Bionic 3rd thumb: The future of human augmentation | Hard Reset
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- Опубликовано: 11 янв 2023
- We flew to the UK to learn more about the designer 3D-printing third thumbs. Is this the dawn of human body augmentation?
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Motorized prosthetics are nothing new. But what about artificial body parts that don’t replace missing ones, but instead provide us with extended capabilities, while also revealing insights into the relationship between brain and body?
That’s the main research focus of augmentation designer Dani Clode, who developed the Third Thumb, a 3D-printed extension for your hand that is controlled by your toes.
Through collaborative neuroscientific research with The Plasticity Lab at University College London & Cambridge University, Clode and her colleagues hope to better understand how the brain adapts to augmentation, learn more about the limits of neuroplasticity, and explore how to best utilize it to improve the control and usability of prosthetics and augmentative devices.
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Read more of our stories on bionics:
Is our world ready for mind-controllable robotic body parts?
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MIT’s new bionics center may usher in our cyborg future
► www.freethink.com/health/bionics
Man builds his own bionic hand out of melted plastic bottle
► www.freethink.com/health/bion...
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What would you do with a third thumb?
be able to solder something
I don't know but once in a while in traffic I could use an extra middle finger!😂🤣🤣😎😎
i would buy new socks
@@bobedwards8896 lmaoooo
Could be useful for climbing, by having increased ways to grip hand-holds.
Anyone who has played VR can vouch for how quickly the human brain can adapt to new augmentations. Unconsciously trying to teleport while outside of VR is a *very* common experience!
Throwback to playing that one office game for so many hours, quitting when I was extremely tired, going to take a piss, and instinctively trying to shoot a portal to move when I was done
Totally tried to make my real body move with thumb sticks one morning after a few hours of Boneworks the night before
@@Createsaur I get that a lot, but with the rotation thumbstick. I’ll notice I’ve gotten turned around and now I’m facing my TV (dangerous!) so I try to correct this using the thumbstick.
Soon 30 years of PC gaming and my hands are resting in WASD + mouse position. When I speak I tent to move my left hand fingers like I'd type on the computer.
Phantom touch aswell
A lot of people dont mention how strange it is we can pilot machines, or operate computers, play video games etc. The fact that you can get into a man made object and after a relatively small amount of time use your limbs extend your brain to move it in specific ways is mind boggling. It makes me think theres no end to what we could operate when it comes to limbs
Spend enough sheer time in any vehicle and it really does feel like an extension of yourself. If you learn to accept and respect that feeling, it greatly strengthens your awareness and control over it.
this is the reason i think we'll have no problem becoming cyborgs. notice how when we're driving a car and we're in the "flow state", the line between you and the car gets blurry. "i'm out of gas", "I'm turning right", "I got a flat tire" etc doesn't really make any sense when you think about it, but the brain doesn't seem to discriminate and treats the new body parts just like its own.
Yes you don't need much time driving until you can gearshift or hold a tempo limit without really think about what you are doing.
After 10 years I was finally able to understand how to drive when someone told me to think of the vehicle as an extension of my body, something just kinda clicked with that comment.
@@KaiserTom and it's so COOL!!! Like, we all talk about neural implants and controlling stuff with our minds and whatnot, yet simply by remapping an existing digit to another function we start controlling it with our minds
What im surprised that no-ones done yet is a wearable prehensile bionic tail that reads nerve activity from our tailbone. The nerves for operating a prehensile tail, I believe, are still present, just dormant, and could be woken up with Estim to use as a control for a number of bionic wearables. A prehensile tail would probably be most natural of course, but you could probably quite easily make it more of an arm by giving it radially symmetric fingers at the end. you could theoretically put it anywhere too, between the shoulderblades, over one shoulder, center of the chest, solar plexus, just about anywhere, with a ton of detailed inputs.
dont tell the furries lol
@Aliquet Oh no
Animu cat girls lets go
@@damarwulan3879 more like doc ock, but only one
Or, if that nerve bundle still exists (I'll take your word for it), why not use it to control extra digits? We already know that the brain can adapt its concept of the position of nerves to elsewhere (see gender reassignment experiences), so it would make sense that those nerves at the tailbone could be read by a sensor and used to control stuff elsewhere, and the brain would simply associate those inputs/outputs with the new physical location.
I think many of us are already quite used to this.
When we play videogames we're very familiar with we aren't controlling our hands to control the character, we just control the character, it's kind of a part of us.
The same could even be said about vehicles probably.
Far in the distance, my ideal body isn't necessarily human shaped...or singular.
So you want to be a swarm of some kind? Or possibly just a few separate bodies? Either way, movie tickets are going to be very expensive
gamepad is your "third thumb"
as someone who plays a ton of vr, the avatar i tend to use is winged with the ability to fly somewhat naturally and honestly after being in game for up to 8 hours at a time being used to flying around its a bit jarring to go back to reality where i cant just flap my wings up and glide around. honestly wonder if this has anything to do with that
Aye, that's called the Tetris Effect! When what's normal or habit in a video game becomes a sort of second nature in meatspace, the real world. So for an example, if you play a lot of parkour games, and then spend a day walking around with a stream of "that's a good place to vault, to wall run, to wall climb" and similar such things. So very likely!
