Speaker 1: Hey, if you can use stereo headphones to listen to
Speaker 1: this episode. Hey, welcome to sign Stuff, a production of
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio More Hit Cham And today we're tackling the question
Speaker 1: do super senses exist? Scientists out there have an idea
Speaker 1: that we can give humans new senses beyond the ones
Speaker 1: we already have, and this is done by basically hacking
Speaker 1: your brain. We're going to be talking to experts about echolocation,
Speaker 1: a skill some people have to use sonar Like that, dude,
Speaker 1: how we're going to talk to a scientist that's using
Speaker 1: technology to one day let us sense things you can't
Speaker 1: see or hear, like collectromagnetic fields or even Wi Fi.
Speaker 1: So you get ready to augment your awareness as we
Speaker 1: make sense of the question do super senses exist? Hey,
Speaker 1: Today we're starting our exploration of the limits of our
Speaker 1: senses by taking a dive into echolocation. This is something
Speaker 1: that some animals like bats, dolphins, some shrews, and digny
Speaker 1: dormice do where they use sound to know what's around them.
Speaker 1: Now you might have heard that some people can do
Speaker 1: it too. To fill us in on everything we know
Speaker 1: about echolocation in humans, I reached out to two of
Speaker 1: the world's experts on the subject, Professors Laura Thaller and
Speaker 1: Liam Norman of Durham University in the UK.
Speaker 2: My name is Liam Norman, and a lot of my
Speaker 2: research concerns human perception, in particular human echolocation.
Speaker 3: I investigate echolocation, in particular how people echolocate and how
Speaker 3: they use echolocation to perceive their Welsh and how they
Speaker 3: learn it amazing.
Speaker 1: Maybe can you start us off by explaining what is echolocation.
Speaker 3: Echolocation is the process where typically an animal make a sound,
Speaker 3: That sound goes out in the environment, and then when
Speaker 3: there's something in the sounds past, it will reflect the
Speaker 3: sound and so that's the echo that then comes back
Speaker 3: to the person and they can hear that echo, and
Speaker 3: this carries spatial information.
Speaker 1: But what's around them? Yes, can you give some examples
Speaker 1: of humans that are able to do this?
Speaker 3: So one of the possibly most famous non echo locators
Speaker 3: Daniel Kish, he is blind from an early age. He's American,
Speaker 3: and he has used echo location as long as he
Speaker 3: can remember, and he uses mouth clicks as his sound
Speaker 3: that he makes. So they're very brief, trendient sound there
Speaker 3: like this, and these sounds then travel out in the
Speaker 3: environment and the echoes return to him the reflections of
Speaker 3: the sound. It doesn't mean that he clicks all the time,
Speaker 3: you know, the ouphent situations where he doesn't need to.
Speaker 1: So why do you think this person, Daniel Kish is
Speaker 1: so famous?
Speaker 3: Now, Daniel Kish is very good at echo location. We
Speaker 3: have tested his skills and variety experiment and so we
Speaker 3: found that he's extremely good at localizing how fartings are
Speaker 3: weigh and whether they are to the left or right,
Speaker 3: So he can, for example, determine a shift in the
Speaker 3: distance of about centimeter.
Speaker 1: Here we're talking about Daniel Kish, one of the most
Speaker 1: well known human echolocators. If you google his name you
Speaker 1: can find lots of videos of him using echolocation. Mister
Speaker 1: Kish is so good at it. If you place an object,
Speaker 1: say five ft in front of him, he can tell
Speaker 1: if you move that object half an inch closer or
Speaker 1: half an inch back, and he can tell if you
Speaker 1: move it a few inches to the right or to
Speaker 1: the left. He can also tell what shape an object is.
Speaker 3: So it was a bit of a silly experiment, but
Speaker 3: we just wanted to test possible So we had different
Speaker 3: shapes that were made from cardboards and there were either
Speaker 3: a triangle or a circuleancequere and wrecked angle and represented
Speaker 3: one at a time, and he was allowed to click
Speaker 3: at them as long as he wanted and to move
Speaker 3: his head, and she could tell them a part very easily.
