cognitive science & biohacking

janus

Hello dear Grinder Community,

I´m following the discussions here on the forum since a while. All in all it´s quite inspiring with what you guys come up in terms of the ideas and the mentality of just "DOING" things in a self-experimental manner instead of just thinking and discussing over and over... However, with what I have seen so far here on the forum, nearly all of the discussions are only focusing on ways to integrate technology (sensors, actuators, materials etc. etc.) into the human body in order to get new sensory experiences and also fun. Even though I understand that enthusiasm very well, the other side meaning the "cognitive apparatus", the human information processing in general is the one that actually creates new sensory capabilities and experiences of sensory augmentation - and should be included in that discussion even before thinking of new technologies and so on.

If I have overlooked that topics please correct me and send me some links but I´m ultimately thinking about questions like: How should new sensory capabilities be represented/translated to the human body? currently most of the augmentation modalities is "reduced" to haptics (Magnets etc.) but is this from a cognitive standpoint really useful or would another sensory modality do the job way better.

What do you think? 

...There are plenty of fascinating psychological questions/experiences arising but I think I will post them step by step to get a deeper discussion.

Saal

I believe there has been some discussion about sourcing MEAs (microelectrode arrays) as far as more sophisticated nerve to device interfacing goes. The array alone was priced at about $4000. Money is the real limiting facter to biohacking, and diy bio in general. Most of our problems have already been solved, but the solutions are only available to the afflicted or the wealthy.

As a result, we rely on haptics. Haptic input is cheap and relatively easy to implement (read: $1 magnet) and allows us to proceed with other projects without waiting for a more sophisticated interface method. Eventually we will outgrow haptic magnets as our means of communicating with nerves; electrodes and electrode arrays are already being looked into by many (the Southpaw being a notable project involving neuroelectrodes, although admittedly still haptic).

As far as the optimal cognitive input method...to me, haptics make sense for raw input data from things like the Bottlenose. Most people think sound when they talk about measuring distance, but I feel like haptic in the fingertip is a good way to prevent the brain from being overwhelmed by new data. Subdued, yet informative. Of course, I don't even have my first neodym yet, so this is pretty much all uninformed blabber.