[wordup] Inserting Magnets to Gain a Sixth Sense

[Adam Shand]

This is incredible ... makes me want to rush to Texas to get Steve
Haworth to set me up! :-)

Via: http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wiredbeyond/~3/70806144/quinn_norton_on.html
From: http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,71087-1.html

A Sixth Sense for a Wired World
By Quinn Norton| Also by this reporter
02:00 AM Jun, 07, 2006

What if, seconds before your laptop began stalling, you could feel the
hard drive spin up under the load? Or you could tell if an electrical
cord was live before you touched it? For the few people who have rare
earth magnets implanted in their fingers, these are among the reported
effects -- a finger that feels electromagnetic fields along with the
normal sense of touch.

It's been described as a buzzing sensation, a tingling, an oscillation,
movement, pure stimulation and, in the case of body-modification expert
Shannon Larrett's encounter with a too-powerful antitheft gateway at a
retail store, "Like sticking your hand in an ultrasonic cleaner."

Body-mod artists Jesse Jarrell and Steve Haworth's original idea was to
implant a magnet to carry metal gadgets. It turns out that doesn't work:
If you try to carry something magnetic on your implant regularly, the
pinched skin between the magnets dies and your body rejects the implant.
But they came up with a new application when a mutual friend suffered an
accident that left a shard of iron in his finger. He worked with audio
equipment, and found that he could tell which speakers were magnetized
from the sensation that passed through his finger at close range.

That gave Jarrell and Haworth a new direction: Could they obtain that
effect deliberately, extending the sense of touch into a sense of magnetism?

Todd Huffman, a graduate student at Arizona State University with a
background in neuroscience, joined the project and brainstormed with
Jarrell and Haworth about how, and where, to best implant a powerful
magnet. He helped come up with the most effective design for an implant,
and eventually became the first recipient. "The fingertip was chosen
because of the high nerve density, and because the hands are constantly
interacting with the environment, increasing the chances of sensing
electromagnetism in the world," Huffman says.

"We chose the ring finger primarily because of its size and relatively
low importance in gripping action, so there was plenty of room for the
implant and a lower chance of physically damaging the implant," Huffman
explains. Jarrell puts it more bluntly, writing about the procedure in a
BMEZine article from March: "'If you had to lose or seriously damage one
of your fingers, which would it be?' This was our answer." But nobody's
finger fell off, and Huffman's results were better than they'd imagined.

According to Huffman, the magnet works by moving very slightly, or with
a noticeable oscillation, in response to EM fields. This stimulates the
somatosensory receptors in the fingertip, the same nerves that are
responsible for perceiving pressure, temperature and pain. Huffman and
other recipients found they could locate electric stovetops and motors,
and pick out live electrical cables. Appliance cords in the United
States give off a 60-Hz field, a sensation with which Huffman has become
intimately familiar. "It is a light, rapid buzz," he says.

I took a trip to Phoenix to have Haworth implant a magnet in me last
September. Because body-mod artists are not medical practitioners, ice
was the only anesthetic available. My finger was soaked in ice water
until it began to hurt. After that, Haworth acted quickly to get as much
of the implant done as possible while my hand was still numb from the cold.

The initial cut did hurt, but not unbearably. He sliced open my finger
with a standard scalpel, inserted a tool to make a gap for the magnet,
and tried to insert the magnet in one nonstop motion. The insertion
didn't work, and he widened the cut and tried again. This time it
worked, and he closed the cut with a single suture. The suture was the
most painful step -- an indicator that the cold "anesthetic" had worn
off. The process took less than 10 minutes. My finger was slightly
swollen and sported a blue, knotted plastic thread.

When we were done we sat in Haworth's living room. He brought out a
magnet and handed it to me. I brought it near my finger and felt the
magnet move for the first time up against the raw inside of my finger. I
startled visibly, and Haworth grinned. "Welcome to your new sense," he said.

At first there was no discerning between the throbbing of the injury and
the sense of magnetic fields. Consequently, some early encounters with
industrial refrigerators remain mysterious -- was the display case at
Citizen Cake really giving off that much EM, or was I just having blood
rush to my healing finger? Other sensations were unmistakable from the
start. I would circle my finger with a strong magnet and feel the one in
my finger spin. In time, bits of my laptop became familiar as tingles
and buzzes. Every so often I would pass near something and get an
unexpected vibration. Live phone pairs on the sides of houses sometimes
startled me.

I become slightly phobic of magnetic resonance imaging machines. The
superpowerful electromagnets used in medical imaging can make metal fly
across a room and stick, often for the hours it takes to power down the
magnets. A person with an embedded magnet runs the risk of having their
implant ripped out of their body.

People with magnetic implants can't erase hard drives or credit cards.
They don't set off airport metal detectors or get stuck to
refrigerators. The magnets are small, and once encased in skin, all they
do is react next to nerves, conveying the presence of sufficiently
strong electromagnetic fields. "The magnetic implant is not the most
sophisticated or rich sensation, it was just the easiest to implement
with our available technology," says Huffman.

Implant work isn't ready for prime time. While Huffman loves his
implant, he discourages others from getting it. "Most people don't
understand the risks, and implant work isn't appropriate for most
people." Those risks include infection and breach of the magnet's
silicone sheath. The procedure itself is painful, and the results vary
from person to person for unknown and unstudied reasons. Huffman doesn't
see it as a candidate for study.

"The science of sensation is something very much studied by
neuroscientists and psychologists, but no one has done what we did,"
Huffman says. "The regulation would be onerous, even if someone wanted to."

Zack Lynch, managing director of neurotechnology consulting firm
NeuroInsights, is skeptical of the practice altogether. "I'm not sure if
it's efficacious, intelligent or therapeutic.... I'd worry about
long-term problems, including corrosion."

Several months after having the procedure, some people begin to have
problems. Some magnets begin to turn dark under the skin, suggesting the
bio-neutral silicone sheath is failing. Exposure to the body starts
breaking down the magnets.

Two months after my own magnet was inserted, and long after the cut
itself had healed, I experienced one of these problems firsthand. My
shielding breached and the implant area became infected. The infection
resolved, but the region turned black and my sixth sense evaporated.

My family doctor tried to remove the magnet and failed. Instead, the
implant shattered into pieces, and I could no longer pick up other
magnets with my finger. After months of ESP, all I had left was a sore
digit with a dark spot.

I figured that was the end, but it wasn't. Four months after I lost all
effect, the spot darkened and the magnetism returned. The magnet --
being a magnet -- had reassembled itself in my finger. While it's
nowhere near as sensitive as it once was, I can once again pick up other
magnets.

Haworth plans to try a new generation of magnets with a 70-durometer
liquid silicone rubber coating, up from the previous 30 to 40
durometers. That's going from the hardness of a pencil eraser to the
hardness of a car tire. No one knows if that will do the trick, but in
the body-modification community, there's only one way to find out.