Every six months I have to go in for a tuneup, a wireless data dump & service testing. Having having one's heart slowed to sub-40bpm via a few taps on a screen is...odd. Printed report tells assorted stories of daily activity periods, odd events, heart rate hitting programmed thresholds, etc. There have been some confluence of proximity & programming causing twitching under some circumstances (couldn't sleep on my left side for a year due to a lead pressing on & convulsing diaphragm) which were fixed completely thru software settings. Have a minimum threshold programmed in, and if it's set too high (say, 60bpm) and I relax deeply can feel it kicking in with "go faster!"
Proved quite useful a couple weeks back. Suffered a random onset of aortic flutter (can happen to anyone, just sorta happens), where a natural short-circuit in the beat-signal nerves sent the heart rate up to 349bpm (neatly documented on the printed data dump). For most people, this means a very scary and tense race to the emergency room, with AED paddles & drugs to bring it down until the problem can be surgically eliminated. My pacemaker hit the brakes at 150bpm, leaving me functional to wander in to the ER at my convenience; there, a tech was brought in to set up a more aggressive flutter-control program (70-100bpm more aware of actual physical needs). That kept things manageable until the drive-thru heart surgery to fix the problem (1 hour to send a probe up a vein to find & burn out the short, 3 hours rest, then discharged). Wasn't what the pacer was installed to handle (ventricular resynchronization), but the "while we're installing this, let's add a wire and program in some other someday-useful stuff" has indeed proven useful.
Other body modification is a mechanical heart valve. I tick. I've been confused with clocks.
Yes, MRIs are completely out of the question now. Work near a small one and get nervous walking by the door.
OK, so these weren't exactly voluntary. Choice aside, being a cyborg does make for interesting experiences & conversations.
ETA: BTW, not looking forward to replacing the battery. At least the device has been saying the battery will last another four years - for the last four years.
This kind of control and capability makes me wonder if they won't someday become common in a preventative/health monitoring role instead of only for cardiac defects. The risk during installation and problems with MRI seem pretty serious, so I doubt it could happen soon, but it's not impossible.
I wonder what some sort of self-assembing/modular device that can be fed in chunks through a vein catheter or keyhole surgery, and built in-situ could be plausible.
Not sure what to do about the MRI issue though. They're only going to get more common as we figure out superconductors, and they have none of the radiation downsides of CT. Maybe non-metallic construction, or perhaps when milli-Tesla MRI becomes a reasonable alternative?
Is the battery in yours single use, or recharged via induction loop?
Apologies in advance for not actually commenting on body hacking, but did you serve in the military? I'm trying to decide whether the writing style where you omit subjects and occasionally verbs comes from the military only, or whether it's more pervasive.
About that wireless connection to the device connected to your heart, and such things as security and bugs, here's a really excellent talk by Karen Sandler. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XDTQLa3NjE
It's a cool idea, but let's not give short shrift to the MRI downside. MRIs are a big deal in today's medical world. Not being able to get one, depending on circumstances, can present anything from a mild inconvenience to a significant challenge. Especially if it's because of some piece of metal you elected to have implanted.
I type these words with a (non-elective) series of metal prostheses implanted in my hand and wrist. Luckily, I don't set off metal detectors unless they're turned to extremely high sensitivities. But MRIs are out. I don't want to get into TMI detail, but let's just say that I have an ongoing medical condition that makes the inability to get MRIs a big setback.
Tread carefully with this stuff. Look before you leap.
There's a reason I have a Rod of Asclepius and "DO NOT MRI" tattooed on my wrist. Apparently it's quite possible to go through an MRI with implant intact, so long as the techs know about it.
The inventor of these implants' advice about MRIs can be found here: http://www.stevehaworth.com/wordpress/index.php/welcome-from...
I have a magnet implant and looked into this. I found a study about MRIs and cochlear implants and not once did the study mention any dangers. Instead their concerns were based on demagnetizing the implant, and they found that the risk of demagnetization could be mitigated by aligning the patient in a certain way.
I know that cochlear implants are very different from finger magnets (cochlear implants are attached to bone) but it does challenge some of my basic assumptions.
It should also be noted that it would take less than five minutes to remove the implant with a scalpel.
