The Perception - Artificial Human Sensors: Science and Applications - page 69

the sense that the complex information received from the sensory organs always
occur in the same way, when we act and move our body in the environment.
We are normally equipped with a sensitive and non-distorted sensing abil-
ity from birth that provides us with an increased sensory perception when it is
non-distorted at its best performance. This specific ability is fragile, and has to be
provided with a process to initiate the sensing structure. This activity begins with
the infant's view of its surroundings, in order to learn and build-up a knowledge
base of experience. Studies show that new-born infants are capable of showing
shape constancy, Slater (1985), recognise individual faces, Turati (2006), prefer their
mother's voice to other voices, DeCasper (1980), appreciate skin-to-skin contact
that has a positive caring effect, Erlandsson (2007), as well as the auditory, tac-
tile, visual and vestibular intervention have a progression on alertness and feed-
ing in pre-term infants, White-Traut (2002). This suggests that perception can be
well established from the beginning and provide surrounding information and
perceptions already from birth.
The complex ensemble of exceptional impressions that we experience in our
daily life normally provides us with a fruitful interaction with pleasure and mean-
ing to enrich our existence. However, also in this case the variation may affect the
personality of an individual. Some individuals may exhibit an extra sensitivity
to sensory inputs that experience an increased sensory capability. Sometimes this
perception is undesired sensations that will give rise to negative impressions, i.e.,
the individual feels a discomfort and illness. This behaviour can be seen in people
affected by perfumes or are hypersensitive to radiation from electrical wires and
objects. However, we may also find this category of increased sensitive individu-
als making an advantage of this quality by working in environments like whiskey
distilleries, the perfume industry or simply in the industrial food sector. The extra
sensitivity makes it unique in establishing the quality and provides the fine-tuning
of the sensing qualities in products that are specially appreciated by people with
ordinary sensing capabilities.
Thus, this group of hypersensitive individuals often have explicit problems
in communicating the extra sensitivity feeling of subjective impression to other
persons and in many cases this will cause an effect of being discriminated in social
life.

3.3 SUMMARY

The perceived impressions of an environment, and the possible effects which bias
the sensory input, give rise to certain questions which are related to how to pro-
ceed in the concept of artificial human sensory system. The approach concerned
is to facilitate a symbiotic design and create a structure that complements the or-
dinary sensing capabilities. The most urgent design however, is concerning one
part of a population to recover their missing or reduced sensing capacity. A sensor
system that complements missing or reduced sensing information is vital for this