Military looks at Tongue Power

I read this today and thought it was interesting. Apologies in advance if it was already posted.
I would love to try the thing, The guy in the article says it feels like pop rocks when it's working.
I also think it may be great to use in missing persons cases for detectives.

(AP) In their quest to create the super warrior of the future, some military researchers aren't focusing on organs like muscles or hearts. They're looking at tongues.

By routing signals from helmet-mounted cameras, sonar and other equipment through the tongue to the brain, they hope to give elite soldiers superhuman senses similar to owls, snakes and fish.

Researchers at the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition envision their work giving Army Rangers 360-degree unobstructed vision at night and allowing Navy Seals to sense sonar in their heads while maintaining normal vision underwater — turning sci-fi into reality.

The device, known as "Brain Port," was pioneered more than 30 years ago by Dr. Paul Bach-y-Rita, a University of Wisconsin neuroscientist. Bach-y-Rita began routing images from a camera through electrodes taped to people's backs and later discovered the tongue was a superior transmitter.

www.cbsnews.com...

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[edit on 24-4-2006 by DontTreadOnMe]

Sounds intresting. It sounds like, at least from what i read they're working in the wrong path. Sending stimulus through an organ which was designed for a specific task (tasting).. I think you'll find will disrupt the normal uses of that organ. Neves on the other hand look for conductive materials to make contact with. When you hear scientists talking about growing cells on microchips. You may wonder, how do they get the cells to line up properly with nodes on the chip? The answer is, they dont have to. The cells actively seek out new platforms to make new connections. All the scientists have to do is spray in some nutrient fluids.

There was a scientist (i cant recall the name atm) that had a microchip implanted in his left wrist, attached to the main nerve running to your hand. He was then able to use a wrist band to send data to the chip to be relayed throught he nerve to the brain. At one point he had attached a low power microwave radar array to a hat and walked around the room. It took some getting use to, but he was able to navigate using the radar array without running into anything. He also was able to use the microchip to send data out from the nervous system back to the wrist band. The computers then reacted to different electrical stimuli from the chip and it could be used to control different pieces of equipment. He was demonstrating by controlling a cursor on a computer using the chip.

I give it another 10 years and it'll be like that movie with mel gibson where everyone has ports on the back of their head and they can "plug in". Or i guess another good example would be the matrix.





[edit on 24-4-2006 by tsensel]

it wont work.how many people are gonna put there tongue on stuff to figure out what is is

or imagine people going around flicking there tongues in the air and goind.......did u here that


or......i spell deer

This story sounds like more dis-information from Donald Rumsfield. I don't know if he is trying to dis-inform Americans and spend defense money on what should be corporate research or is trying to dis-inform foreign governments into wasting money on propaganda.

Im curios as to how a person could handle this kind of information.

I couldnt imagine being able to see 360 degrees, or how I would process it. Imagine sitting in the middle of your room, how would it look if you could see everything in it? Would it be like one big picture? Im not sure how to explain this really.