A bit OT, but does it depend on the metal used? My wife's wrist was reconstructed using a set of metal plates after it was shattered a few years ago. However, she's had at least three MRIs (for an unrelated problem) since then. The plates may be titanium and not surgical steel, so perhaps that's the difference?
Though it would seem that removing the magnet wouldn't be too much of a problem. I mean, it should show up under flouroscopy, and failing that, I guess you could mark the spot with tattoos with when get them implanted.
Fascinating article. Speaking as someone who as worked around MRIs, I think the author underestimates the risk of being put in an MRI machine. It would be worth carrying a wallet card or wrist band noting that he has an implant (though emergency MRIs are relatively uncommon).
It's also worth noting that the fascial compartments of the hand can make infections tough to treat, and compartment syndrome can occasionally lead to serious problems requiring finger amputations.
Regardless, it's an interesting experiment that I'm glad someone who wasn't me performed.
Last I checked the MRI risk seemed low due to it's placement, shape, and the minimal strength of the magnet. Do you have any specific concerns?
PS: What if I need an MRI?
Originally it was thought that the magnets would always rip out of the skin and attach themselves to the MRI. However, we now know of a few people who have the magnets have gone through MRIs and this did not happen. One person reported that the magnet just vibrated very strongly. Another person reported that the techs shielded his hand, as they would with someone who had shrapnel or other implants. However, there are several different types of MRIs, so we can make no guarantee of what will happen during your MRI, so you must discuss it with the technician. It is likely that they will give you a hard time about it, so you should be prepared for this and for any possible risks to yourself. It’s also possible that the MRI might demagnetize your magnet.
I don't know that I would want an implant, but I'd like to try a haptic compass. You strap it on and it gives you a physical sensation of where north is, as if you were a bird with magnetoception.
The funny thing about these is that they don't really make you constantly aware of where north is. To answer that question you would have to concentrate on the vibration. What acutally happens is way cooler: You become subconsciously aware of the structure of the space surrounding you. This is something that everyone has to a leser extent i.e. you could point at the direction of various objects around you and tell me roughly how far away they are even without looking.
When you have been wearing the belt for a few weeks you are able to do this even for objects that are not in you immediate vicinity. You get an actual feeling for the location of all kinds of things. Imagine having an accurate intuition for the location of your home town or the next highway exit! Another example: you could visit a city where you have never been before, wander around the streets without caring for where you go and then immediately find the shortest route back to where you started. And it would be about as hard for you as finding the way to the door of the room you're in right now.
That would be nice, and I imagine I could get used to the noise. Problem is, others wouldn't. Vibration has this effect in cellphones, you can hear the rumble and it could disturb classmates or coworkers.
It would be cool to have something like this that defaults to north, but could be programmed using GPS and a smartphone to point somewhere else.
I hope technology such as this can help make the world of body modification a little more palatable to average folk.
The vast majority of people go only as far as some piercings and maybe a tattoo. We need to get away from the absurdity of contemporary body mod culture: tooth sharpening, scarification, branding, horn implants, sclera tattoos, gauging, suspension, tongue bifurcation, lip discs, genital modifications…it’s too much.
That kind of modification is a dead-end because it doesn’t fulfill its nominally transhumanist goals. But regular people could warm up to things like magnets and RFID tags, or, say, internal sensors to let you know of impending health problems. That sort of body modification provides actual value in the form of information that would otherwise be unavailable or inconvenient to obtain. I think that’s where we’re headed in the next couple of decades.
> We need to get away from the absurdity of contemporary body mod culture: tooth sharpening, scarification, branding, horn implants, sclera tattoos, gauging, suspension, tongue bifurcation, lip discs, genital modifications…it’s too much.
... why?
> That kind of modification is a dead-end because it doesn’t fulfill its nominally transhumanist goals.
> I also figure that if I’m ever incapacitated and put in an MRI machine without the ability to give the doctor any forewarning, a tiny magnet getting ripped out of my finger will be the least of my concerns.
It might be a rather bigger concern for the owner of the MRI though...
Won't they get some metal detector over your first? Who knows you might just, let's say, have a magnet in your little finger! But seriously, there are more metal things under your skin possible, so if you can't make them 100% sure nothing is going to happen when they turn it on, I guess they will find out by themselves beforehand.
I've had two tiny disc magnet implants in two fingers for over three years now. I originally had it implanted as part of an idea for a novel man-machine interface I came up with for my Master's degree research project at the Uni of Reading (UK).