What's the name of the game in which you fly?
I’d also like to know the game + how the avatar was coded if possible!
@@roseherbalist830 "play a lot of parkour games" or just do parkour lmao
@@mayonnaiseonanescalator7237 the game is called neosvr it's a bit of a technical learning curve on how to program things because it's a visual node based coding system called logix but people have built amazing things in it. the avatar I use is an avali, a winged furry type creature but you can use the flight logix on any avatar really. it's honestly a neat game and I highly recommend checking it out especially if you're a technical nut
The only thing I don't like about prosthetics like this is how they just 'repurpose' already existing avenues of interaction with the outside world.
Things like oft-unused muscles, toes, or movement in residual stumps.
What I feel really, _really_ holds these things back is the lack of direct interface, being able to read _new_ signals the brain can generate, either internally or sent through nerves.
Maybe you could read the brain directly, but you might also be able to grow new nerves that the brain can interact with, and provide a _direct_ route for interaction that doesn't hamper or repurpose anything, or rely on you having enough of the original limb left to work with, even though the brain is still fully capable of sending the signals that the limb would have used.
you should check out Ian Davis' (@missingpartsclub) content here on youtube. He's missing a few fingers and machines his own mechanical partial hand prosthetics that function similarly to what you're describing here, and has many interesting thoughts on prosthesia
@@swill6500 Ian davis' prosthetic isn't directly interfaced with the brain though, like the OP was saying.
His prosthetic functions based on gears and pulleys that operate the hand that are pulled and rotated when he moves his "stumps" in a specific way.
That's precisely what Neuralink is working on. Although with Musk going kinda crazy of late, idk how it's gonna turn out.
Neural ink and other companies have done exactly that , the only problem is high cost
They read the muscle contractions of residual muscles instead of directly reading the residual nerve impulses because the ultrasound sensor for the muscles are cheaper and more precise than the myoelectric ones for the nerves. Some research is done with sensing the nerves for people that does not have the muscles or for creating new kinds of interactions. Some research is done to externally read impulses from the brain in a portable way (this open up a great amount of opportunities).
And of course there are the people trying to insert sensors directly into the nerves/brain but implants are very complicated. Turns out living organisms don't react well to being cut open.
As someone with dyspraxia (motor learning disability) as part of my autism it is extremely interesting to me how we can learn to move, augment, extend ourselves and the motor aspects of tools, vehicles and so on. Ergonomics too
I wonder what this will bring us in the future
Edit: also a sidenote because its neat. Ive found that my coordination has improved since i started doing experiments with weird ways to move, trying to use my pinky as a 2nd thumb for instance, or using my knee to open certain doors, using exclusively one hand or the other to complete a task, etc, aswell as choreographing certain movements and sets of them.
I think that personally my brain due to dyspraxia just needs more examples/sample size to kearn these things, which has kinda been the case of a lot of stuff. At this point, i am very coordinated, though i wasn't always. The hardest part is bodily multitasking, and copying motions i see others do.
Yes, absolutely. As someone who studies this kind of stuff in university and works in a physio clinic, I fully endorse this. Intentional practice using your body in novel ways DRASTICALLY improves kinesthetic awareness. We've had people with concussions, chronic dizziness, and vertigo make huge improvements. It's especially effective if you can practice movements with your eyes shut, just be safe when you do it that way
@@rando5673 i actually did that too, because i wanted to learn how blind people percieve the world, and because soap got in my eyes while showering XD
Obviously didn't do it all the time, but yeah that adds up.
Cool C:
this is VERY cool, kudos to you for improving your coordination
@@orbismworldbuilding8428 I don’t get i ,so does it make it harder to learn
@@dnxx503 it makes it harder for me to learn coordnation and motor skills. For example i can't dance and find it hard to learn new dances, am clumsy sometimes, don't have good handwriting unless i try really hard, and have things with muscle memory not always being flexible enough.
It doesn't effect my ability to learn concepts or ideas, but it makes it harder for me to learn how to do things using my body (including my hands).
Dani is an example of empathy and curiosity at it's best. Most people would never want a prosthetic, but because she wanted to see for herself she is opening up the eyes of so many people. Keep being you Dani!
"From the moment I understood the weakness of my flesh, I craved the strength and certainty of steel"
The exact thing I thought seeing the thumbnail, hail mars!
I remember reading an article recently about how VR therapy has been used to successfully re-train the brain specicially to help eliminate a lazy eye by altering the image one eye sees to the other, while responding to a laser operated sensors pointed into both eyes. Fascinating stuff! It essentially teaches your eye how to function properly by augmenting reality around the process required for the brain to learn.
After enough hours in a video game it feels like a similar idea. When I'm in games that I'm really comfortable with, I don't have to think about moving a certain way, I just do. The same thing for typing, really, once you're comfortable enough it's just an extension of your hands. It would be interesting to see this study done with different age groups to determine effect of age on brain plasticity
I cannot wait for what the future has to hold! As a studying biomedical engineer my passion for this field comes from this idea of creaing unique augmentations rather than just creating a prosthetic hand or foot. Yes, this augmentation serves as an additive more than a replacement, but I love the new direction people in this field are taking it. I absolutely cannot wait to be involved with this type of research and developement, it truly is fascinating! I wish i could have an extra thumb right now even!
it would be interesting to see if there is a similar effect on people who as example are immersed in their videogame character controls or people who do alot of puppeteering.
