 So Lilliana, how are you nervous? I even brought the water. Okay, so she is nervous But I think our audience is really nice. They're not gonna bite so you can relax and maybe In a minute or two, we'll start your talk. So as far as I know you are a neuroscientist. Is that correct? Yes, I study how the brain cells develop and end up forming a healthy brain So you are kind of like more on the developmental neurobiology side, but now your talk is about the senses So it's not really well. No, it's related, but it's not directly related to what you do as a researcher So why did you pick this or pick the senses as the topic for your talk? Because even though I work on how the brain is formed, but this is a structure But we are not only a brain We also have a mind and this connection between the mind and the brain is something that I've always found very fascinating and The senses is a big part of this. So I'll talk to you about the senses. Okay, we are looking forward to that So everyone please join me to welcome Lilliana with her talk the senses Thank you So as you might have realized from the science exhibition show our senses are really important It's how we learn. It's how we protect ourselves and it's how we experience the world in this talk We'll talk about and we will explore the human senses. How many senses we have how they work and what happens when you lose one of them Let's start simple. So how many senses do humans have? Give me a number try it out Five okay, so people tell me that we have five senses So very early in school. We learned that we have five senses disinclude smell taste audition touch and vision But if you ask a scientist nowadays, they will actually tell you that we have something between 20 to 30 different senses and Do some of the ones that we use more often include Kinesisia, this is the sense to move so you know when you are moving your arm or when you are walking You have the sense of thermoception, which is the sense of temperature. I know when I'm cold or when I'm warm You have the sense of balance allows me to stand straight without falling and you to sit down without falling We have the chronoception, which is the sense of time how much time has passed since I started my talk for example and Finally this proprioception. This is the sense of yourself You always know where your body is in relation to yourself even if you're not looking an example for example try it out close your eyes and Now touch your nose your ears your knee Okay, so even though you are not looking you know exactly what your board where your body parts are and This is an incredible sense right So these are a lot of them and you might be wondering where do I actually use all these senses? And he used them all the time without realizing even in the most basic actions such as the case of me Drinking from this glass of water the simple action of drinking from a glass of water has more senses than you might be aware of And I will explain them to you. So first I see the glass Then by my sense of kinesthesia or movement I know how much I need to extend my arm to be able to grab the glass through my hands I can tell you that this glass of water the water is cold But not very icy which is good then using my sense of balance I can lift this without spilling the water all over myself and then because I know where my mouth is even though I'm not looking I can take this glass into my mouth and I can tell you that this doesn't have bubbles, which is good. I don't like bubbles So just in case you were counting there were five senses Different senses in just drinking from this glass of water. Okay so One of the myths about the senses is that we use each sense Individually so I hear a cat. I see the tree. I touch the chair But actually all of our senses are working together as you might have realized from this example of drinking from the glass you always are always using all of them without even realizing and This is great. Your mind keeps receiving information from the entire world through your senses and But because your mind is receiving information from all of the senses at the same time Sometimes one sense can actually trick another and I'll show you three examples of how your senses Co-operate with each other and now sometimes they even trick So let's start with my favorite example of how your eyes have a lot to say about what you hear in this video Play attention. Look at it and tell me what do you hear? Do you hear ba or fa? Raise your hand who hears ba Raise your hand who hears fa Most of the room hears fa now, please close your eyes Listen closely. Do you hear ba or fa? Please raise your hand who hears ba Raise your hand who hears fa Okay, you are the one out Okay, so Depending on whether you have your eyes open or your eyes close you hear different things Most of you so and why is this is because the way that you speak The sounds that you make are completely related to the way that your mouth moves I mean this example is Very nice because it shows you that when you are Shows you that when you are speaking with someone you are not only listening to them But your if your vision actually has a lot to say about what you understand when someone is speaking to you Another great example that I would like to show you and try out with you is your balance your balance is It's in close interaction with your eyes. If you would please stand up I'll do a little experiment and now please raise your leg and try to balance yourselves Okay, great. Now put it down again close your eyes and lift your leg again Okay, you are way more wobbly this time, so thank you very much so You might have noticed that when you had your eyes closed it was much harder for you to keep your balance That's because your eyes are giving information into your body on how you should balance it So this is a great example of how your balance really needs your vision to Work out properly another example that you can try at home is you get two gelatin's one red and one green And then you add the same exact amount of sugar and then you ask people to try them out and tell you which one Do they think is sweeter? Most people will tell you that the red one is sweeter Actually studies have shown that people think that the red one is ten times sweeter than the green one And why is this this is because we associate green with sour foods and reds with sweeter foods And so our eyes see red and we expect sweeter stuff So it tricks our sense of taste and this interaction between food and Between taste and vision is very well known for the food industry and they will use it to take advantage of you Next time you go to a supermarket supermarket Check out their shelves and you will if you go for example to the sweet product shelf and you take a look You will realize that most of their products tend to be red and pink and while light products are pretty much always with a blue label So hopefully you have realized how your senses are in close collaborating with a collaboration with each other And that you are always using the information from all of your senses Well, not using all of it. You are not aware of it, but you are definitely receiving this information and Although this interaction between your senses may sometimes trick you in small ways It has one enormous advantage if by any chance you lose one of your senses all the other ones can compensate for that loss One of the most famous examples of this compensation is blind people So it is a well-known fact that blind people have a better hearing sense than we do and They use it for example to echolocate how far away from an object They are and they do it pretty much like bats do it So they will emit a sound with their mouth or with their cane and they will listen closely to the echo to the wave sound That comes back and depending on whether this sound is louder or quieter They will know how far away from an object. They are now some blind people Learn how to do this naturally others have to be taught some of them cannot do it at all and even the ones that can't do it if you think about it