Could the human body learn new tricks?

[quarky]

Greetings, all.

I recently read something that implied that humans may have the ability to enter a stupor of sorts; a low level hibernation like what bears do in winter.
People have survived a much lowered core temperature than what used to be thought possible.

I have no idea about that, but it did get me thinking about other potential abilities humans may have, innately, yet undiscovered.

For instance, afaik, it is impossible to read separate books with each eye.
But could that be a matter of never practicing that feat?
Hearing is similar. It seems impossible to comprehend 2 different speeches, one in each ear. Is this a matter of our anatomy, or more because we've had no reason to develop such skills?

How about being able to enter and exit a 'coma-like state' at will?
There are times when such skill could be helpful.

Might the future human manage a symbiosis with a bacteria that would allow the digestion of otherwise useless foods?
Short of gene manipulation and bionic surgical enhancements, do our bodies have abilities we haven't tapped into yet?

 

[BravesFan]

People who have had a severing of their corpus callosum have been known to develop the ability to write two letters, one with each hand. Or to process two different activities simultaneously... Perhaps we could learn to do it if we practiced hard. I discovered I can write with my right hand forward and write with my left hand backwards at the same time. I feel this is probably not that difficult.

If one is dedicated enough, I figure we can do most anything not physically limited (like say fly without assistance or run 100moh)

 

[Wowbagger]

I think it might be possible to comprehend two different speeches, one in each ear, given enough practice. I've been sorta able to do that, to a limited degree, myself.

Reading generally requires more focused attention in the brain. It is much less likely, I think, that one could read two books at the same time. Perhaps if it was two books they already knew well, then maybe it would lessen the processing involved.

 

[Roboramma]

I think it might be possible to comprehend two different speeches, one in each ear, given enough practice. I've been sorta able to do that, to a limited degree, myself.

Reading generally requires more focused attention in the brain. It is much less likely, I think, that one could read two books at the same time. Perhaps if it was two books they already knew well, then maybe it would lessen the processing involved.

I can't even focus my eyes on two different things at once!

But I suppose with training it's likely possible.

Interesting question quarky.

 

[thaiboxerken]

I learn new tricks quite often, it's part of being a hobby magician.

Seriously, though. It appears that multi-tasking is the example people are talking about here. Studies have shown that people really do not multi-task for similar tasks, such as doing two language related tasks at the same time. What's really going on is that a person is switching back-and-forth at a rapid rate. This means that parts of the two conversations are being ignored or not heard. It's a matter of our brains resources.

 

[Roboramma]

I learn new tricks quite often, it's part of being a hobby magician.

Seriously, though. It appears that multi-tasking is the example people are talking about here. Studies have shown that people really do not multi-task for similar tasks, such as doing two language related tasks at the same time. What's really going on is that a person is switching back-and-forth at a rapid rate. This means that parts of the two conversations are being ignored or not heard. It's a matter of our brains resources.

I've noticed that if someone's talking to me but I'm not paying attention, my brain seems to store about one sentence of un-analyzed speech. If I then want to I can think for a moment and reconstruct it, but otherwise I'll lose it. So if someone says, "are you paying attention?" I can stop, think, and say, "yeah, you just said..."

Anyway, that seems to be how I can talk to someone while texting on my phone at the same time (or reading JREF). Like you said, I pay attention to one (say the phone), then stop for a moment, reconstruct the last spoken sentence, then go back to the phone. Since the reconstruction happens faster than the actual speech, it's possible to keep up. But it's not easy and the texting goes incredibly slowly. It's also very easy to forget to switch over and thus miss entire sentences (particularly if I put too much focus on the phone, I'll literally forget that someone is talking to me for a couple of seconds).

It gets even harder when I'm writing posts on JREF in english and my girlfriend is talking to me in chinese. Generally I fail to keep up the converstaion, she gets annoyed and stops talking, and I don't notice she's stopped talking until a few minutes later, at which point it's too late to do anything about it.