I see hydraulic digger operators controlling their machines like an extension of themselves and I'm 100% convinced they have a similar mapping in their brains.
Imagine how much yarn strands I could hold (I crochet, don't worry about it), maybe some new crochet techniques could appear?
@@benjaminmiller3620 People often describe using a sword or tool as "an extension of their arm". I don't really think the statement was intended to be as poetic as we take it, I think they were being quite literal.
I draw on a PC and whenever I make a mistake irl I just automatically go and try to press ctrl Z, and then stare into space processing what I just tried to do LMAOO
I can confirm that I use a controller like an extension of my hand. I have spent nearly 3000 hours training to be good at one specific game. At this point I don't even need to have a controller in my hand or a screen in front of me to perform certain common mechanics. I can do a rocket league fast-aerial, speed-flip, wavedash, and half-flip without even having the game in front of me.
I’ve participated in long distance cycling and have experienced the sensation of embodiment of my bike.
It’s very cool that we now have evidence of that experience. I had assumed that it was a very physical form of what’s call a “flow state.”
I was and still am, very attached to my bike. 😊
I’ve experienced this mountain biking often, as well as when engaged in “spirited” driving a manual transmission car. The human brain can learn to control all sorts of motions at the speed of thought.
@@danwebber9494 all that matters is that we give the brain enough feedback, and the embodiment is just a matter of time. My favorite example of this is the driving simulator scene, where you can't feel the acceleration on the car conventionally. To alleviate this, sound of the engine, body of the car tilting, and perhaps even haptic feedback from the controller are used to great effect. At some point, you can embody a virtual car just as well as a real one, simply by reading different sorts of clues that are telling you the same thing
I'd say I've experienced that sense of embodiment with my trumpet. Only for a couple of years where I was really playing every day but I got to the point where I would just play what I wanted without thinking about it. It became second nature, as they say in the video.
My bike feels like I'm running. My guitar makes me feel like I'm singing. So cool.
Top 3 Robot/Prosthetic Equipment Options:
1. Exoskeleton
2. Extra pair of arms
3. Camera Eyes
What I wanna see is more studies into VR phantom sense. Seems like something with a lot of potential not just for be but for those who have lost their sense of touch and want to be able to feel something.
Epic narration : "What if your body could be any shape you want it to be?"
Me : "Triangle! Please, I need to be a triangle!"
this is so interesting and the stuff you were talking about in the end of the video made me realize how we are already adapting ourselves like this with stuff like segways, keyboards and what not to the point its like extension of us (i guess the car and phone examples are good too but these feel more integrated)
also its interesting to see how when people see these advancements and they loose a limb they are not too phased by it, some may be even excited cuz they get the exclusive robotic enhancements
I would honestly consider going further and let them amputate limbs if I knew the tech was completely there (low risk, not many downsides) and could be integrated 100% with no or little maintenance.
@@e.h.4933 i had the same thought but figured that might be considered morbid or something
@@zajlord2930 It's morbid until you find your self in mid life, not able to do the things you once did, and have pain from injuries and so on. Yes, it may seem extreme to some, but honestly, if I could replace my spine with a titanium one and get better limbs I would jump at the chance.
The caveat being it would have to be relatively permanent, with no need for follow up surgeries, and the tech would have to be at the point where it was fully integrated. I don't think we will get there in time for me, alas.
@@e.h.4933 Replacing the spine would be a must. If they could do that with very little risk it'd just be the right move to do.
A lot of our faults start with the spine, and if it's cut then you're done for.
OH MY GOD, I did a research paper on supernumerary prosthetics a couple years ago for my ap research class. I really wanted to get my hands on one of these thumbs so I could use it in my longwinded presentation on the subject and introduce newfound brain plasticity and I found nothing but dead ends. I really wish I could've watched this back then instead of the same 2 promotion trailers for this product on repeat.
The sheer joy in this video is amazing.
THIS IS AMAZIIING!!! imagine being able to play the piano with 12 fingers
It would be 11 fingers unless you grow 2 pairs of additional feet
@@RandomGuy-nm6bm 2 additional feet or 1 additional pair* ;)
Pretty sure that's a scene in GATTACA
@M JAY saratchandra not all piano music needs pedals
Imagine being able to play the piano with 10 fingers
I would like a prehensile tail I can use to open and close doors when my hands are full. And wings, please, and thank you!
The airline industry would probably start suing the biotech industry if they started giving people wings lol
Wings are fine, they'll be beautiful and interesting, but I don't think they'll ever make you fly. Human body weight is just too much for proportionally sized wings. A flight-worthy pair of wings for human will be too large and/or too powerful to a point it's a safety hazard in daily life. Anyway, tails, yes please! Imagine parkour with a tail!
@@HigherQualityUploads well not really. you have legs but car companies dont sue us
@@baganatube why not just use them to glide. Or you could actually just attach propellers but that would look kinda silly
@@ilovehumongoushonkers That's a good point! I'll never have to wait for the elevator after work :).
