Two Minds Blog

Some news reports  have suggested that smartwatches or other wearable devices can detect signs of COVID-19 infection before it becomes symptomatic. If true, this could be a game-changer for managing the pandemic: People who know they are infected could begin to quarantine even before they develop symptoms, and thereby reduce community spread of the virus. Positive findings have been reported with multiple devices, including the Apple Watch , Fitbit  (also here ) or  Garmin wrist trackers, and the Oura Health smart ring .  Primarily these studies have looked for changes in people's heart rate, although some of the analyses also include activity data and sleep patterns. A noted challenge of this and other chronic-disease-detection studies is that heart rate, activity, and sleep can be quite variable within individuals over time, even under normal conditions. Think about the last time you took a trip on an airplane across time zones, for instance -- a certain level of...

You might have heard the remarkable story of Daniel Kish , the blind man who can ride a bicycle using a technique that he calls "flash sonar." Kish's method involves a series of verbal clicks that bounce back and tell him the location of objects in his path. The technique is also known as human echolocation, and it works just the same as the sonar that bats use to fly through the woods in the dark. Some people navigate using only the natural reverberations of sound off of objects around them, while others, like Kish, actively generate sounds that they can then interpret as they are reflected back. This method is surprisingly accurate, enabling expert practitioners to perceive not only the size and distance of objects, but also their shape and texture. It can be completely smooth and intuitive, as in the case of another famous echolocator, "bat man" Brian Borowski who as a child learned to ride a bicycle despite being blind since birth. One of the most intere...