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.'"

Comments

Yeah, but....

[FalconZero]

How long before I can get my 802.11 sensing fingertip implants?

Wait

[EmperorKagato]

So now you'll be able to literally feel the power?

Re:Wait

[azav]

Actually, yes. That's what the article says. Being able to detect phone lines, magnetized speakers, etc...

I think this is actually similar to the active detection of electrical fields that many fish can do. Sharks have these "Ampules of Lorenzini" that they use to zero in on their pre from a distance by detecting the electrical signature of muscle contractions in a prey animal.

Re:Wait

[suv4x4]

I think this is actually similar to the active detection of electrical fields that many fish can do. Sharks have these "Ampules of Lorenzini" that they use to zero in on their pre from a distance by detecting the electrical signature of muscle contractions in a prey animal.

Fish have built-in magnets?

Are you thinking what I'm thinking? As in, buying a huge neodymium magnet and goin' fishing?

Re:Wait

[TheRaven64]

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).

um....

[dark404]

if they touch my crt screen, they'll lose those implanted fingers!

Re:um....

[ScrewMaster]

Now, now. Think positive. These are just people with built-in degaussers.

Re:um....

[Tx]

Shouldn't that be "Think north"? ;)

Goodbye Finger

[Suddenly_Dead]

So, what happens when you get too close to another rare earth magnet? I would expect bad things.

Re:Goodbye Finger

[reverseengineer]

Well, from the article:

I become slightly phobic of magnetic resonance imaging machines. The superpowerful electromagnets used in medical imaging can make metal fly across a room and stick, often for the hours it takes to power down the magnets. A person with an embedded magnet runs the risk of having their implant ripped out of their body.

So, I would imagine, um, that sort of thing, basically.

Re:Goodbye Finger

[Suddenly_Dead]

Sounds bad for your health then, having to avoid MRIs as much as possible. People will do some strange things to differentiate themselves from everyone else.

Re:Goodbye Finger

[Spy der Mann]

So, what happens when you get too close to another rare earth magnet? I would expect bad things.

Tell ME about it. Mine were adamantium!

Sincerely,
Wolverine.

Re:Goodbye Finger

[sidfaiwu]

That will be a problem with almost any added sense. It can be overloaded and cause damage. Take the some of the senses we have. Too bright of light will make us blind, too loud of a noise will make us deaf, too strong of an electrical field will rip out your implants. Often, you have to take the risk with the reward. The question is wether the reward is worth the risk.

Re:Goodbye Finger

[networkBoy]

That would be an emergency quench and with most MRIs I'm familiar with runs a 10-20% chance of the magnet tearing its self apart as the field collapses.
-nB

Re:Goodbye Finger

[diskis]

Yup. My local hospital's MRI scanner has this big red button on it. With a very big sign saying something like: Shuts down the magnetic field. For extreme emergencies only. Press only if you get stuck to the machine.

(The last part was added with a pen by some technician)

My ex-girlfriend had her head examined there, so I talked to a tech while she was in the scanner. He told me that it just takes ages to power it up again. And gave me a complimentary copy of a MRI image of my ex-girlfriends brain.

Re:Goodbye Finger

[unknownideal]

You would probably sense it and pull your hand away as from a hot stove before anything happens.

Re:Goodbye Finger

[David Horn]

The superpowerful electromagnets used in medical imaging can make metal fly across a room and stick, often for the hours it takes to power down the magnets.

I was under the impression that an MRI machine can be shut down more or less instantly, and a series of emergency stop buttons are placed around it for precisely this reason. IIRC, an emergency shutdown runs the risk of damage to the machine, as all the coolant boils off, which is why medical staff presumably leave it energised and try to pry off items stuck to it rather than shutting the thing down.

Please correct me if I'm wrong. :)

Re:Goodbye Finger

[drinkypoo]

There are so many problems with this idea it's hard to know where to start. Just think about those magnets in hard drives... I let two of them come together from about 1/4" away from each other, they pinched the skin on my finger, took a piece of it with them, and chipped themselves. If you get one of those stuck to your finger, expect severe injury. First of all, the polarity of a magnet that strong will be enough to make that little grain of magnet rotate in your finger immediately, that's going to feel interesting. Then, if you get them close enough to be, well, close, you're not getting that magnet away from your finger without ripping a hole in it and extracting the magnet.

Let's not even talk about MRIs, starter motors, or degaussing coils in monitors.

Imagine the possibilities...

[one-eye-johnson]

Being near a big transformer gives the implant-bearer a vibrating fingertip. Just saying is all.

Oh, and going through an MRI might be a little painful.

