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Comment by nehagup | Hacker News Reader

When I try and imagine what that must be like from the inside—I can’t think of anything more exciting or scary than to gain a new sense.

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There is a belt you can wear that has vibrators around it, and it always vibrates the north facing side. I read that people who wore that for a few weeks started gaining the ability to create much more accurate maps in their head, which makes sense, this is how pigeons do it too, they basically can just always sense where north is.

There are magnet Implantats you can put into your finger which lets you feel magnetic fields.

That's not a new sense, just using the existing tactile system with a magnet.

Senses are defined by what they sense, not how they are sensed. A person can have their sight partially restored through implants that bypass rod/cone activation. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6934168/

That's still signaling through the optic nerve.

If they would restore vision by using e.g. the cochlear nerve, that would be something.

you'd be surprised.

I've heard about people experimenting by wearing a belt with dozens of haptic motors and a compass, so that it always indicates the direction of north. After a while wearing it, they stop consciously feeling the sensation of the vibration, and just feel "northness". And then when they take off the belt, they feel weirdly disoriented for a while, even in familiar places.

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