I have very vivid dreams. Always have. A very long time ago, I had a very detailed dream wherein I had wings that came from a second set of shoulder joints about an inch or so from the arm's shoulders along the clavicle, with a second shoulder set of blades.
I can still remember the feeling of moving those limbs, even to this day, and it was incredibly strange to have phantom-limb syndrome for limbs I never had in reality.
This was mixed and produced so well, the concept is so facinating and the haunting soundtrack has gotten me hooked
Thanks for the great video! I have so many questions about this. Can you control the third thumb with muscles you don't usually use? So that it doesn't displace any existing ability of your body. Or even better, can you develop brand new control pathway that doesn't replace any existing controllable muscle? Another question: When you're used to it and then removed it, do you feel injured or, for the lack of a better word, crippled? How long does it last? Thank you again! I'm glad I'm not the only one who wears socks with more than one hole as long as all but one are hidden in the shoe ;-).
This. We have muscles in our body that we don't normally control - at least independently. I can personally attest to this from my experience learning to wiggle my ears decades ago. (And to this day I can still do it on the right at will despite almost never doing so - certainly infrequently enough to negate any actual muscular development. The other ear, I now struggle to isolate from my eyebrow, much like I did when I first trained the ability.)
I was very disappointed to find this video wasn't about encouraging the development of new conscious nervous system pathways, but just repurposing mature ones. Sure it's way more accessible, but it's also barely novel and ignores the key challenges to real functional body modification, which would undoubtedly be extremely valuable for restorative augmentation as well. Because the greatest potential value here would be a massive acceleration in prosthetic tech and economics as byproduct of developing related useful tech for the massively larger "everybody" market.
В нашем теле нет мышц которые мы "обычно не используем". Мы используем их все. А шевелить пальцем при помощи мышц на затылке или при помощи тех что отвечают за брови и уши как минимум странно. Мне кажется лучше двигаться в сторону нейроинтерфейсов.
@@HonoredMule There is a lot more to learn from coupling motor neurons that are so far apart in the brain than there is from coupling very close motor neurons. If only because this way you can actually discriminate between the two areas lighting up. You wouldn't learn half as much if you tried to utilise an underused hand-nerve.
You prompted me to Google how many holes normal socks have, topologically speaking. I wondered if it was zero because I was imagining a sock as a manifold. But you can imagine at as a sphere you’ve punch through, and that’s got one hole, as you’d think intuitively. “Hole” isn’t a well-defined term is what I’ve learned.
@@lkyuvsad This explains holes quite well. ruclips.net/video/ymF1bp-qrjU/видео.html
I've actually been thinking about this for a while and what I'd do if I had a prosthetic how I'd re-design my arm, my idea was not only a third thumb but splitting the hand into 2 pairs of fingers, you'd end up with the ability to manipulate delicate things in one hand or the ability to combine their grips more uniformly than the 3rd thumb in this video.
I might even go a step further and be able to flex in both directions but that's not something I can fit in my brain and imagine for myself right now it would be something I would be happy to learn though.
One of the reasons I wouldn't get a third thumb as presented here is the strength and precision of my ring and pinky fingers, I'd want them to be the equivalent of my index and middle finger for my real thumb but I don't have the musculature or strength in them to have them act independent of one another, anything my pinky does influences my ring finger in a way that isn't true of my index and middle pair. A way to show this is to try picking something up with just your index and thumb while keeping the rest of your fingers straight, that's relatively easy, same for the middle finger, you might be lucky and be able to do this with your ring finger too but doing it for the ring finger is impossible for me.
But I'm glad to have a video to point at to go 'I'm not crazy look it's being researched for real' XD
So like General Grievous?
I guess... though I wouldn't split all the way up the arm, if I wanted 4 arms I'd want each to have this 4 fingers 2 thumb arrangement XD
#never seen Star Wars #had to work it out from google images
One of the coolest videos I've seen in a while!
This is a field I'm personally really interested in, and as a hobbyist game dev, have even had the idea for using VR to add 6 extra eyes to the player, with the view of those eyes being at the edges of the players view, seeing if, after some time, the brain would get used to these extra eyes, and pay attention to them subconsciously.
I definitely think this 3rd thumb is a LOT cooler though! But it makes me wonder: Would it be possible that, instead of reusing current paths to the brain (Like the big toes in this example), would it be possible to create our own in a sense?
I have little clue how nerves work, other than sending signals through to the brain, so I'm willing to bet this would be FAR more complex than I even dare to think,
but imagine if the third thumb could send and receive electrical signals, with it sending things like touch. At first, no doubt the brain wouldn't be able to make sense of it, but I wonder if the brain would eventually adapt, being able to understand those signals and associate them with different parts of the thumb, and eventually adding it to it's internal "Body Map", allowing you to keep track of it without needing to look at it, like the other parts of your body? Could it even learn to control it?
Anyways, the third thumb is definitely really cool, and I hope it opens the door for more research on this, answering those questions I asked above!
