick it up. It's also closer to the fingers, so it might be more intuitive to learn to repurpose it.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmaris_longus_muscle

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

#82

Post by Sharlin »

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.

Do they use plastic bricks there? I've heard about such things existing, but ours are molded concrete at least. And the pattern is quite unobtrusive as well.

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

#84

Post by resonious »

djtango wrote: post #43
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…

Yes - I'm learning singing at the moment and just the other day the teacher fed back - don't try to over-conceptualise what you're doing. Just do it, focus on the outcome, stay relaxed and the body will figure it out. I've been through enough learning cycles to appreciate this but this was a real hurdle for me when I was young because my default was to rely on systems and rules. Ironically as a swimmer my biggest bre…

Similar here. For a very long time, I thought that being good at something was knowing the system and rules, and applying them consciously every time. It's funny because I legit thought that that's what I was doing while playing video games or doing martial arts (the only things I was reasonably good at for quite awhile). It turns out the learning and doing processes are both deeply subconscious; very little goes on in the conscious mind during both.

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

#85

Post by OJFord »

hnbad wrote: post #51
m463 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was young, my first real experience with this was seeing a black and white spiral optical illusion in a museum. I stared at it for a bit, and then my brain adjusted and when I looked away, it affected what I looked at. I think my realization was that my brain didn't just do simple things, it did complex in many dimensions to adapt and fix things. The same thing goes with your foot, and it goes way deeper than…

The brain seems to do 90% error correction. Once you learn how human vision actually works it seems miraculous that it works at all.

That's true of so many things isn't? At my graduation (EE as well as CS, is why it's relevant) I said to my dad that I'm still completely baffled by the simplest AM radio, forget WiFi.

I understand it (especially then), but it's just crazy isn't it, that it actually works? Discovering/theorising and then prototyping some of this fundamental stuff and seeing that for the first time must have been absolutely incredible.

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

#86

Post by retrac »

Tangentially related - I hit my head last year and lost almost all low frequency hearing on my left side. (I had an existing loss, and had almost no high frequency hearing on the other side already.) Everyone sounded like a chipmunk for a while. A year in, and I am no longer subjectively aware of any difference. I still struggle with direction - which way is that siren? But music sounds like it used to, subjectively. People who I know sound familiar - exactly like they used to. But I have trouble identifying the sex of new people on the phone now. It's very surreal how stable my subjective experience of reality remained, how the brain has sort of just patched over the missing bits. The reports about how people can become accustomed to glasses that flip vision in just days, etc., are much more believable to me now.

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

#87

Post by deaddodo »

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.

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

#88

Post by makerdiety »

Seriously. How to acquire and manage an extra set of eyes? How to install a mini-map capability onto your daily person?

I'm thinking about cameras connected to a network where a server computer performs as the central hub for information and control. The set of cameras are mounted on drones or something and you have to control the drones (since artificial intelligence is still a tricky problem to solve).

The problem to solve is getting over not just control but constantly receiving new information types and pathways. Instead of the photo receptors in the human eyeballs, you now have in addition to your old eyes digital information from an array of cameras. You have the drones for taking the cameras with you everywhere you go. A whole lot of new stuff gets dumped on you and you're now basically undergoing physical therapy for a new organism or species.

Maybe twitching your tongue becomes a new daily occurrence? Or how about some hand signals forming to trigger indexed movements (a mapping between signals and output responses stored in the networked system's central database)? This is maybe how commands are sent. And that means you need an increase in power production for supporting the new infrastructure of your new lifestyle. And it will look like a gross hack in the end. Not that clean and sleek looking stuff you see in the movies. I guess pioneering is rough and rugged like that?

Sending commands is the easy part. But reading information, on top of the baseline of daily living, seems to create an information overload situation, yes? Because how to do remote control if you can't see what it is that you're remotely controlling? It's not simple like flying an RC drone. It's augmentation of all aspects of RC drone flying.

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

#89

Post by koolala »

saagarjha wrote: post #65
hnbad wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did HN start allowing emojis or did that one slip through the cracks because it pre-dates the inclusion of Japanese emojis?

There are certain blocks that are not caught by the filter.

What if alien planets filter their population like this too? Jokers and vague ideaa get "berried" because people downvote anything they don't understand.

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

#90

Post by smogcutter »

resonious wrote: post #84
djtango wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes - I'm learning singing at the moment and just the other day the teacher fed back - don't try to over-conceptualise what you're doing. Just do it, focus on the outcome, stay relaxed and the body will figure it out. I've been through enough learning cycles to appreciate this but this was a real hurdle for me when I was young because my default was to rely on systems and rules. Ironically as a swimmer my biggest bre…

Similar here. For a very long time, I thought that being good at something was knowing the system and rules, and applying them consciously every time. It's funny because I legit thought that that's what I was doing while playing video games or doing martial arts (the only things I was reasonably good at for quite awhile). It turns out the learning and doing processes are both deeply subconscious; very little goes on…

Developing that automaticity with a physical skill also unlocks the brain to do other parts that are conscious.

After a game, Lebron James can explain what happened in a play moment by moment for every player on the floor, and everything he was thinking and planning as the play developed. He’s done it in post game press conferences off the top of his head.

Granted he’s maybe the all time greatest, but it’s illustrative. He’s not thinking at all about how his body is going to do what it does. That’s completely automatic. He’s thinking a lot about the higher level strategy of the game.

Post reply on HN