Sensory substitution and augmentation devices are built to try to replace or enhance one sense by using another sense. For example, in tactile-vision, stimulation of the skin driven by input to a camera is used to replace the ordinary sense of vision that uses our eyes. The feelSpace belt aims to give people a magnetic sense of direction using vibrotactile stimulation driven by a digital compass. Fiona Macpherson brings together researchers -neuroscientists, psychologists and philosophers -who are developing these technologies, studying the minds and behaviour of subjects who use them. Sensory Substitution and Augmentation has three specific aims. The first is to present the latest empirical research on sensory substitution and augmentation. Second, philosophers and scientists who adopt a very different approach comment on the empirical work. Their commentaries are often critical of the assumptions of the work, but often they make and call for clarifications, suggest extensions to the work, or comment on features of the application of the work that the original authors do not. This is one reason why Sensory Substitution and Augmentation is more than simply a collection of papers on the same topic. Finally, philosophers look at the nature of sensory substitution and augmentation, tackling issues such as the nature and limitations of sensory substitution, the nature of the sensory experiences, theories of perception, and the potential for these devices to help those people with disabilities, in part due to future amendments of the devices that are suggested. Throughout, there is a particular focus on the nature of the perceptual experiences, the sensory interactions, and the changes that take place in the mind and brain over time that occur while using and training to use these technologies.

This book addresses Assistive Augmentation, highlighting the design and development of assistive technologies, user interfaces, and interactions that seamlessly integrate with a user’s mind, body, and behavior, providing an enhanced perception. Our senses are the dominant channel we use to perceive the world around us. Whether they have impairments or not, people often find themselves at the limits of their sensorial capabilities. Some seek assistive or enhancing devices that enable them to carry out specific tasks or even transform them into a “superhuman” with capabilities well beyond the ordinary. The overarching topic of this book revolves around the design and development of technologies and interfaces that provide enhanced physical, sensorial and cognitive capabilities: “Assistive Augmentation”. The Assistive Augmentation community convened at an interdisciplinary workshop at the 2014 International Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI) in Toronto, Canada. The community is comprised of researchers and practitioners who work at the junction of human–computer interaction, assistive technology and human augmentation. This edited volume, which represents the first tangible outcome of the workshop, presents stimulating discussions on the challenges of Assistive Augmentation as examined through case studies. These studies focus on two main areas: (1) Augmented Sensors and Feedback Modalities, and (2) Design for Assistive Augmentation.

A Collection of Classic and Contemporary Articles on the Philosophy of the Senses --

This book explores the science of touch. It brings together the latest findings from cognitive neuroscience about the processing of tactile information in humans. The book provides a comprehensive overview of scientific knowledge regarding themes such as tactile memory, tactile awareness (consciousness) and tactile attention.

"Eagleman renders the secrets of the brain’s adaptability into a truly compelling page-turner.” —Khaled Hosseini, author of The Kite Runner “Livewired reads wonderfully like what a book would be if it were written by Oliver Sacks and William Gibson, sitting on Carl Sagan’s front lawn.” —The Wall Street Journal What does drug withdrawal have in common with a broken heart? Why is the enemy of memory not time but other memories? How can a blind person learn to see with her tongue, or a deaf person learn to hear with his skin? Why did many people in the 1980s mistakenly perceive book pages to be slightly red in color? Why is the world’s best archer armless? Might we someday control a robot with our thoughts, just as we do our fingers and toes? Why do we dream at night, and what does that have to do with the rotation of the Earth? The answers to these questions are right behind our eyes. The greatest technology we have ever discovered on our planet is the three-pound organ carried in the vault of the skull. This book is not simply about what the brain is; it is about what it does. The magic of the brain is not found in the parts it’s made of but in the way those parts unceasingly reweave themselves in an electric, living fabric. In Livewired, you will surf the leading edge of neuroscience atop the anecdotes and metaphors that have made David Eagleman one of the best scientific translators of our generation. Covering decades of research to the present day, Livewired also presents new discoveries from Eagleman’s own laboratory, from synesthesia to dreaming to wearable neurotech devices that revolutionize how we think about the senses.

Objective Biometric Methods for the Diagnosis and Treatment of Nervous System Disorders provides a new and unifying methodological framework, introducing new objective biometrics to characterize patterns of sensory motor control underlying symptoms. Its goal is to radically transform the ways in which disorders of the nervous system are currently diagnosed, tracked, researched and treated. This book introduces new ways to bring the laboratory to the clinical setting, to schools and to settings of occupational and physical therapy. Ready-to-use, graphic user interfaces are introduced to provide outcome measures from wearable sensors that automatically assess in near real time the effectiveness of interventions. Lastly, examples of how the new framework has been effectively utilized in the context of clinical trials are provided. - Provides methods and their implementation using real data and simple computer programs that students and researchers from less technically trained fields can use - Describes the motivation for methods according to the problem domain in light of existing methods for each chapter, along with their lack of neuroscientific foundation and invalid statistical assumptions - Accompanied by a companion website which contains Appendices with MATLAB codes and data samples to generate the graphics displayed in all chapter figures - Features videos illustrating the experimental set up for scenarios and methods described in each chapter - Includes step-by-step explanations of paradigms in each clinical or typical sample population to enable reproducibility of the study across different clinical phenotypes and levels of expertise in sports, the performing arts, or mere individual academic predispositions/preferences