Last night I was thinking about the flexibility of the brain, specifically the sensory input substitution discussed by Hawkins in On Intelligence, such as the Bach-y-Rita tongue vision experiments. I wondered, did they put a camera on the person's head, so that the mental image would be like seeing with your eyes? What if there were multiple cameras, facing in all directions? Ignoring the practical issues, assuming it were possible - what would it be like to see in all directions at once? What would the mental image be like, to be in the center of your own field of vision, looking out in all directions?
And what if the camera were elsewhere, like a handheld camera? OK, one more step - what if you had eyes in the tips of your fingers? What would that mental image be like?! Would there be one coherent overall mental image, only illuminated in the directions you happened to be pointing your fingers at that moment? Or could the mental images from one finger, or a group of fingers, be separate from the others?
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1 comment:
They did an experiment on newborns where they put different shaped pacifiers in their mouths. Then they put different pictures of pacifiers up and noticed which picture the infants looked at. They looked at the picture which matched the shape of the pacifier in their mouth. Spooky. Anyway, your post made me think of it.
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