Speaker 1: Actually, mister Kish is also able to recognize the texture
Speaker 1: of an object, whether it's rough or smooth, and he
Speaker 1: can tell if something is hollow or flat, can tell
Speaker 1: their size, whether they're up or down, and all of
Speaker 1: it while being completely blind. It's really quite amazing. But
Speaker 1: here's the surprising fact. Daniel Kish is not unique. There
Speaker 1: are many expert echo locators out there like him, and
Speaker 1: actually doctor Steller and Norman think that anyone can learn
Speaker 1: to echo locate. Okay, so who can do human echo location?
Speaker 2: That's a good question. The short answer is, anybody who
Speaker 2: has an ability to use hearing normally to locate sounds
Speaker 2: should be able to learn echo location to some degree.
Speaker 3: So one thing that we've learned is that anyone can
Speaker 3: learn to echolocate people with pickle vision, people who are blind. Obviously,
Speaker 3: it is mediated through hearing, so if there's a profound
Speaker 3: hearing loss, then there are natural limits to how this
Speaker 3: can work. But in principle. It's very learnable and we
Speaker 3: had in workshops at the youngest child that's learned it
Speaker 3: was three years old, and in our research, which today
Speaker 3: has focused on adults, the oldest person was seventy nine
Speaker 3: years old.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 1: Yes, people from three years old to seventy nine years
Speaker 1: old can learn to echo locate. You don't need to
Speaker 1: be blind or have special hearing to do it, although
Speaker 1: it helps you have been doing it for a while.
Speaker 2: As with anything, there is a benefit to learning this
Speaker 2: ability from a young age. So the best human echolocate
Speaker 2: is that we know began learning this ability either in
Speaker 2: early or middle childhood.
Speaker 1: Wow. How do you train someone to echo locate?
Speaker 3: For our research, we have developed a paradigm where we
Speaker 3: have different tasks that we ask people to do.
Speaker 1: Okay, here's how you can train to echo locate. The
Speaker 1: first thing you have to do is learn to make
Speaker 1: the clicking sound with your mouth.
Speaker 2: And so this is usually made by placing the tongue
Speaker 2: in a particular position at the roof of the mouth
Speaker 2: and then keeping the mouth open. You then bring the
Speaker 2: tone down quite quickly and it can create a kind
Speaker 2: of a short popping sound or a clicking sound. It
Speaker 2: sounds like a.
Speaker 1: Now you don't have to make this particular sound. Some
Speaker 1: echo locators use shouts or hissing or whistling. You can
Speaker 1: also use a clicker in your hand. But mouth clicks
Speaker 1: are good because they're short so they don't interfere with
Speaker 1: the echo. They're sharp, so they have lots of high
Speaker 1: frequencies which give you more resolution, and they come from
Speaker 1: your mouth, which is a fixed distance from your ears,
Speaker 1: so it's more consistent.
Speaker 2: And then once you've established that the person is comfortable
Speaker 2: making a mouth click, then it's just about teaching them
Speaker 2: what to listen for in the echoes. And the key
Speaker 2: thing is to start with tasks that are fairly simple
Speaker 2: and then just develop the difficulty in a step by
Speaker 2: step way. For example, you can place a large object
Speaker 2: in front of the person. They can be very close
Speaker 2: to the head, and then you ask them to make
Speaker 2: a click, and then you can take the object away.
Speaker 2: They do the same thing again, and you ask them
Speaker 2: to pay attention to the difference in how those two
Speaker 2: sounds sound, and then you ask them to judge whether
Speaker 2: they think the object is in front of them or
Speaker 2: whether it's not there, and you can gradually increase the distance,
Speaker 2: and so with practice they should be able to develop
Speaker 2: disability and be able to do these tasks that maybe
Speaker 2: one or two meet a distance after a few weeks.
Speaker 1: And this training works. Even people who don't have a
Speaker 1: visual impairment can learn to have sonar like a bat.