Nerves are indeed complex, but they really really "want"(not actually want, because they're not sapient, it is just a humanizing metaphore for "tends to") to control the body so in practice it is easier than you think. You don't have to worry about difficulty with the brain learning how to sense and operate the new thumb, the only problem is the interface. Somehow you want signals to move from the limb to the brain, and the easiest way to do that is to appropriate already existing nerves. For example, there is no hard rule that humans have 4 fingers and a thumb, they're just nerves you've learned to use in that area. If you give someone an extra thumb wired into half the nerves of their pinky finger, their brain will probably learn to distinguish between the two with enough practice.
I made a mod for Minecraft that extends the field of view up to 360 degrees (see my channel for details). I can confirm that after a few months, you absolutely can adjust to a much higher fov. I find I get lost a lot less, and I'm much more aware of what's happening around me. I don't actively look behind me, rather I use the extra fov as an extension of my peripheral vision.
@@The18107j Gotta have a really large screen to make it playable, I bet. 😂
This will be revolutionary. Working in the auto industry, do you know how many times i wished it had one more finger, on each hand? My original desire was to have one more set of functional arms like a machamp (pokémon). so seeing this video has evolved that desire. Also with being a dad my need to do things with one hand has risen drastically. I would love to see the additional thumbs be controlled directly via the brain so i could use the two together, and also have the ability to remove them if need be
Machamp? Lmao.
@@KARIAP i mean it's true
I had to wear a fake tail for a mascot job for a convention. I made it out of a plastic a teaching spine I found at a garage sale. So it moved like my body. After days of wearing it, i missed it after I took it off. I walked differently with it on and if felt weird not to have it there afterwards.
this is going to sound very very odd, but i feel they link in a way. i am an avid vr player and since i started playing i have developed phantom touch. this means when being touched in vr or colliding with object i can feel it. but another aspect which i experienced was phantom limbs, but with body parts i never had. I can feel the weight and swing of having a tail, i can feel the movement and flex of having animal ears. at first i could only feel this in vr and if my avatar had these components. but it fascinated me so much i wanted too see if its something i could will in real life, it truly just takes brain power and its now second nature, i can imagine myself with these limbs now, colliding with objects. obviously not constantly but its something i have willed my brain into creating these extra body parts that i can feel interacting with my body and the world around me it fascinating.
same, its facinating
Explaining the nerve system as pully system is amazing
it'll be interesting to see where this goes, imagine if we could create new nerve endings just to link to new body parts or a surgeries to add a way that nerve signals can be interpreted without needing to go out of the body ( i was thinking patches of muscle doing nothing in your arm linked to new limbs, like you get it surgically added and when you tense the new tiny muscle a "fake" muscle replicates that tension), you could expand your body for as much space you have to put augmentations on. imagine having extra arms and limbs and what it could do for expression and the social world
This seems similar to when you play a videogame and you train yourself to map your finger movements to button presses to moves and attacks in the game. The difference being you're using your toes to control something physical rather than your fingers to control something digital.
She is amazing for this! Brilliant! Just pure and genuine curiosity coupled with passion! Yes Yes Yes!!!
I’m really happy to see more research being done body augmenting!!
Wonder if you could design a augmentation to specifically challenge the brain like you'd see while learning a new language or playing a new instrument. Use it to bolster your brain from neurological deterioration like you'd see in an elderly person, make it similar to lifting weights or working out but specifically for your brain. Or use it to specifically target parts of the brain that have been harmed or damaged as a form of physical therapy to get back some higher functions and use out of the damaged areas.
This is so freaking cool! I want one! :)
I'd actually be really curious to see how it would go with both controllers on the one foot (one on the big toe and one on the next couple of toes perhaps), both so that you could potentially operate two of the thumbs at the same time, but also to see if there's any differences that happen because you're not crossing the left/right side of the body for the controls, only having one side of the body control the prostetic on that side of the body, since our brains do seem to love their bilateral symmetry.
Also it's always amazing what our proprioception can adapt to, and what our brains can interpret as 'part of us' after surprisingly little time.
Plenty of people have pointed out the brain adapting to new controls and capabilities in VR space, or 'feeling' the bike you've been riding for days on end (and often being able to 'just tell' when something's off, like tyre pressure or a warp after hitting something), but it happens with so many other things as well, like PowerSkip stilts, and even simpler things like wearing a brace on a limb, or even wearing high heels.
Our brain loves going "Oh, cool, this appears to be sticking around, lets just start auto-adapting to it being here, change the baseline feel of the body to take it into account, and making use of it"
Sword masters weren't kidding with the whole "Practice until the weapon feels like it's part of you" thing =)
It's also interesting that not only it takes mere days to entirely augment the body's self map, but also the fact that it can store different profiles. I walk and I am perfectly used to that, then I get on a bike and that bike is a perfect extension of my body, I switch that for a car and I can seamlessly transition into this new body extension. And I assume that if I was licensed to control more vehicles it would be just as seamless once you learn them.
Now that I think about it, it's not just vehicles, basically all of our tools work in the same way! A fork, a walking stick, and an angle grinder, all having the same thing in common - your brain will just assume they're a replacement limb basically.
One of the most interesting videos I've seen this year!!! 👌
I did an internship there, and it is teeming with low key geniuses!
some people can move their ears independently, what if instead of using the toes (as you cant walk etc like this) we used a muscle like near the ears or something as these dont seem to be used for anything, although it might look a bit weird, it would make it so you can multitask while using it.
