After my avian magnetoreception post, I remembered a story I read about a year ago. A body modification enthusiast (you know, the crazy guys that hack themselves to bits and pierce any available body part) implanted a magnet into his finger. The original intent was just for fun, so he could pick paperclips and such up with his finger. As it turns out, he got a sixth sense - magnetoreception.

It’s hard to exactly describe what it feels like — it’s definitely not as simple as “I can feel the implant vibrating under my skin”, which is true, but I am completely unaware of the presence of the magnets… It’s more like being able to “touch” the EM field. It’s very tangible, and the best way I can describe it is a combination of vibrating air and a strong sense of static electricity.

Later on I started being able to sense other fields as well. Sometimes I can feel store security gates as I pass through them, although usually I can’t feel them at all unless my hand happens to pass very close. Only once (at an art gallery in Paris) did I experience a very obvious gate — it was turned up so high that it was almost painful at a distance of two or three feet, feeling very much like dipping my fingers into an ultrasonic cleaner; an extremely fast and aggressive vibration! My theory is that the system was malfunctioning, but of course no one else could possibly have been aware of that.

How wonderful is that?! Don’t you just wish you had the same? I know I do. Unfortunately, the technology is not nearly safe yet.

More information, links, a video and some other cool novel sensory inputs after the jump.

Kids, don’t do this at home

The magnet that was implanted in his skin was originally encased in bio-neutral silicone to keep the body from rejecting it. While opening a pickle jar one day, he accidentally split the silicone. The magnet became infected and shattered, turning black. Apparently it has healed and retains some of its previous magnetic ability. Neodymium, however, has not been studied in humans. It could very well be toxic to have a rare earth magnet sitting in your finger.

For more information, you can read this Wired article or visit Steven Haworth’s own site (Warning about the second link, it is not safe for work and may make you queasy if you have a squeemish stomach. It shows pictures of the implant operation)

And a nifty video of his ability:

Directional compass ability

Other “artificially” added senses include the very cool feelSpace belt. This is a belt worn around the waist and has pager vibrators spaced out at regular intervals. All vibrators are inactive except the one pointing north. If you were to rotate your body on a point, you would feel the vibrators activate and deactivate one by one around your body, all the time pointing north. The inventor, Udo Wächter, wore the device for six weeks. He even wore it while sleeping. After a time, he began to intuitively feel direction. Another Wired article highlighting the feelSpace belt and a few other cool experiments:

Deep into the experiment, Wächter says, “I suddenly realized that my perception had shifted. I had some kind of internal map of the city in my head. I could always find my way home. Eventually, I felt I couldn’t get lost, even in a completely new place.”

The effects of the “feelSpace belt” — as its inventor, Osnabrück cognitive scientist Peter König, dubbed the device — became even more profound over time. König says while he wore it he was “intuitively aware of the direction of my home or my office. I’d be waiting in line in the cafeteria and spontaneously think: I live over there.” On a visit to Hamburg, about 100 miles away, he noticed that he was conscious of the direction of his hometown. Wächter felt the vibration in his dreams, moving around his waist, just like when he was awake.

Unfortunately for Wächter, his brain remapped an area for “direction” and quickly became used to it. When he removed it, his brain started complaining loudly about not having a sense of direction anymore:

When the original feelSpace experiment ended, Wächter says he felt lost; his brain had remapped in expectation of the new input. “Sometimes I would even get a phantom buzzing.” He bought himself a GPS unit, which today he glances at obsessively. One woman was so dizzy and disoriented for her first two post-feelSpace days that her colleagues wanted to send her home from work. “My living space shrank quickly,” says König. “The world appeared smaller and more chaotic.”