Re:Imagine the possibilities...

[frickendevil]

If an MRI is _needed_ they will pbly do what they do to the people with the old steel plates and pins, just take them out and put them back in after the MRI.

Cyberdyne Restaurant

[Tackhead]

Walk into the doctor's office wherever you are, just walk in, say "Doc -- you can mod any parts you want at Cyberdyne Restaurant" -- and walk out.

You know, if one Slashdotter, just one Slashdotter does it, they may think he's really sick and they won't take him.

And if two Slashdotters do it -- in harmony -- they may think that they're both TROLLIN' and they won't take either of them.

And if THREE Slashdotters do it! Can you imagine three Slashdotters walkin' in, singin' a bar of "Cyberdyne Restaurant" and walkin' out? They might think it's a HACKER CONSPIRACY.

And can you imagine FIFTY Slashdotters a day? I said FIFTY Slashdotters a day -- walkin' in, singin ' a bar of "Cyberdyne Restaruant" and walkin' out? Friends, they may think it's a movement, and that's what it is.

The Cyberdyne Systems T-800 Model 101 Trans-Humanist Movement!

And all you gotta do to join it is to mod me (+1, Funny) the next time the mod points come 'round on the thread view. With feelin'.

You can mod any parts you want at Cyberdyne Restaurant (or be an Alice!)
You can mod any parts you want at Cyberdyne Restaurant
Magnets, implants, and MRI,
And then across the room you'll watch your finger fly,
Oh, you can mod any parts you want at Cyberdyne restaurant...

Re:Cyberdyne Restaurant

[Alsee]

And can you imagine FIFTY Slashdotters a day? I said FIFTY Slashdotters a day -- walkin' in, singin ' a bar of "Cyberdyne Restaruant" and walkin' out? Friends, they may think it's a movement, and that's what it is.

Most Slashdotters are too young to know what a movement is.

-

Re:Cyberdyne Restaurant

[SpinJaunt]

Too young? I have a bowel movement nearly every day.

Re:Cyberdyne Restaurant

[g1zmo]

And the rest of you old farts think it has something to do with the bowels. :)

Re:Cyberdyne Restaurant

[spun]

Not me, I just had a movement this morning.

Seriously, though, most Slashdotters are probably too young to know Alice's Restaurant

Re:Cyberdyne Restaurant

[MrPsycho]

A bit OT, but I'm 19 and I own the record. So it pays not to judge.

Ouch

[Wellington Grey]

Don't forget to tell the doctor before you go in for that MRI.

-Grey

Why implants?

[JanusFury]

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.

Great idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Until something happens to the magnet, as documented here. (don't click if you don't want to see a finger being sliced open to remove the magnet)

Re:The Penis is next

[Elwood P Dowd]

Just definitely stay away from MRI machines with that thing.

Re:Lust!

[BigCheese]

So you want your fingers stuck to your back?

Are you in Cirque Du Soleil?

Places you couldn't go

[Optikschmoptik]

We operate a 10-Tesla magnet in our lab. When it's on, all nearby metal needs to be secured and people with pacemakers shouldn't be anywhere near us. I suppose this wouldn't be quite as serious, but a field like that would likely rip your implants right out, or cause you to lose control of your fingers. It's not an 'everyday environment', but I would expect physics labs to be a little more common in the lives of the kind of people who would consider getting magnets implanted in their fingers.

Oh, and no MRIs either.

So in terms of implants...

[Anonymous Coward]

Women get boob-jobs and men get hand-jobs?

magnetic implants meet silicon implants...

[presarioD]

... interesting... interesting I tell ya!

Re:The Penis is next

[Mindwarp]

Could prove inconvenient to say the least if your partner happens to have a ferrous tongue piercing.

Oh yeah?

[Wellington Grey]

from the kind-of-a-crappy-superpower dept

And how many superpowers do you have Zonk? If it could be made safer (I'm a science teacher and have a few magnets in the lab that could rip this out of my finger) I'd get one in a second.

-Grey

As if....

[obsidianpoet]

As if my love life isn't awkward enough

Oh well, at least then I would have an excuse :)

In case this sounds like a good idea...

[St. Arbirix]

It's not.

Re:In case this sounds like a good idea...

[Municipa]

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.

Re:In case this sounds like a good idea...

[jwiegley]

I just had to reply to this thread after reading the bmezine article.

Here's the summary of my opinion: "Children do not try this at home. Hell, don't even try this at your good friends home like the original idiot did."

