Professor Anil Seth

University of Sussex researchers are taking part in a free festival at London’s Science Museum this week that explores the biotechnological future of the human body. 

The festival, You have Been Upgraded, opens today (Wednesday 25 March) and includes Professor Anil Seth and colleagues from the University’s Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science talking and demonstrating about what is known – and not known – when it comes to how the brain generates our conscious world. 

Dr Keisuke Suzuki will be demonstrating his ‘substitutional reality’ system (with help of students Georgina Heron and Hielke Prins), to show how technology can give people dramatically new immersive experiences – such as believing that what they see around them is fully real, when in fact is was pre-recorded at a different time. 

And Professor Jamie Ward, a leading expert in synaesthesia - a sensory cross-over condition in which people see letters as colours or can ‘taste’ sounds - will be talking about his project with student Giles Hamilton-Fletcher to ‘recode’ different senses so that people can ‘hear’ colours, or even temperature – in effect giving them new senses.

Created by the Science Museum in collaboration with theatre company Unlimited Theatre, the festival presents a futuristic take on the life-changing innovations currently being developed by leading scientists, artists and designers. 

Visitors can meet researchers from leading UK universities, try demonstrations and see the latest technologies across four key areas: high-tech prosthetics, neural implants, brain enhancers and sense augmentation devices.

Professor Seth said: “This is a great opportunity for us to showcase some of our fascinating projects and reach out to the public. and to show how recent developments in consciousness science open new possibilities for actually changing how people experience the world around them.”

The festival runs until 29 March.