Speaker 3: And you'd be surprised. It sounds difficult. But then we
Speaker 3: have people who at first are very doubtful, like oh, no,
Speaker 3: I cannot dose this as sort of ago, and then
Speaker 3: they come in for the second or third session and
Speaker 3: they just get the hang of it. And then we
Speaker 3: asked them to come in for twenty sessions in total,
Speaker 3: and we space this around ten weeks out and by
Speaker 3: the end when we benchmark them to someone who's done
Speaker 3: this for ten years or more, many of the people
Speaker 3: who've trained for just ten weeks reached the level of
Speaker 3: this expert, which suggests, you know, it's a skill that
Speaker 3: you don't have to practice for ten years. So for
Speaker 3: some people they are very good even earlier on, so
Speaker 3: may not even take ten weeks.
Speaker 1: Yes, it seems anyone can learn to echo locate. Even
Speaker 1: you could learn to do it, you just have to
Speaker 1: want to learn. In fact, the two researchers we're talking
Speaker 1: to who are both sided taught themselves to echo locate.
Speaker 1: So you're able to echo locate, you've taught yourself to
Speaker 1: do it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I have had a good role model. I'm not
Speaker 3: as good as many of the echo locations, but I'm
Speaker 3: not too bad. I can do some you know, basic stuff.
Speaker 1: Okay, But here's the thing about echo location principle. It's
Speaker 1: easy to know what's going on. You make a sound,
Speaker 1: the sound goes out, it bounces on things, it comes
Speaker 1: back to your ears, and from the echo you can
Speaker 1: tell what's there. But if you talk to anyone who
Speaker 1: can echo locate, they're not really thinking about any of
Speaker 1: the physics or even the timing between the sound and
Speaker 1: the bouncing echo. It's really more of a feeling. Was
Speaker 1: there a moment when it clicked for you? No pun
Speaker 1: intended when you say that, like, Okay, I get it now,
Speaker 1: I understand what to listen for.
Speaker 3: Yeah, definitely. I started out expecting or I must have
Speaker 3: this revelation of this this echo that I'm hearing, but
Speaker 3: often that's not what it sounds like. There's something's presented
Speaker 3: at one two meters. Also, for me, it's more the
Speaker 3: quality that I'm paying attention to and so that was
Speaker 3: an ahab moment for me.
Speaker 1: I see, it's not so much about hearing the echo,
Speaker 1: but maybe kind of feeling the echo.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: In other words, unless you're sh across the Grand Canyon, Hello, Hello,
Speaker 1: in a room with objects close to you, the echoes
Speaker 1: happen way too fast for us to consciously notice them,
Speaker 1: which means that when you echo locate, your brain is
Speaker 1: sort of processing the echo automatically, and to your conscious self,
Speaker 1: it's just the feeling that you.
Speaker 5: Get it's close.
Speaker 1: Or to the right or left, or that it's round
Speaker 1: or rough or smooth. And that means that either your
Speaker 1: brain is already wired to do echolocation, or your brain
Speaker 1: rewires itself as you learn to do it. So when
Speaker 1: we come back, we're going to find out which is
Speaker 1: the case by digging into what happens in the brain
Speaker 1: of people who echo locate, and we're going to find
Speaker 1: out what that means for our ability to hack the
Speaker 1: brain to gain more supersensus. Stay with us, we'll be
Speaker 1: right back. Hey, welcome back. We're talking about whether supersensues exist,
Speaker 1: and we started with e colocation. It's what bats and
Speaker 1: dolphins use to get around and it's something people can
Speaker 1: learn to do. In fact, they can learn to do
Speaker 1: it pretty well, to the point where they can notice
Speaker 1: centimeter changes in the position of things around them and
Speaker 1: even their shape and texture. Now, I asked our two experts,
Speaker 1: professors Laura Thaler and Lean Norman, to describe what happens
Speaker 1: in the brain when people echo locate, and their answer
Speaker 1: is kind of surprising. Okay, so I saw some research
Speaker 1: done by you about what happens to the brain of
Speaker 1: people who learn to echolocate. Can you tell us about that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think this is one of the most fascinating
Speaker 2: things about this topic. Who don't have all the answers yet.
Speaker 2: But first of all, that location is obviously processed through
Speaker 2: the auditory system because it is part of our hearing.