Frankly, this guy is an idiot. The first thing that came to my mind when seeing his fingertip was: Blood infection. Bright red, vascular looking, painful... blood infection. This is NOT something you should take to your "body-mod" friend to be "fixed". This is flat out an emergency room visit. I'm not a medical doctor but if this is a blood infection it has the ability to travel quickly, infect organs and cause death in a surprisingly rapid fashion.

This is something that needs professional medical equipment to make sure the damage is repaired properly. He's "guessing" they migrated together... He needs an X-ray, not a guess. He needs this for several reasons. To pinpoint where the damage and pieces are so they can be removed with minimal invasion instead of poking around until you've found it all. He also needs follow-up X-rays to confirm that all pieces were found and removed.

I certainly would not go to my body-mod (oh hell, let's just call a spade a spade... body-hack) for the repair. For best results I would be looking for this to be done by a vascular surgeon or neurologist so that I have the best chance of not loosing any senesitivity in my finger and preventing any vascular damage that could result in necrosis.

He needs this to be done in a sterile environment not on somebody's desk. He risks an equal or worse post-hack infection (that would sort of be like a post-surgical secondary infection but this was NOT surgery; this was an adult being stupid.)

I hope most slashdotters don't think this is cool, cause it's not.

Re:In case this sounds like a good idea...

[MustardMan]

A few points...

Tom Brazda is no "hack". He is one of a handful of people who PIONEERED the modern body modification scene. He invented a lot of the tools and techniques that can be found in any piercing studio on the beach today. He helped push the industry to its limits, while also helping spread word about how to do things as safely and carefully as possible. People like Tom are the reason every respectable studio on the planet has an autoclave.

Second, Shannon Larratt is no idiot. A risk taker, sure. Someone who uses his own body as a testbed for the untried? Absolutely. But an idiot? Not a chance. He knows exactly what he's doing, and he knows the risks. He's written countless articles about the safety aspects of piercings, tattoos, and more extreme body modifications. He's quite well aware of the risks, and indeed most likely purposely chose to have Tom do the removal because that way he could document every step of the process for others to learn.

Third - read the article more carefully. Another person with the same implant went to a doctor to have it removed. The Dr. fucked it up. The local emergency room person may or may not do the same. The problem with Doctors is, just like everything else in the world - there are ones who are good, and there are ones who are not. A perfect example of this is doctors who tell people with an infected piercing to remove it and shoot them up with antibiotics. This can often be a VERY bad idea, because the piercing can no longer be properly cleaned, AND it can no longer drain. You better hope those antibiotics work, because the good Doc has just taken away all but one of your treatment options.

And last but not least - your quip about a sterile environment shows just how clueless you are. Any good quality piercer will have sterility routines that put your average family practice doctor to shame. EVERYTHING is autoclaved, needles are disposed of in proper medical sharps containers, studios are kept immaculately clean and gloves are changed CONSTANTLY during a procedure.

My piercier practices better hygiene than my oral surgeon.

Well

[ShooterNeo]

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.

I think I'd prefer something external...

[Vellmont]

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?

Re:I think I'd prefer something external...

[Ken_g6]

Maybe you could glue magnets to the inside of some surgical gloves. Be sure to let the glue dry before wearing them!!!!

Interesting uses...

[bill_kress]

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?

Re:Interesting uses...

[Municipa]

Interesting ideas.. though the one about being deaf - I'd expect there are a few dozen better ideas specifically geared towards that that I would rather try first. I am pretty sure that sensing speaker magnet vibration in your hand wouldn't help you hear anymore than sensing sound vibration by your hand already does for anyone, deaf or not. Some things still have to be routed through the right areas of the brain for it to give you the same sense.

In almost any case I can think of I do not see any point to trying an fully implanted version first anyway. Most things can be tried with devices outside of the body, or lt east with most of the device outside the body. I'm not against the idea of implants, but only when there is a definite advantage over working external versions, or the technology becomes so well developed and its effects integrated into society where you really do need it with you 24/7. People could get FM radios implanted near their ears and say they can "sense" FM radio, but there's no real advantage over using headphones and almost certainly some disadvantages.

Re:Interesting uses...

[zsau]

Regarding giving deaf people the ability to ear again, there's a much better approach: The bionic ear. Basically, you have a speaker which is attached to a device inserted partway into the cochlea and stimulates the nerves inside the cochlea directly. Obviously it only works if (a) the cochlea is at least partially functional and (b) the connection between the ear and the brain, and the temporal lobe of the brain are both functional. Also, for it to be useful, the patient generally will need to have lost their hearing sometime during their life, or be under about two years of age before the implant; people who've not had a sense at all generally find gaining it very disconcerting, hard or impossible to use, and potentially dangerous.