The early reports of electrical fields inducing sensations had intrigued me, so I set out to explore the possibility of controlling the magnet with an external electromagnet, which in my final design was a simple coil ring worn around the finger, and use it as a sensory substitution man-machine interface. After measuring the frequency response, sensitivity etc characteristics, I finally put it into a practical application demo by using the interface to couple an ultrasonic ranger and a mobile phone to myself. The ultrasonic ranger was used to feed the distance information and I learnt pretty quickly to judge distances and move about with my eyes closed. In the phone scenario, I encoded characters as Morse Code pulses and could "read" the incoming text messages. My morse skills weren't that good but it worked!
The internalization of the sensory information, with the magnet being inside the body, made a qualitative subjective difference as opposed to simply having a magnet glued to the finger.
My best experience with real world magnetic fields? Wires. It was mind blowing to be able to feel the field around a wire which we usually think nothing of. The power cable to the electric heater generated a field I could "touch" about 4-5 inches away! What does touching it feel like? Like touching a stream of air. :)
I've read that paper, and I'd like to say thanks; being able to point at graphs that say I'm not imagining the sensation from my implant has occasionally been helpful. ",)
> While a magnet implant doesn’t technically count as a “sixth sense” (it’s more of an extension of our existing sense of touch), the way that the body internalizes these tiny magnetic vibrations feels truly foreign.
Let's just start by dispelling the myth that there are "five senses", and then we can agree that this does provide an additional sense. The inner ear is an orientation sensor and orientation is clearly a sense, therefore there are more than "five senses".
This is one of those things that people "know" but don't actually care enough to take action on. "The five senses" is easy to teach in school and has become a turn of phrase meaning "the things we can perceive".
Classifying senses is difficult. Some believe we have six, some believe we have many, some believe different people may have different senses. Some senses that I've read simply described one of the "five" senses being perceived in a slightly different way (the sense of pain is the sense of touch), some extra senses are simply two or more of the "five" senses put together (such as being able to sense when there's someone else in the room).
I'm not a neuroscientist, so I'll just leave it at saying "five senses" is easy to understand and explain for a complex subject that every common man needs to understand. Trying to complicate it further will garner no fruit.
I have an rfid implant, but I haven't found any real uses for it. Of course I thought about what I was was going to do with it before I got the implant, and had some ideas and got the implant thinking that tinkering with applications would shine new light, but in the end it's quite lackluster to have one. It's also strange how exotic it seems to have one when you don't have it, and how pedestrian it feels when you actually have it.
I sort of read that same feeling between the lines of the article. It's a bit of a novelty when you first get it, but after a while it's not all that special.
There was a House episode where a prisoner had a low-quality tattoo containing too much iron (or something). The prisoner went into the MRI and the experience was excruciating.
Not sure if there's any grain of truth to that or not. It was Hollywood.
I've followed magnetic implants for a while, always considering getting my own, as well as an RFID implant. I'm also a fan of BMEZine and there can be quite a few overlaying interests in the two communities. Whiles its not as good as it used to be when Shannon (guy mentioned in OP's article) was editor, I suggest people subscribe if they're interested in such things.
The author reports that the sensations are different between a ring and an implant. I can’t speak to the differences firsthand, as I have no implant, but I gather that the perception of an external ring is more tool-like than sense-like.
I found these quite interesting, but I'd never get one implanted: using small screwdrivers and wrenches would be a pain, it affects the phone's magnetometer and you have to be careful not to cut your finger or when lifting anything heavy (and using all your fingers' strength)...
[+] [-] ctdonath|14 years ago|reply
Every six months I have to go in for a tuneup, a wireless data dump & service testing. Having having one's heart slowed to sub-40bpm via a few taps on a screen is...odd. Printed report tells assorted stories of daily activity periods, odd events, heart rate hitting programmed thresholds, etc. There have been some confluence of proximity & programming causing twitching under some circumstances (couldn't sleep on my left side for a year due to a lead pressing on & convulsing diaphragm) which were fixed completely thru software settings. Have a minimum threshold programmed in, and if it's set too high (say, 60bpm) and I relax deeply can feel it kicking in with "go faster!"