Speaker 2: But when we conduct brain imaging studies and we have
Speaker 2: expert eclocators in an MRIs Kunner and they listen to
Speaker 2: e colocation sounds they make judgments about them, we find
Speaker 2: that actually it's the part of the brain that we
Speaker 2: normally call the visual codex that is the most active.
Speaker 2: That's where we see by far the most activity in
Speaker 2: the brain in terms of processing these zones. So that's
Speaker 2: quite surprising because we call this visual codex.
Speaker 1: Okay, this is the first interesting fact about the brain
Speaker 1: activity of people who use echolocation, and that is that
Speaker 1: they're part of the brain that scientists normally think is
Speaker 1: used to see things. The visual cortex lights up when
Speaker 1: they echo locate, and this is unexpected because A you
Speaker 1: see this in expert echo locators who are blind, so
Speaker 1: they're definitely not using their eyes and b echolocation only
Speaker 1: uses hearing. So why is the visual cortex being you
Speaker 1: and not only that, Scientists can see these brain areas
Speaker 1: light up in the same way as if the person
Speaker 1: was seeing something in front of them.
Speaker 3: When we followed this up later on, wondering is there
Speaker 3: a systematic pattern to this activity, we found that it's
Speaker 3: not just responding to the echos, but that there's a
Speaker 3: relationship between the location and space where the echo comes
Speaker 3: from and the part of the brain in this eartivisual
Speaker 3: context that maps that takeos sound and let's often retract
Speaker 3: to as retino topek mapping.
Speaker 1: All right, this is a little complicated but super interesting.
Speaker 1: If you're a sighted person, there's kind of a one
Speaker 1: to one mapping between what you see and which part
Speaker 1: of the visual area of your brain lights up. This
Speaker 1: is the little patch of brain that first gets the
Speaker 1: signals from your eyes. So, for example, if you see
Speaker 1: an image of a black cross on a white background
Speaker 1: and then someone looked at your brain actively in that area,
Speaker 1: they'll see it activate in a little cross pattern as
Speaker 1: if someone was projecting that image onto that part of
Speaker 1: the brain. And if you see a circle in front
Speaker 1: of you, you'll see that area light up in a circle.
Speaker 1: It's super fascinating. But what's amazing is that the scientists
Speaker 1: saw the same thing happen for echoes. In expert echolocators
Speaker 1: who are blind, if they send an object to one
Speaker 1: side of them, then one side of their visual cortex
Speaker 1: would light up, and if they sense an object on
Speaker 1: the other side, the other side of the visual cortex
Speaker 1: would light up. They were using their visual cortex almost
Speaker 1: in the same way a sided person would, and this
Speaker 1: points to something that scientists call sensory plasticity.
Speaker 2: So it seems like there are parts in the brand
Speaker 2: that have a high degree of what we call plasticity,
Speaker 2: which is the capability to change and adapt over time
Speaker 2: to process information from sensory modolities that they ordinarily would process.
Speaker 1: In other words, the wiring of your brain for your
Speaker 1: senses isn't fixed. If your brain notices, for example, that
Speaker 1: you're not using your visual area because maybe you're blind,
Speaker 1: your brain will start using that area for other senses.
Speaker 1: In this case, the visual area is used to process
Speaker 1: what the echo locators are getting through their ears when
Speaker 1: they send out these sounds and then hear the echoes.
Speaker 1: And not only that, Doctor Thaler and Norman think your
Speaker 1: brain actually starts to change. Is there evidence though, that
Speaker 1: people who echolocate for a long time somehow the brain changes.
Speaker 2: Yes, and there is some evidence to suggest that is
Speaker 2: the case. So somebody who who is initially naive to
Speaker 2: this ability but then learns it over maybe a ten
Speaker 2: week period, we find subtle changes in order for your
Speaker 2: brain areas where there might be high gradmouta density in
Speaker 2: that area. But at the same time we also get
Speaker 2: these functional changes in visual codex where the role of
Speaker 2: the brain reagion has changed to some extent.
Speaker 1: So when learning to echolocate, your brain possibly grows the
Speaker 1: hearing parts of your brain and it starts using the
Speaker 1: seeing parts of your brain for processing the information you hear.
