Free Republic

The man, a doctor left blind by two successive strokes, refused to take part in the experiment. He could not see anything, he said, and had no interest in navigating an obstacle course — a cluttered hallway — for the benefit of science. Why bother? When he finally tried it, though, something remarkable happened. He zigzagged down the hall, sidestepping a garbage can, a tripod, a stack of paper and several boxes as if he could see everything clearly. A researcher shadowed him in case he stumbled. “You just had to see it to believe it,” said Beatrice de Gelder,...

Some San Diego State University students are undergoing what organizers acknowledge is a “disturbing” series of “sensory experiences” in an attempt to drive out students’ prejudicial tendencies and help make them less oppressive. The annual workshop, “Journey to a Shared Humanity,” is described on the university’s website as a way for organizers to get students to “step outside their comfort zone and into the shoes of those who are struggling with oppressive circumstances.”

Experiments involving real and simulated robots suggest that the relationship between physical movement and sensory input could be crucial to developing more intelligent machines. Tests involving two real and one simulated robot show that feedback between sensory input and body movement is crucial to navigating the surrounding world. Understanding this relationship better could help scientists build more life-like machines, say the researchers involved. Scientists studying artificial intelligence have traditionally separated physical behaviour and sensory input. "But the brain's inputs are not independent," says Olaf Sporns, a neuroscientist at Indiana University, US. "For example, motor behaviour has a role to play...