Proved quite useful a couple weeks back. Suffered a random onset of aortic flutter (can happen to anyone, just sorta happens), where a natural short-circuit in the beat-signal nerves sent the heart rate up to 349bpm (neatly documented on the printed data dump). For most people, this means a very scary and tense race to the emergency room, with AED paddles & drugs to bring it down until the problem can be surgically eliminated. My pacemaker hit the brakes at 150bpm, leaving me functional to wander in to the ER at my convenience; there, a tech was brought in to set up a more aggressive flutter-control program (70-100bpm more aware of actual physical needs). That kept things manageable until the drive-thru heart surgery to fix the problem (1 hour to send a probe up a vein to find & burn out the short, 3 hours rest, then discharged). Wasn't what the pacer was installed to handle (ventricular resynchronization), but the "while we're installing this, let's add a wire and program in some other someday-useful stuff" has indeed proven useful.
Other body modification is a mechanical heart valve. I tick. I've been confused with clocks.
Yes, MRIs are completely out of the question now. Work near a small one and get nervous walking by the door.
OK, so these weren't exactly voluntary. Choice aside, being a cyborg does make for interesting experiences & conversations.
ETA: BTW, not looking forward to replacing the battery. At least the device has been saying the battery will last another four years - for the last four years.
[+] [-] shabble|14 years ago|reply
This kind of control and capability makes me wonder if they won't someday become common in a preventative/health monitoring role instead of only for cardiac defects. The risk during installation and problems with MRI seem pretty serious, so I doubt it could happen soon, but it's not impossible.
I wonder what some sort of self-assembing/modular device that can be fed in chunks through a vein catheter or keyhole surgery, and built in-situ could be plausible.
Not sure what to do about the MRI issue though. They're only going to get more common as we figure out superconductors, and they have none of the radiation downsides of CT. Maybe non-metallic construction, or perhaps when milli-Tesla MRI becomes a reasonable alternative?
Is the battery in yours single use, or recharged via induction loop?
[+] [-] ArbitraryLimits|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joeyh|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] palish|14 years ago|reply
Could you describe in detail what that experience was like? That's incredible.
[+] [-] iamdann|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ohgodthecat|14 years ago|reply
If you ever write up more I sure would be interested.
[+] [-] jonnathanson|14 years ago|reply
I type these words with a (non-elective) series of metal prostheses implanted in my hand and wrist. Luckily, I don't set off metal detectors unless they're turned to extremely high sensitivities. But MRIs are out. I don't want to get into TMI detail, but let's just say that I have an ongoing medical condition that makes the inability to get MRIs a big setback.
Tread carefully with this stuff. Look before you leap.
[+] [-] AkThhhpppt|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aplusbi|14 years ago|reply
I know that cochlear implants are very different from finger magnets (cochlear implants are attached to bone) but it does challenge some of my basic assumptions.
It should also be noted that it would take less than five minutes to remove the implant with a scalpel.
[+] [-] HeyLaughingBoy|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] icegreentea|14 years ago|reply
Would still be a headache though.
[+] [-] sanj|14 years ago|reply
It looked more than a little flashy, and it provided less sensation than it would've implanted, but it worked surprisingly well.
[+] [-] kaybe|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kristiandupont|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rokhayakebe|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eridius|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] phren0logy|14 years ago|reply
It's also worth noting that the fascial compartments of the hand can make infections tough to treat, and compartment syndrome can occasionally lead to serious problems requiring finger amputations.
Regardless, it's an interesting experiment that I'm glad someone who wasn't me performed.
[+] [-] onemoreact|14 years ago|reply
PS: What if I need an MRI?
Originally it was thought that the magnets would always rip out of the skin and attach themselves to the MRI. However, we now know of a few people who have the magnets have gone through MRIs and this did not happen. One person reported that the magnet just vibrated very strongly. Another person reported that the techs shielded his hand, as they would with someone who had shrapnel or other implants. However, there are several different types of MRIs, so we can make no guarantee of what will happen during your MRI, so you must discuss it with the technician. It is likely that they will give you a hard time about it, so you should be prepared for this and for any possible risks to yourself. It’s also possible that the MRI might demagnetize your magnet.
http://www.stevehaworth.com/wordpress/index.php/welcome-from...
[+] [-] celticjames|14 years ago|reply
Wire article on haptic compasses: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/15.04/esp.html
[+] [-] ciex|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] freehunter|14 years ago|reply
It would be cool to have something like this that defaults to north, but could be programmed using GPS and a smartphone to point somewhere else.