Speaker 1: In other words, your brain to some degree molds itself
Speaker 1: to this new sense so that it becomes a natural
Speaker 1: addition to your existing senses. And this says something profound
Speaker 1: about the brain. Well, what do you think this says
Speaker 1: about just human senses and human abilities how our brain works.
Speaker 2: I think it says a couple of things. I think
Speaker 2: it tells us that our sensory abilities are much more
Speaker 2: adaptable than what we previously believed. So the classic textbook
Speaker 2: idea is that where you have the visual codex that
Speaker 2: processes site, you have the order free codex that processes
Speaker 2: hearing and so on. But research seem to suggest that
Speaker 2: these brain readers are much more adaptable and they can
Speaker 2: process sensory information from an atypical modality. And so what
Speaker 2: we would call the visual codex isn't necessarily the visual
Speaker 2: codex In many people, people who are blind, they can
Speaker 2: use as part of the brainfall many other purposes that
Speaker 2: aren't supported through vision.
Speaker 3: It just creates, like, for me, I think this feeling
Speaker 3: of yeah, we do have a sensory repertoire that we're
Speaker 3: born with that we use every day, but we can
Speaker 3: actually do a lot more. It just makes you sort
Speaker 3: of believe in, you know, other possibilities. If you think
Speaker 3: about technology that might make you able to sense the
Speaker 3: mood in a room or favorite example. Also you know,
Speaker 3: sense magnetic lords or something like that. You know where
Speaker 3: if you have technology to provide you this information and
Speaker 3: you know, we should be able to do it. So
Speaker 3: I think that's what e location has certainly made me
Speaker 3: very confident with that we can expand sensory reportoire.
Speaker 1: Wait, did you just say that we could expand our
Speaker 1: senses so we can sense magnetism using technolology and our
Speaker 1: brain can adapt to that well. As it happens, I
Speaker 1: talked to a scientists working on just this idea. So
Speaker 1: when we come back, we're going to see how technology
Speaker 1: can hack your brain to give you extra senses like
Speaker 1: sensing magnetic fields or even Wi Fi. Stay with us,
Speaker 1: we'll be right back. Hey, welcome back. We're talking about
Speaker 1: whether supersensus exist. Now, this last segment is going to
Speaker 1: seem a little bit like science fiction. For example, imagine
Speaker 1: a scenario where you're a chef or a cook and
Speaker 1: you work in a commercial kitchen.
Speaker 5: And somehow you can tell how hot something.
Speaker 1: Is just by looking at it. You wouldn't have to
Speaker 1: touch it or get near it to tell. You would
Speaker 1: just no, you could tell if a pan was the
Speaker 1: right temperature, or if a piece of steak was hot enough.
Speaker 1: Or imagine, if you could sense the Earth's magnetic field,
Speaker 1: you could have a perfect sense of direction. You would
Speaker 1: always know where north was, no matter how deep in
Speaker 1: a forest you were, or if you were inside a
Speaker 1: building or a crowded city you've never been to. Having
Speaker 1: these kinds of supersensus may seem like science fiction, but
Speaker 1: I promise it's not. It's real science, at least according
Speaker 1: to the next expert I talked to, doctor Amber Mymon.
Speaker 4: So my name is Amber Myimon. I'm a researcher at
Speaker 4: the interface of neuroscience and human computer interaction. Most of
Speaker 4: my research has to do with how we can use
Speaker 4: technologies to induce neuroplasticity.
Speaker 1: Now, I always thought that humans had five senses, but
Speaker 1: the first thing I learned from doctor Mymon is that
Speaker 1: apparently we have more than five senses.
Speaker 4: So we basically inherited the five senses from philosophers many, many,
Speaker 4: many decades ago, such as Aristotle, who said that we
Speaker 4: have five basic senses. We have vision, hearing, touch, tastes,
Speaker 4: and smell, which people are usually familiar with.
Speaker 1: But we don't have five senses.
Speaker 4: So that's the thing. It's an issue of hot debate.
Speaker 4: Right now, I can give you an example. We have
Speaker 4: something called approprioceptive sense, which is kind of a sense
Speaker 4: of where our body parts are located. So I can
Speaker 4: know where my hand is located, for example, even if
Speaker 4: I don't see my hand. And then we also have
Speaker 4: vestibular system, which controls our sense of balance and more
Speaker 4: and more.