Amongst the advantages this has over your proposal is that it directly interfaces with the hearing apparatus, so your brain interprets the sounds as sounds rather than feelings (the parts responsible for dealing with feelings wouldn't have any idea what to do with sound), and it means you can hear all sounds, not just sounds from speakers. OTOH, your proposal might be useful to give people a feeling as to the level of background noise which might help them when crossing the road or something (if combined also with a speaker).

(BTW: If you need to understand how the first paragraph works. Recall that the ear is composed of three portions, the outer ear (everything to the eardrum); the middle ear (the ossicles or tiny little bones); and the inner ear, which is basically the cochlea. The outer ear channels sound and alters the sound waves to some extent to help our directional hearing. In the middle ear, the ossicles convert ear-based sound waves to liquid-based sound waves (the cochlea is filled with fluid); it also dampens some sounds, probably the ones caused by you chewing and talking so you don't damage your hearing/get distracted. The inner ear converts these sound waves to nerve impulses; along the length of the cochlea are thousands of nerves that respond to gradually lower frequencies. From here the sounds are sent (indirectly) to the primary auditory cortex of the temporal lobe of the brain to be processed. Standard hearing aids require that everything's working, just to a lower grade than normal: They merely amplify sounds. Bionic ears bypass the inner and middle ears and interface with the cochlea. But they don't give their recipients anywhere like normal hearing; the cochlea is wound up on itself like a snail and so you can only go so far in, and even still its somewhat limited in its resolution.

Yes!

[ichigo 2.0]

If by powerful you mean painful, and if by orgasm you mean wound, then yes!

Re:Where's North?

[EvanED]

Smash your finger with a hammer and end up with chunks of metal floating around.

I don't know about you, but if I smash my fingers with a hammer it wouldn't be the chunks of metal that are on my mind.

Human Compasses

[As_I_Please]

Great, now men will be even more adamant about not asking for directions.

"Dammit! I know where we are! We just need to head north, which is ..." *waves hand around* "... that way!"

Hoax?

[Handyman]

Dutch blog "Retecool" tried it out and calls it a hoax. Translation of highlights:

I still need to install a ceiling lamp in the bedroom. There's no current flowing there now. The electricity company therefore doesn't charge me anything for the power being hooked up there. If there's no current, no magnet will vibrate, because it is the current (in Amperes) that causes the magnetic fields. But the electricity company does deliver me the required power for the lamp. Therefore, the connection has countless electrons waiting charged with anticipation before I poke a screwdriver into the hole. Without telling my magnet that they are so charged with anticipation, they wait for the moment that they can jump onto my well-conducting finger, to run to earth through my body. Free at last!

One slight drawback remains to be mentioned. My iBook has a magnetic detector on the right of the keyboard which detects when the screen is closed. I now have to press "Enter" with my left hand, because approaching the magnet with my right hand puts my iBook to sleep. So while my bionic magnetic finger doesn't detect anything, my iBook does detect it.

They are

[winkydink]

You just happen to have the same polarity they do

Why implant the device?

[David_Shultz]

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)

Re:The Penis is next

[David_Shultz]

Could prove inconvenient to say the least if your partner happens to have a ferrous tongue piercing.

don't you mean convenient?

Re:Scientific approach

[MustardMan]

Science would be pretty fucking boring if we only ever did experiments where we knew the outcome.

Humans have them as well

[MCTFB]

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.

Re:Humans have them as well

[suv4x4]

in the forms of very trace amounts of magnetite in brain tissue.

Two questions:

1. If I put a supermagnet right next to my head, am I piersing microscopic holes through my brain? There should be some effect even with trace amounts, I suppose, even if not that drastic.

2. Where did this magnetite come from? I think my mother's diet didn't include magnetite, nor did mine. I suppose the organism will have to metabolise in a truly peculiar way to start with organic proteins and end with magnetite as well :D

So...

[christoofar]

...how can we use this for sex again?

Reminds me of a idea I had a long time ago

[biafra]

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.

Re:A few days old - still interesting

[marcelmouse]

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."

Even worse

[shigelojoe]

Finishing your post in the subject is

met Todd

[jumbledInTheHead]

I met Todd at a dinner party, he also has a magnetic implant in his arm which bottle caps will stick too. Anyways here is part of that conversation from that evening:

Some friend of his whose a girl: The magnet in his arm gets him laid all the time, ask him.
Me: So do you get laid a lot because you have the magnet.
Todd: It isn't like I get laid from it everyday, but yeah once in awhile.
All my friends in near unison: I want a magnet in my arm.

hand me that floppy disk....

[seven of five]

... on second thought ...