[+] [-] evincarofautumn|14 years ago|reply
The vast majority of people go only as far as some piercings and maybe a tattoo. We need to get away from the absurdity of contemporary body mod culture: tooth sharpening, scarification, branding, horn implants, sclera tattoos, gauging, suspension, tongue bifurcation, lip discs, genital modifications…it’s too much.
That kind of modification is a dead-end because it doesn’t fulfill its nominally transhumanist goals. But regular people could warm up to things like magnets and RFID tags, or, say, internal sensors to let you know of impending health problems. That sort of body modification provides actual value in the form of information that would otherwise be unavailable or inconvenient to obtain. I think that’s where we’re headed in the next couple of decades.
[+] [-] sukuriant|14 years ago|reply
... why?
> That kind of modification is a dead-end because it doesn’t fulfill its nominally transhumanist goals.
Does art have to?
[+] [-] monochromatic|14 years ago|reply
It might be a rather bigger concern for the owner of the MRI though...
[+] [-] ceejayoz|14 years ago|reply
Not to mention all the other patients who need the MRI machine your "sixth sense" just shot a hole through.
[+] [-] Edootjuh|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lucb1e|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jaa|14 years ago|reply
The early reports of electrical fields inducing sensations had intrigued me, so I set out to explore the possibility of controlling the magnet with an external electromagnet, which in my final design was a simple coil ring worn around the finger, and use it as a sensory substitution man-machine interface. After measuring the frequency response, sensitivity etc characteristics, I finally put it into a practical application demo by using the interface to couple an ultrasonic ranger and a mobile phone to myself. The ultrasonic ranger was used to feed the distance information and I learnt pretty quickly to judge distances and move about with my eyes closed. In the phone scenario, I encoded characters as Morse Code pulses and could "read" the incoming text messages. My morse skills weren't that good but it worked!
The internalization of the sensory information, with the magnet being inside the body, made a qualitative subjective difference as opposed to simply having a magnet glued to the finger.
There's a bit of info on this and pictures/xrays on my blog: http://www.jawish.org/blog/plugin/tag/smii. The details on the interface is on the paper we published: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/freeabs_all.jsp?arnumber=5898...
My best experience with real world magnetic fields? Wires. It was mind blowing to be able to feel the field around a wire which we usually think nothing of. The power cable to the electric heater generated a field I could "touch" about 4-5 inches away! What does touching it feel like? Like touching a stream of air. :)
[+] [-] AkThhhpppt|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jcampbell1|14 years ago|reply
Let's just start by dispelling the myth that there are "five senses", and then we can agree that this does provide an additional sense. The inner ear is an orientation sensor and orientation is clearly a sense, therefore there are more than "five senses".
[+] [-] freehunter|14 years ago|reply
Classifying senses is difficult. Some believe we have six, some believe we have many, some believe different people may have different senses. Some senses that I've read simply described one of the "five" senses being perceived in a slightly different way (the sense of pain is the sense of touch), some extra senses are simply two or more of the "five" senses put together (such as being able to sense when there's someone else in the room).
I'm not a neuroscientist, so I'll just leave it at saying "five senses" is easy to understand and explain for a complex subject that every common man needs to understand. Trying to complicate it further will garner no fruit.
[+] [-] mturmon|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] roel_v|14 years ago|reply
I sort of read that same feeling between the lines of the article. It's a bit of a novelty when you first get it, but after a while it's not all that special.
[+] [-] cowpewter|14 years ago|reply
Not sure how they would shield from outside interference/have the field coming from your pocket reach your hand in all situations though.
[+] [-] endlessvoid94|14 years ago|reply
Not sure if there's any grain of truth to that or not. It was Hollywood.
[+] [-] sp332|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rinrae|14 years ago|reply
I was kinda surprised the most frequently asked question when ppl heard about it – and the one that came pretty unexpected for me – was "why?!".
thanks for the article!
[+] [-] iamdann|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] js2|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] iamdann|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TamDenholm|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Kliment|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cmos|14 years ago|reply
They are super annoying to make stay where you want them.. I would go crazy if I had one inside me.
[+] [-] unknown|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] evincarofautumn|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Cushman|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nixle|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jakeonthemove|14 years ago|reply