That is fuckin genius, that way I can finally put that skill to good use.
That's actually a really good idea!
This is quite exciting stuff! I can’t wait to see what the future holds!
I just want to say I knew it would work, I've wanted something like this for years, and I hope it becomes publicly available soon
I certainly think this would be a lot more applicable in less inconvenient areas of the body, even if it is harder to put sensors there that are still easy to control. Perhaps in between the thigh and the calf, where squeezing would have the same effect?
This has to be my favorite Freethink video yet. Super interesting and loved the presentation style.
Wow, thats bloody fascinating.
I've wondered what an extra thumb would be like ever since I read Childhoods End. And now I see that it seems brilliant
This is so cool
And could help so many disabled people, myself included. Having a tail, for example, might improve my balance and help with my back pain.
God I want to toy around with this stuff so badly
This is awesome. I would really amazed if one day we can control external device like this directly from our brain (without using our toes or another body part).
Hello there
i wanna have bluetooth thumbs in the future
@@MuAlexJS so your own limbs can be hacked?
@@amentco8445 how do you hack Bluetooth? Lol
I give this 4 thumbs up.
Danis excitement about a third thump is so refreshing to see
This kind of stuff is way too cool! I want one!!
I've always thought that driving felt like an actual extension of my body. You understand how big it is, how it moves etc
For cost of research the toe controls are brilliant but where things would get really interesting, brain wise, would be EEG controls. When the brain isn't mapping an existing digit but introducing a novel pathway to control a novel extremity.
Damn what an awesome vid ! I want to work in biomechatronics like Hugh Herrs one day, so seeing videos like this are so incredible and inspiring ! I’ve always loved the concept of augmentation ever since I played games like Deus Ex as a kid. Not just prosthetics and augmentations to fix a handicap like a missing limb , but the idea enhancing human capabilities to do things never before possible is so exciting . While a lot of tech seems to go in bad directions to cater to the greedy ; prosthetics /bionics /augmentations are going in an amazing direction . I can’t wait to see what the future holds and I can’t wait to be a part of it one day once I’m through with school !
*"GLORIOUS EVOLUTION"*
-Victor
I am also one day hopefully going to work with bionic augmentations. I have often wondered whether or not humans can control limbs they don't have with their brains. This video proves it is obviously possible. and it works exactly how I thought it would.
From what I understood though, they are just using their big toes to control it, it is no different than doing something backwards, with practice you get use to it, but it is not controlling a ghost limb, just using one we do have to link it, or direct it.
you must not have understand the video well, because the extra thumb is really just remote controlled by their toes.
@@VertexPlaysMC you control your toes with your brain.. the interface is just indirect. I'm sure we could come up with a way to use a different interface
But this video is not proof that we can, like you stated in your comment. Plus people have been controlling unnatural "appendages" like paddles and steering wheels for hundreds of years so this video isn't really that revolutionary.
One interesting question might be...does the fact that it looks like an extension affect the time it takes for the brain to adapt? If, for example, the user wore a two-thumbed glove so that the new thumb looked exactly like the rest of the hand, would the brain adapt to it faster?
I just finished watching Boston dynamics’s newest video. It’s truly incredible how far robotics and bionics have come. To me, it seems totally achievable that we will have neuro-linked, remote piloted mechs within a decade.
I've wanted one of these for decades.
I imagine it has to be very similar to video game controls - after enough time playing a game, if something in the real world prompts me to think and want to move in a way I would while playing, I've found myself trying to press buttons on a controller or keys on a keyboard that isn't actually there, and then there's a brief moment of confusion where I wonder why I can't move the way I want to. It especially happens when I'm suddenly prompted to do something I usually only do in a game - collect a plant, check who's on a team, reload some sufficiently gun shaped tool, etc.
It's hard to explain the motion I try to make, because while I will twitch my finger, that's not actually what I'm thinking about - it distinctly feels like I'm trying to move a body part I don't have.
Given the soonest chance, the world is probably going to rapidly adopt third arms, especially compact ones. A dexterous third arm would be incredibly useful. With models I'm sure ranging, but likely the most popular ones being small, light-weighted and form-fitting ones with still enough power to be useful for pretty much everyone for most basic tasks.
i would love to general grevious one of my arms
We've only recently proven unequivocally that our brains do, in fact, both integrate tools into our idea of 'self', as well as extend our senses outward into it. When you hold a stick, swing it around a little and 'get a feel for its weight' so to speak, after a short while you'll be able to tell precisely where an impact on it takes place while you're holding it, even without seeing the impact happen. This 'projecting' of our sensory system into objects requires a lot of complex calculations and our brains just kind of 'do it' without us noticing. This concept extends to vehicles as well, and even the fact that you need a couple minutes to get used to typing on a new keyboard is your brain learning to embody your tools.
It's a thing that's been common knowledge for some time, of course, but it's marvellous to see it reflected in hard science; and honestly mind-boggling to see it extend to this degree.
I wonder, if you were to use neural signals to drive this thing - specifically with the more analogue input scale - what your nerves would look like around the sensors after using it for a while. Would they grow denser and more numerous, much like how doing things that require specific fine muscle control causes more nerves to grow in the area?
