Rats use a sense that humans don't: "whisking." They move their facial whiskers back and forth to locate objects in their environment. Could humans acquire this sense? At the Weizmann Institute of Science, researchers explored this by attaching plastic "whiskers" to the fingers of blindfolded volunteers and while doing a location task. The study appears in The Journal of Neuroscience.
The scientific team, attached a "whisker" - a 30-cm-long elastic "hair" with position and force sensors on its base - to the index finger of each hand of a blindfolded subject. Then, two poles were placed at arm's distance on either side and slighty to the front of the seated subject, with one a bit farther back than the other. Using just their whiskers, the subjects were challenged to figure out which pole - left or right- was further back. As the experiment continued, the displacement between front and back poles was reduced, up to the point where the subject could no longer distiguish front from back.
Based on this, the scientists created a statistical model to describe how the subjects updated their "worldview" as they acquired news sensory data. This could be used to make devices that translate video to mechanical stimulation, based on principles of active sensing that are common to vision and touch, could provide an intuitive, easily used sensory aid.
Based on this, the scientists created a statistical model to describe how the subjects updated their "worldview" as they acquired news sensory data. This could be used to make devices that translate video to mechanical stimulation, based on principles of active sensing that are common to vision and touch, could provide an intuitive, easily used sensory aid.
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