Speaker 1: Yes, scientists can't really agree how many senses we have.
Speaker 1: Some people say our ability to sense temperature, or to
Speaker 1: feel or heart beat or are breathing, or our sense
Speaker 1: of balance, or even our ability to feel pain should
Speaker 1: also be included in our list of senses. A sense,
Speaker 1: it seems, includes any time we know something about the world,
Speaker 1: including our bodies, without thinking about it. It's when we
Speaker 1: just know information about the world. Okay, now let's get
Speaker 1: to supersensus. Let's get to the topic of supersensus. So
Speaker 1: there's the idea of augmenting your senses.
Speaker 4: Right, So the idea of augmenting our senses is generally
Speaker 4: changing our sensory abilities in a positive way for some
Speaker 4: form of improvement, like for example, Superman and see into
Speaker 4: the thermal range. Is it something that I've personally worked
Speaker 4: on and it's an interesting time.
Speaker 1: So a supersense is basically giving ourselves the ability to
Speaker 1: sense something we currently can't sense, like seeing into the
Speaker 1: infrared or having X ray vision, or being able to
Speaker 1: sense the Earth's magnetic field. And for that you need technology.
Speaker 5: Now.
Speaker 1: According to doctor Mama, there are two ways to do this.
Speaker 1: The first is to base turn yourself into a cyborg.
Speaker 4: There are methods to augment our senses that are invasive
Speaker 4: or they physically interact with our brain. So I can
Speaker 4: give you some examples. You can have an implant, for example,
Speaker 4: Retinal prosthesis are known as bionic eyes colloquially in day
Speaker 4: to day's each These are implants that electrically stimulate whether
Speaker 4: it's the retina today. There are also cortical implants that
Speaker 4: stimulate the brain directly, and what they do is they
Speaker 4: try to physically create the sensory information. They physically activate
Speaker 4: the retina, for example, to allow blind people to have
Speaker 4: some form of visual perception.
Speaker 1: And I guess can that be used to augment someone
Speaker 1: without a visual impairment? Like, can I use an implant
Speaker 1: to make me see better?
Speaker 4: Yes, absolutely. There's also more and more awareness of this
Speaker 4: concept of augmenting the senses, which means enhancing or extending.
Speaker 1: So one way to extend our senses with technology is
Speaker 1: with neural prosthetics. In other words, implanting some device senses
Speaker 1: something about the world and then having that device give
Speaker 1: that information directly to your nerves or directly to our brains.
Speaker 1: Believe it or not, that's something that's being developed right now.
Speaker 1: There are retinal implants that can be attached by surgery
Speaker 1: inside your eyeball that will then zap the nerves the
Speaker 1: back of your eye to tell what the device sees
Speaker 1: directly to your brain.
Speaker 5: You can imagine that the device could have.
Speaker 1: A regular camera to allow someone who's blind to see,
Speaker 1: or you can imagine using this to give someone a
Speaker 1: super sense. For example, you could attach a camera that
Speaker 1: also sees infrared or X rays, or that has a
Speaker 1: super telescoping lens or a super microscope lens, and then
Speaker 1: the implant would zap your nerves tell your brain what
Speaker 1: it sees. I could do a whole episode about this idea.
Speaker 1: But the more interesting idea that doctor Mymo does research
Speaker 1: on is to give someone supersensus without risky invasive eye
Speaker 1: or brain surgery.
Speaker 4: But what's really fascinating is that there are also non
Speaker 4: invasive ways that take advantage of a couple things. They
Speaker 4: take advantage of the fact that we have connections between
Speaker 4: our senses. They take advantage of the fact that our
Speaker 4: brain is plastic.
Speaker 1: Okay, remember when we talked about echolocation. Echolocation is basically
Speaker 1: a supersense, although it still relies on sensus we already
Speaker 1: have in this case hearing. But echolocation is important because
Speaker 1: of two things we mentioned before. The first is that
Speaker 1: the brain is flexible, and when you echo locate, you
Speaker 1: actually use the parts you usually used to see, the
Speaker 1: visual parts of your brain to process what you hear.
