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Implants for Sensing Magnetic Fields
Okian Warrior writes "Wired is running a story about people who have magnets implanted in their fingertips. As a result they can sense ambient magnetic fields, including whether AC wires are carrying current. From the article: 'The fingertip was chosen because of the high nerve density, and because the hands are constantly interacting with the environment, increasing the chances of sensing electromagnetism in the world.'"
So, what happens when you get too close to another rare earth magnet? I would expect bad things.
Don't forget to tell the doctor before you go in for that MRI.
-Grey
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Why implant a magnet? I can only imagine what kind of hassle that would be if you ever needed an MRI. Couldn't a ring or some sort of fingertip cap be created that transmitted signals through the skin to nerve endings, so you could take it off as needed? I imagine it might be less effective due to the skin barrier, but it seems like it would be a much safer alternative that would work nearly as well.
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You wonder if this will be on the pre-MRI questionaire soon. I guess as soon as a patient's hand flys through the window and smacks the operator in the face.
You might erase your credit cards everytime you hand one to someone.
And you'll never get rid of those damn iron filings.
G.
A far better approach, albeit more complex, would be to build a microchip - powered by induction like RFID circuitry - that could generate signals in the right voltage and frequency range to stimulate nerves. A surgeon would carefully place the chip along a nerve inside your hand somewhere, placing the electrode side parallel to the nerve. The chip would have signal processing abilities and could be used to :
1. detect the signal pattern for pain and cancel it out
2. interact with novel gadgets like a magnetic or radio field sensor, or a geiger counter
3. Pick up signals from one part of the body, and transmit them to another chip located in a damaged limb somewhere that the nerves have been cut from
All of this is basic signal processing, simpler than the state of the art in radio by a considerable margin (nerve signals are MUCH, MUCH slower)
I don't understand why this sort of thing isn't routinely done. I know there are implantable nerve stimulators to stop phantom limb pain, I know that surgeons don't need FDA approval to perform trials on gadets like this - they just need a researcher to create a prototype that is appropriately coated with bioneutral materials and sterile, and the surgeon can implant it into any consenting adult. Surgery is not a medical procedure that has to be specifically approved : this is how the variants of the gastic bypass were developed, such as the bands around the stomach approach. A particular surgeon decided to try it, and others adopted it.
Should be a whole thriving industry by now.
It sounds like it'd be a usefull tool for electricians or audio engineers, but it'd be far more practical if it were an external device that you could take off. I don't know many people that want to permanently place something in their body that could easily lead to damage to your finger. How would a thin stick-on magnet that you could attach to a finger work?
AccountKiller
Your brain seems to be able to adapt senses to what it knows is going on--for instance, if you wear glasses that invert your vision for a couple weeks, your brain will compensate and you will start seeing things "upright" again. If you take off the glasses, you will then see everything upside-down for a while.
So what other kind of input could this give you. If you implanted one in each hand of a def person, might he eventually be able to hear if he put his fingers near to a speaker magnet? If I were def, I'd totally give that a try--you never know! I wonder if such an implant could be placed inside the ear, maybe returning the ability to hear completely (as long as the sound was broadcast via magnetism like if the user was wearing headphones.
How about an extra input from your computer. Placing tiny electro-magnets under some of your keys could allow the keyboard to give you a little buzz that nobody else could perceive.
Any others?
why are they implanting it?
It works by stimulating via vibration "somatosensory apparatus" (ie touch), which to the best of my knowledge IS available on the outside of the finger -it should work by being strapped to the outside. Albeit it is not as cool and cyberpunk sounding, but it does remove EVERY SINGLE NEGATIVE POINT associated with the device (painful surgery, risk or rejection, no more MRIs, etc)
Why? I bet this could be reproduced with something you wear on your finger tip. Until an external device is researched a bit more I see no compelling reason to ever get an implant like this. It could be something like a paper thin sleeve that goes around your finger. The key thing being you can take it off if you ever plan to be in a powerful EMF, which doesn't seem too uncommon for someone who wants to feel EMF.
in the forms of very trace amounts of magnetite in brain tissue. Whether or not this magnetite is actually used at all in human beings or not, there is no clear concensus on, however, at the moment it is believed that this magnetite has no effect on human beings and if this magnetite was ever used for sensing magnetic fields, it was in an ancestor of the human species going back many millions of years.
I believe the original source for my knowledge of this was some television program, but to save you some Googling, here is one of the first hits that came up.
It would primarily be used to outdoor survivalists/military (I'd think), but I thought of a small compass implanted in the back of a persons neck. Something very very subtle so that a person could just slightly percieve the direction of magnetic north. Personally I can't wait till there are a bunch of usefull body modifications, I never understood jabbing steel into your arm (or worse) but I'd totally get a implant that performed a usefull task.
:wq
Why does it have to be an implant?
Couldn't you just mount the magnet in a little setting, and have it put in like a stud? Or as a barbell, in that whats-it-called, the webbing between thumb and index finger? I'd love to have this done (useful not only at work, but also in my off-time as a wierdo electronic musician), but I am dubious about amateur surgeons, not to mention crappy housings for things I'm going to put in my body. It is useful, but by no means necessary, to have it mounted in the fingertips.
For that matter, couldn't you get similar results by manufacturing a, um, neodynium thimble? Or neodynium fingerpicks?
"Help, I'm stuck to my banjo."
I was under the impression that this ability was not too uncommon in humans. I haven't tried for a while, but I used to be able to tell if my father's telephone was turned on by touching the back. I sometimes think someone is trying to call me and take my 'phone out, then have it start ringing a second later, and I've known several of my friends do the same (this seems to only work with GSM 'phones, although that may just be that we are familiar with the characteristic sequence of EM pulses that precede a GSM 'phone ringing).
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