- This is an extra thumb.
You know what thumbs are,
it's kinda like the Like button below this video.
Let me know if that was too subtle.
Anyway...
That's f*ckin' weird.
These folks are giving people a third thumb, including me.
And it's having surprising effects.
- The project has just kind of blossomed
into this amazing neuroscience research,
and what it's created is this kind of model
to very quickly test augmentation in the brain.
- Why do this?
Well, aside from the obvious reasons,
this research is changing our understanding
of what's happening inside our brains,
and how our brains map to our bodies.
- I was amazed that this research could ground this weird,
bizarre thing that I'd made
into something that was really important and interesting.
And I was just like, "Yeah, let's do this."
- See the hand area?
- Mm-hmm. Oh, yeah.
- There's some interesting sh*t here. - All right.
- We as humans, I think, are really fascinated
in extending ourselves, and I think that we're gonna see
more and more of this kind of technology.
- The end result could be a world where our bodies
can change and our brain can adapt.
What if your body could be any shape you wanted it to be?
- We're already starting to really blur these lines,
and it's gonna be really interesting to see
how far we push this and also, yeah,
what we're capable of.
- This is "Hard Reset,"
a series about rebuilding our world,
and maybe even our bodies, from scratch.
Now, "Hard Reset" is a show about rethinking things
from the ground up.
So when you do that, it's good to go
to somewhere where they do things differently,
which is why I came to the U.K.
They drive on the wrong side of the road.
Their word for "pudding" does not mean the same thing
as our word for pudding,
but admittedly, their puddings are better.
One other thing that's different here, is that some people
have three thumbs, and I don't just mean the royal family.
So this is where you make all the thumbs.
- It is. Yeah.
We 3D print everything in here.
It's the shed.
Welcome.
So, yeah, as you can see,
lots going on in here,
but this is my space over here.
So I've got my two main printers.
So this is where I print the thumbs,
and this is where I prototype.
- This is Dani.
She makes thumbs in the U.K.,
but she's not originally from there.
- Yes. No, I'm not English.
I'm from New Zealand, originally.
And yeah, I became super fascinated
with designing objects and products for people,
and in particular, hands.
I found that I've just kind of wanted to push it
a bit further and really kind of breach
that interface layer with the body-
and that's when I got really excited about prosthetics.
- As Dani was designing prosthetics,
she realized she'd never actually used the prosthetic.
So in order to get a better sense
of what prosthetic users experienced, she designed this,
an extra thumb that fits onto a typical hand.
- When I was thinking about the design of the thumb,
I was looking at a lot of, you know,
prosthetic thumbs on prosthetic hands,
and instead of going that really mechanical route,
I wanted to actually just be more inspired by the body.
And so looking closer at the structure of our hands,
we kind of just have this kind of pulley system,
and that like started to really get my gears going.
- In recent years, falling prices
for custom electronics components and huge advancements
in affordable 3D printing have made it possible
for designers like Dani to explore totally new territory
in the world of prosthetics.
- I hadn't really seen anything else around
that was like it.
And you know, prosthetics is such a rich field
for designers,
I'm surprised that more people don't come into it
because we're not good at recreating the body
well enough yet.
- So, I'm very curious to learn how to put on a third thumb.
- Yes, I've got one here to try on.
- All right.
- So, we've got left and right foot.
So we're going to take your shoes off.
- That's a very wooly sock.
- Is it?
- So, yeah, we'll turn it on and we'll check
that it's in the right place for you.
So then, this just goes on your right hand.
- Okay. - So now,
we'll just give it a press.
There we go-
there we go!
So you've got two controls-
and so if you wanna press just on your right foot.
Yep, and back.
Yeah, and then just on your left foot.
Yeah, so those are the two movements,
and then you can use them together,
so then if you press both together,
you can kinda see we're getting this in-between.
- Very interesting.
It feels strangely intuitive,
and yet I'm clearly still fumbling around with it.
But I can see how it would very quickly become second nature
to do things with this.
It's really fascinating.
It's not quite the same as your sensation of touch
you would feel from your skin,
but it definitely has a sense of touch.
That's really interesting.
It does hold on nice and tight too.
- Thank you. I've been working hard on the strength.
- You're really good at it already.
- That's f*ckin' weird.
- The thumb is controlled by your big toes.
One controls the inward and outward movement,
and the other big toe controls the direction it's pointed.
These controls are designed to be proportional.
So how much the thumb opens or closes depends
on how hard you press with your toes.
This is unlike most prosthetics,
which tend to trigger fingers to open or close,
and are pretty binary.
The only real downside here is that you can't use the device
at the same time as walking, unless you're willing
to have a really silly walk, which is another field
where the British are world leaders.
The third thumb is not a prosthetic.