Speaker 1: Scientists call this cross modal correspondence, which is when your
Speaker 1: brain activates connections between the different senses. This is most
Speaker 1: noticeable in people with something called synesthesia, which is when,
Speaker 1: for example, some people say they can hear colors or
Speaker 1: smell sounds.
Speaker 4: So, for example, if you're familiar with Billie Eilish, the singer,
Speaker 4: or for El Williams, they have reported that when they
Speaker 4: associate automatically, they correlate different sounds and colors, and this
Speaker 4: affects their artistic abilities. It affects their music and their
Speaker 4: music making abilities. And another example is the painter Kandinski.
Speaker 4: He also correlated between colors and sounds but also shapes,
Speaker 4: and this very much affected his artwork.
Speaker 1: Now, some people have a lot of synesthesia, like the
Speaker 1: artist doctor Maima just mentioned, but all of us have
Speaker 1: to some degree some cross wiring between our senses. For example,
Speaker 1: if I asked you to think of a shape and
Speaker 1: I said the word guba again, gouba, most of you
Speaker 1: probably thought of something round and maybe big. But now
Speaker 1: if I ask you to think of another shape and
Speaker 1: I said the word tikiki, you probably thought of something
Speaker 1: thin or sharp or something with edges. Doctor Maiman says,
Speaker 1: our brains are sort of wired to have associations like that,
Speaker 1: and that can be used to give you supersensus. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm not eager to implant a chip in my eye
Speaker 1: or my brain. So this idea that maybe we can
Speaker 1: augment my senses just by kind of taking advantage of
Speaker 1: these connections between the census, it's super interesting. Tell us
Speaker 1: about that idea.
Speaker 4: We have the concept of novel senses, which we can
Speaker 4: call supersensus, which is basically taking information in the world
Speaker 4: that's not censor information such as air quality, pollution, or
Speaker 4: even Wi Fi information that's out there in the world,
Speaker 4: and conveying it to people in a sensory way. So,
Speaker 4: for example, I can convey Wi Fi information as tactile
Speaker 4: information on my body.
Speaker 1: Okay, here's the idea. Instead of directly connecting say an
Speaker 1: infrared camera or compassed directly into your brain or nervous system,
Speaker 1: you could have that device talk to your brain through
Speaker 1: one of your other senses. So, for example, you could
Speaker 1: wear a belt that vibrated the closer you are to
Speaker 1: pointing to the north pole. Or you could wear an
Speaker 1: infrared camera that played a special sound for you whenever
Speaker 1: you were looking at something hot, or you could wear
Speaker 1: glasses that turn pink the closer you are to a
Speaker 1: Wi Fi signal. And at first you might find this
Speaker 1: kind of annoying, or you'd be very self conscious about
Speaker 1: these vibrations or sounds or colors. But after a while,
Speaker 1: doctor Maima says, because of your brain's plasticity, you'll just
Speaker 1: get used to it and it just becomes another one
Speaker 1: of your senses. Okay, this will make more sense with
Speaker 1: an example, So Let's say you wanted to give a
Speaker 1: chef or a cook the ability to see into the
Speaker 1: infrared or to tell how hot or cold something is
Speaker 1: just by looking at it. So how does this technology work.
Speaker 1: There's a camera, right, and the camera is recording the temperature,
Speaker 1: and you're conveying that temperature to the person via sound.
Speaker 4: Exactly, that's precisely what we're doing. We're taking the thermal
Speaker 4: information acquired through the thermal camera and through an algorithm
Speaker 4: and six stages of mapping that I won't get into,
Speaker 4: and we divided it into hot, cold, and neutral.
Speaker 1: Okay, So imagine the chef is wearing a camera and
Speaker 1: whenever they look at something hot or cold or room temperature,
Speaker 1: they hear a different sound. For example, whenever the infrared
Speaker 1: camera sees something it knows is hot, it would play
Speaker 1: this sound. When the chef faces something the camera knows
Speaker 1: is cold, you would play this sound. And that's enough
Speaker 1: to give you a super sense.