and This blind person is in a very big open space with a lot of people going back and forth like an airport Then it gets really hard for them to be able to listen to the echo coming back And this is where science and technology comes in in the past 50 years a technological advances have allowed scientists to develop New technologies to help improve blind people and deaf people to help them improve their life and with their loss of sense One such example is the brain port device. This is a new technology that allows blind people to see with their tongue Yeah, I'm not kidding. It's really their tongue and This this device can be used for with children and adults born blind or that became blind later in life Due to illness or injury and how does this work? So this device has a pair of goggles with a camera and a little plastic lollipop that has tiny little Electrodes that will give an electric shock into the tongue of the user. It's not torture. It's not painful people that use this device Say that it feels like champagne bubbles in their tongue and how does this work? So the glasses with the camera they will record what is happening in front of the person and then they will transform this image Into a black and white pixelated image each pixel in the image corresponds to an electrode in the lollipop and brighter pixels have a stronger electric shock and Darker pixels have a weaker electric shock. So this kind of creates an electric shock picture in their tongue with a bit of training blind people can associate this electric shock image to actual objects and actually Understand how far away from an object. They are and grab it for example Super successful story of someone using this device is Eric Weihann Meyer this is the first and only blind person to not only scale Mount Everest but The highest mountains in all of the seven continents and you can see him here using the device to climb an inside wall But what about deaf people people that are unable to hear if you Pay attention you will because we are not thought how to use sign language in school They have deaf people have a big problem in communicating with us If you are speaking face-to-face with them, they can still understand you because as I told you before The way that you what you want to say has a lot to do with how you move your mouth So we'll they will simply read your lips and understand what you want to say But if there is an announcement in a supermarket or in the urban or S1 Then it's they have no way of understanding what has just been said and they have just lost the train So this is why scientists have developed a vest that can be worn underneath their clothes And this vest is equipped with small vibration sensors that are like the ones that you have in your cell phones and With a phone app deaf people can record what is being said and then each word is Translated into a vibration pattern in their vest With only eight hours of training with this vest Deaf people are already able to associate certain words to certain vibration patterns with a bit more training This video is the result what you see here is Jonathan he was born deaf and He's wearing a demonstration vest in which the vibration motors actually light up polite when they are active and you'll see that He's able to Immediately translate what his colleague is saying into sign language. So take a look And he's immediately translating what the other person is saying quite impressive so Both the vest and the lollipop are two of the new technologies that scientists have developed to help people that have lost a sense Taking advantage of the fact that when you lose a sense the other ones can be Improved and can get better and compensate for the one that you lost So I told you a lot of stuff today So I'll try to wrap it up So we have more than just five senses and you use them all the time even though you don't realize that you are using them and Because they keep interacting all the time and you are always receiving information from all of them Sometimes they trick you but this is not such a bad thing when you think that if you ever lose one sense all the others are there to help you and support you and Manage you through There is a lot more that I could talk to you about the senses But there's not enough time But I hope we got excited about the topic if you want to know more experiments that you could do to Understand how your senses interact or how they are tricking you or if you want to know what other technologies Are developed or have been developed To help people that have lost one of the senses you can come to me during the break or during the networking event or find me on Twitter And I'll be very happy to help you. Thank you Thank you so much Lilliana. Now we have about five minutes for questions. So anyone have any questions? Okay, so Andre, can you please help? Hi, so my name is Arti and I come from India. I'm here visiting. It was really fascinating I just have a question from the point of view of Applications of the technologies that you just showed us how expensive is it because you know in a country like India if we want to Try and buy some of this for people who have lost senses. How feasible would it be and how expensive is it? Okay, so if I may repeat the question so the question is how expensive are the current technologies that are available I I So I can actually not tell you about the the prices in comparison to India But for example in the in the Germany a cochlear device, which is a device to help deaf people costs around 23,000 euros and the problem is that not everyone is able or Can wear these devices? Okay a vest like this at the moment cost us 10,000 euros So they are still expensive, but the people that are developing these technologies. They are using crowdfunding Campaigns, thank you. They are using crowdfunding campaigns and they are hoping that with the advances of technology Stuff will become cheaper and they can actually reduce the cost Thank you for the question any other questions Do I see someone in the back or okay? Hi, it seems like the Vibration West and the tongue lollipop they seem interchangeable So why is it specifically that the tongue lollipop is used for blind people and the vibration West for deaf people? It seems like it might be the other Doing it the other way around might benefit Blind people more because they can actually speak Whereas the tongue lollipop they might not be able to speak while it's in the mouth Okay, so if I may repeat your question, so why the technology not be used the other way around the tongue for the Deft and then the vest for the blind people. Is that correct is? Okay, so Okay, so I cannot actually Tell you exactly why they thought about this way But I can tell you for example that the The tongue in the lollipop thing it it works actually for video So if there's someone moving in front of them The lollipop will just make an electric moving Thing so but if you have a vest then it's really complicated because you don't have that each Vibration motor is like this so you don't have that much space So with a lot with a little lollipop and the little electrodes You actually have a lot more area and you can be a bit more detailed on what you are showing Which is the case of images you want detail, right in or it's not so much Do I see one more question? Okay, so we have time for one more question. Hi, thanks for the talk It was a great talk. Thank I have one Clarifying question is the vest is this actually transmitting the The sound itself or does it do speech recognition before? Okay, so the question is with the vest Does it actually transmit sound or is it a speech recognition system? It's actually a speech recognition system so the vest is made so that people can word underneath and no one will know that they cannot understand speech and Each word is then recognized for what it is and is then transformed into a certain vibration pattern So and only it is not like a gigantic vibration that the person will feel and go so, yeah Thank you so much Liliana one more time give it up for Liliana