It's not replacing a part of our bodies.
It's extending our typical body plan.
The reason that's important is because it asks
some big questions about how our brain will adapt
to suddenly having a new digit.
How often do you come and do brain scans here?
- We're scanning every week.
- For yourself or just for fun?
- For the study.
- Oh, okay.
Dani's third thumb design is now based
at Cambridge University, where she teamed up
with neuroscientists to help understand the way our brains
map to our limbs, and how that mapping might change
when we introduce something like a prosthetic,
or a third thumb.
- The Plasticity Lab was first established in 2014.
Back then, we called it the Hand and Brain Lab,
and I remember one of my mentors telling me,
"But what if you would want to study the foot?"
And I said, "What?
Why would I study the foot?"
Of course, two years later,
we started studying the feet.
- This is Professor Tamar Makin,
a neuroscientist at Cambridge University,
and head of the Plasticity Lab.
- In the strictest, simplest way,
plasticity is learning:
It's the brain's way to learn.
- Hi Maggie, how are you?
- Right now, Dani and the other researchers here
are looking at how long it takes for the brain
to adapt to an additional thumb.
They have the study participants wear the thumb
for a few days and perform a series of motor skills tests
to see how they improve over time.
They also use FMRI technology to see how the brain
is changing as they use the thumb.
- There's something interesting happening here.
So see the hand area?
- Mm-hmm. Oh, yeah.
- So they seem to be activating
something relating to the hand area.
Again, the edge of the hand area.
- Mm-hmm.
- Surprising and interesting.
- Yeah. Cool.
- Even after just a few days,
many participants begin to think of the thumb
as a part of themselves,
what is sometimes called 'embodiment.'
- To hear people talk about it, like they had started
to really form this attachment with it, was just bizarre.
At the start, I thought it was just me.
'Cause, like, "I made it!"
Like, "Of course, I feel emotionally connected to it."
- We're inviting you to do more with your body.
And for you to do more with your body,
you have to change the way you operate with your body,
which is why FMRI is such a useful tool for us
because we can explicitly ask the question:
"How does the brain form a representation
of a body part that it never had before?"
- Okay, so we're just gonna start at the moment,
and you just keep your hands still and enjoy.
- FMRI technology now allows us to see
what's happening in the brain.
This allows researchers to see exactly
which parts of the brain light up as the thumb
or other parts of the hand are used.
- Augmentation technologies can potentially,
genuinely change the world.
But we only get one shot.
If we are irresponsible, if we're unsafe,
if the technologies are too complex,
we're gonna fail, and we're gonna miss this opportunity.
So I feel like what my lab can do
is provide proof of concepts of the opportunities
and limitations of these technologies
so that we can safely deliver this new field.
- You can see here,
you can see the ventricles pulsating.
- Hm.
On a scale of 1 to 10, how smooth is my brain?
- It's the best I've seen.
- Thank you.
I have come to learn that the smoothest brain
is not a highly sought-after title.
Anyway, in FMRI studies,
Tamar's team found that after using the third thumb
for about five days,
the brain's representation of the hand began to change.
All those thousands of years of evolved neural pathways
changed in five days.
That's like the brain taking a corner like James Bond.
After a week or so without the thumb,
people's brains seem to go back to normal.
But it does raise the question:
"What does it mean that our brain's map of the body
can be edited like this?"
"What will this allow us to do with future augmentation?"
So, picture a scenario where we could augment
the way our bodies interact with the world.
If we can use our toes to control our thumbs,
can we also use our arms to control wings,
our feet to control tentacles?
- We are going to see more augmentation devices
in the future.
They're already kinda starting to pop up.
Whether that's exoskeletons, whether that's extra arms,
whether that's, you know, something weird like a tail,
who knows?
But we are interested, as humans,
to augment our cells, and we already are,
in different ways, you know, with our phones
and with different other technological devices,
but when we physically extend ourselves,
that's kind of opened up some new interesting questions.
- Most of us don't have a third thumb,
but many of us do have an external brain,
and most of us know how to drive.
So how does our brain adapt to these technologies
that might feel like an extension of ourselves?
- Really, we have designed a world
around these hands, you know?
And so, that for me, is really interesting.
It's like if we start to augment ourselves,
how do we then also change the world around us as well
to then expand that second time?
- All this research opens the door
to exciting possibilities.
Like what if the shape and function of your body
could be as much of an expression of your personality
as your clothing is?
And how will that expand the way we design the world
around us if we don't assume that everyone
has the same body configuration?
This is the kind of world we might get to explore very soon.
- So we're starting to then, like, step further
and further forward.
And I think this is just, at this stage,
just kind of a baby step forward,
and just asking questions at this stage,
and I'd love to just keep pushing forward.
- I think this cow is trying to eat the mic-