Speaker 4: And this was very intuitive. People with fifteen minutes of
Speaker 4: training could learn to identify thermal information hot and cold
Speaker 4: information that is invisible to them through their sense of vision.
Speaker 4: For example, they could recognize a cold item in a
Speaker 4: bag that they couldn't.
Speaker 1: See, now, what's cool is that. In doctor Memo's experiment,
Speaker 1: the sound they played also told the person a little
Speaker 1: about where the hot or cold object was by changing
Speaker 1: the pitch of the sound.
Speaker 4: We didn't want them to only perceive the hot and cold.
Speaker 4: We also wanted them to know where something hot and
Speaker 4: where something cold is. We played back to them the
Speaker 4: auditory information using pitch manipulation. If a hot item was
Speaker 4: located higher up, it would have the hot sound, but
Speaker 4: also it would have a higher pitched sound, and people
Speaker 4: could learn to understand this very quickly, could learn to
Speaker 4: perceive this form of information very quickly.
Speaker 1: So, for example, if the chef in the kitchen was
Speaker 1: facing four pots on a stove, the computer would play
Speaker 1: a specific sound to them, and they would instantly and
Speaker 1: intuitively just know which of the four pots was hot
Speaker 1: and which was coal.
Speaker 4: And finally, we tested them. We tested them both on
Speaker 4: their ability to locate objects through sound, and we tested
Speaker 4: them on their ability to recognize the temperature of objects
Speaker 4: through sound. And ultimately they got up to something like
Speaker 4: eighty seven percent abilities for recognizing thermal information that's invisible
Speaker 4: to their eyes.
Speaker 1: And so you're cooking, you're cooking, and I'm training this.
Speaker 1: So now when I see a pen, there's a sound
Speaker 1: plane in my ear, but I'm not thinking about the sound,
Speaker 1: but I know somehow that how hot that pen is?
Speaker 3: Exactly?
Speaker 1: Wow, that's super cool, so.
Speaker 4: Intuitive to the extent that over time you don't even
Speaker 4: hear it as sounds. You perceive it as thermal information.
Speaker 5: Wow.
Speaker 1: And so suddenly you have the kind of the superpowers
Speaker 1: of a snake or superman.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, we want to give these chefs superman abilities.
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh wow, Well, chess are superheroes already.
Speaker 5: Chefs are superheroes, at least the good ones. All right.
Speaker 1: I think the big takeaway of this episode is that
Speaker 1: supersensus are possible.
Speaker 5: It's within our power to teach.
Speaker 1: Ourselves new ways to sense the world, like an echo location,
Speaker 1: and it's within current technology to give us census we
Speaker 1: didn't think we're possible, like sensing magnetic fields or sensing.
Speaker 5: Temperature from afar.
Speaker 1: Need to be firm krypton or get bitten by a
Speaker 1: radioactive spider, or even have something implanted in you, you
Speaker 1: can use the power of the brain's ability to adapt
Speaker 1: to gain or sensus. Now you might be thinking, where
Speaker 1: does this end? What will this do to humans? That
Speaker 1: was the last question I asked doctor Maimund. Well, maybe
Speaker 1: just to wrap it up, what do you think it
Speaker 1: would do to us as people? As humans if we
Speaker 1: have supersensus, Like let's say suddenly I'm walking around and
Speaker 1: I'm aware of the temperature of things, and I'm aware
Speaker 1: of how strong the WiFi is, and I'm aware of
Speaker 1: the air quality, all of this at the same time,
Speaker 1: what do you think it's going to do to us?
Speaker 4: So ultimately, at the very simplest level, it will increase
Speaker 4: our performance abilities, right, It'll maximize what we can do
Speaker 4: in this world. It's really getting people to maximize their
Speaker 4: potential and stretch their brain to its life limits and
Speaker 4: find out what we can do that we don't currently do.
Speaker 1: All Right, I hope that all made sense and maybe
Speaker 1: even super sense. Thanks for joining us. See you next
Speaker 1: time you've been listening to science stuff. Production of iHeartRadio
Speaker 1: written and produced by me or Hey Cham, edited by
Speaker 1: Rose Seguda, executive producer Jerry Rowland, and audio engineer and
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Speaker 1: back next Wednesday with another episode.