There was a study where participant wore a belt with vibrators all around and which vibrated toward the north. People were told to just wear it for a few weeks.
In the experiment, they were asked to navigate a space blind folded (going back and forth on a long distance). Participant did the task flawlessly without even noticing that the device did help them, the brain processed the information, but didn't resurface it. Without the device, participant became bad again.
This showed that non only humans can be augmented, but that the brain is able to use new information passively. The corollary being that things happens in a low consciousnesses level. (i.e. your brain process information without resurfacing it, a walk is a good illustration as you are most of the time in imbalance and doing corrections after correction, but it happens without a need for explicit control!)
And even further, there is the infamous experiment where people are taught to push a button whenever they want. The brain is monitored to know when the decision is taken and the subject is asked when he took the decision. Candidates report later times, showing that the decision was taken before they were aware. This poses the question of free will as there is a discrepancy between when the decision is taken and when it's perceived to be taken, so, unknown factors may modify that subconscious decision.
Once you start reading about those stuff, you start to question your own brain even more ^^
I think you're on to something here with the 3rd thumb. My son is 9 and born without his dominant right hand. I'm wondering if this technology could possibly be worn on his left hand as a glove of sorts and mimic that hand or map it to an artificial right hand?? That could do SO MUCH for him just sitting down or getting up, even holding things in both hands at the same time.. the possibilities are exciting here. I'll be watching. Thanks.
Well, as far as I know, if you're born without a right hand, you will automatically be left-handed. The brain just works that way.
i have an extra finger on each hand, they're placed on the opposite side of my thumbs just like these augmentations are. my left is just a skin tag that does nothing, but my right is a proper finger. it sticks out like a thumb, but with one less joint. i'm right-handed with limited dexterity, so it helps me immensely! this was so fascinating to watch, i love how these were made so this woman could understand her clientele better!
seeing an extra thumb so hyped up was a bit surreal, not gonna lie. most people get their extra digits removed as babies, so it's super rare to find someone like me. extra digits are automatically assumed as unwanted and disabling, when that isn't always the case! seeing how an extra digit can be beneficial is really great. :)
i would have liked if this video focused on disabled people more, though. we are 16% of the population, we are abundant and this technology has so much promise to help us! like, a prosthetic is an augmentation of the wearer's body. just because it makes them more "normal" doesn't make it *not* an augmentation. it adds to what wasn't there before. sure, wings and extra limbs are fun, but right now i just wanna see amputees with comfortable, flexible prosthetics that can improve their quality of life. that's just as amazing as prosthetic wings, in my opinion.
I think this video wants to focus more on the psychological effects of learning to associate a specific muscle contraction with a new joint. I’m surprised they focused on fmri instead of mri because imo it would be a lot more interesting to see how quickly new neutron connections are made instead of just finding out where activity was found. I think this video should have touched upon the difficulties of creating augmentations for disabled people. For example, the process of finding out how to reconnect or extend a nerve ending and map it to a augmentation has always been a difficult problem to solve. This alternative method of associating an existing nerve (toe) with a new limb has the potential to be far more effective and reliable.
@@Jwellsuhhuh fair enough! seems they simplified things a bit to make it more exciting for the average person. fmri is colour-coded and easier to wrap your head around if unfamiliar with these topics, i'd assume. and i hope these techniques are used to make prosthetics easier to use. perhaps it's difficult partially because the neuropathways for the missing limb are still there, and does not work in the way a prosthetic has to function (not to mention the nerve pain). i don't know, though! it's unfortunate that brains can adapt to extra stuff so easily, but replacing something missing is so challenging.
honestly this is cool but I really want that tentacle attachment. I want to start learning how to use a whole new limb that humans don't have because that's FASCINATING
this is exactly what I imagined. this is the start of something great.
Very cool i wonder how someone like me with dyspraxia would get along with this thumb+ , Also Bring on human prehensile tails!! :-)
Are you a furry?
@@eyesyt7571 Does it matter?
@@JoBot__ Yes
@@eyesyt7571 Within this context, the correct answer is "No."
@@JoBot__ False
I wonder what sort of weird tailed tentacled beings humans will become lmao
Finally, i can escape the limitations of meat prison
Idk but I'm ready
oh boy man made horrors!
Homuncular flexibility is such a fun thing to research!
I always wanted two hands extra, can't wait for the tec to arrive.
Am I the only one that want the professor's voice in a meditation app?
From the moment I understood the weakness of my flesh, it disgusted me. I craved the strength and certainty of steel. I aspired to the purity of the Blessed Machine. Your kind cling to your flesh, as though it will not decay and fail you. One day the crude biomass you call the temple will wither, and you will beg my kind to save you. But I am already saved, for the Machine is immortal… Even in death I serve the Omnissiah.
I'm somewhat disapointed by the foot based control. Doesnt that just exchange toes for fingers? Not being able to walk while using it seems like a big disadvantage. Maybe useful in a seated, factory-like setting.
This would appears to be something that might improve the quality of life for a few at a very minimal cost. Good work.
