Dr. David Eagleman

magnetoreception so they can pick up on the magnetic field of the earth and they can navigate that way for years i was staring at this stuff and figuring out how in the world does evolution happen so quickly that you can do all this and this is what led me to this theory that mother nature really only had to invent the brain once figure out the principles of brain operation

And after that, she could spend all of her time tweaking the genetics to make all these weird peripheral devices that you plug in, and it's all plug and play.

Whatever weird thing you come up with, you just say, okay, cool, I'm going to plug this in, and I'm sure the brain will figure this out.

And it always does.

And that's exactly why we can do sensory substitution.

And by the way, sensory enhancement or sensory addition, where you can add completely new senses.

One example is...

My colleagues at Osnabruck built this belt that you wear that's got vibratory motors all around it.

And there's just a little digital compass on it so it can tell where north is.

So whenever you're, you know, whichever direction north is on your body, you feel that motor buzzing.

So it might be on my left hip if north is that way.

But if I turn around, I'll feel that on my right hip and so on.

And people get really good at being able to detect which way north is.

Just as one example, it's really easy to add new senses, like magnetoreception in this case, and people can figure this stuff out.

Let me answer that second part first.

We're not sure about that.

I ask people all the time who are aphantasic or hyperphantasic about their dreams.

It's hard to tell.

I don't see something obvious there, which is to say when there's dreams, you're getting this activity blasted into your visual cortex.

So it's like vision.