I think this is brilliant as a proof of concept ... for what we already know ... but don't explore. We know the brain adapts. Numerous proofs of this are available just in stroke recovery, prosthetics, physical therapy, etc. Other "weird" studies have also proven this, such as wearing glasses that flip your view upside-down, and how quickly we adapt to that vision, as well as how the brain struggles to let go of that adaptation once achieved. So we know full well that the brain is flexible and adaptive. But we don't really explore what we can DO with that knowledge. Which is what makes this kind of study great! Next up is finding a machine-to-neural interface to add new inputs to our nervous system instead of using existing paths. We've been trying THAT for a long time ... but with limited success, because nerves are damaged by prolonged direct electrical stimulation. We need to find a safe bridge between the electro-mechanical and the organic if we really want to push what we can do, both for prosthetics and for augmentation. Well, that or we need to learn to engineer organics much better to create actual living prosthetics that are truly a part of us. Assuming that we don't end the world, it's just a matter of time before either or both of these bridges are crossed. The future is going to get ... strange.
I understand that the same thing happens when you used pencils, the brain treates it like its a biological component, like a bone thats being minipulated with muscles, but its a pencile being minpulated by the fingers.
its incredible what our bodys can do and how adaptable we are, Mashallah.
If this could be controlled just through the brain i think this would be really cool and useful
This device is one of the things I want to try the most out of everything in life
While I'll admit that this is very cool, I'm also ready for man-made horrors beyond our comprehension.
How is this different from using any other machine for a long time, e.g. a car?
The whole point is that it isn't.
The brain learns to treat tools as extensions of yourself.
The bicycle def came to mind when thinking about things we already augment our body with.
Huge missed opportunity not calling her shed "The Cyber-Shed". FR though, this is absolutely amazing. I can't wait to see how this field develops further!
Wonder if any of the participants felt phantom pain after they returned the thumb. That might also be interesting, but maybe you need to feel pain in your prosthetic first.
No. You'd have to have a great deal of attachment to the *thing* before you would experience something like that.
It has to be a part of you to the point that you no longer see it as an attachment but truly a PART of you.
@@PanoptesDreams yeah, that's what i also believe. Didn't know how long the subjects used it, but it would be interesting if they tried really long testing periods.
The extra thumb can't experience pain to begin with. They're remapping nerves in the foot to also control this thumb, and the brain is fairly quick to adapt to this. Take away the extra thumb, and the nerves in the foot are still functioning fine and the normal pathways aren't interrupted.
I'm all for transhumanism but a 3rd arm would probably more useful than a 3rd thumb
More complex to hook up and control, too. With a thumb, it's just rotation around the base and flexing/relaxing the digit, with maybe a bit more control in individual knuckles. With an arm, you have two degrees of freedom in the shoulder, one in the elbow, two again in the wrist if you *don't* include the rotation of the forearm, and then all the complexity of the thumb, times however many fingers you want the arm to have on the end of it.
Controlling a thumb can be done with a very small sacrifice of one of your toes. Controlling an arm basically needs an arm's worth of movement - And unless you're controlling the arm remotely in a different room, or at a different scale (like in surgical robots), or with demonstrably more power, there's not a huge use case to giving up one arm to get another arm.
Once we can make our own nervous system grafts and the like, I'm in complete agreement, but my new arms are gonna have as many extra thumbs as I can get away with, because why the hell not.
Very cool idea and concept.
Like it !
I haven't even watched it yet, but I'm giving it a "thumbs up", right now!
The implications of this for medical application of amputees is huge. I'm excited to see where it goes
It would be cool to see a prosthetic finger like that that responded to the positions of the other fingers in order to move and didn't rely on the foot part.
Misses clode, you are absolutely beyond gorgeous and even more so intelligent. This is not me being a creep,just trying to bring attention to your perfection of the duality of brains and body.ty for your contribution to mankind and keep it up!
projects like this will make sports like running into sports like formula 1
I feel that innovations in exoskeleton tech involving augmentation by added extra arms per say is a very real thing to happen in the future. I’m saying this in the mind of a technician or a laborer. Having extra arms/hands would increase one’s productivity immensely and having the extra strength from the exoskeleton can help further us in many areas. Could be military, could be construction, could even be search and rescue.
I have had this idea for years, I am so happy to see someone implement it.
this is really cool!
The human brain will adapt and adopt new senses, appendages, or other ways of integrated information gathering. The perfect machine.
Thumb wars are going to get a whole lot more interesting
If at some point in the future something like this was just extra thumbs I could strap onto my hands, it could be easily washed in a sink like normal hands, and it could be controlled in some more convenient way for general use, it might be neat to just generally use something like that!
I don't think its "1000's of years of evolved pathways". At birth we fumble with our fine motor skills until we've learned how to use them (as the dexterity, length and overall strength of the joints change over an extreme growth period). It's amazing how young kids can learn to ride a snowboard or play the piano; even learning to operate a mouse and keyboard, gaming controller, or VR could be considered a very similar learning process. All they're doing is controlling (interfacing with) a robot with their toes. I get that this technology is for teaching whole body people what its like to use a prosthetic but a truly impressive (and potentially dangerous) feat would be to interface with a newly formed control signal in the brain, instead of just remapping an existing signal.