Sometimes the whackiest ideas turnout to the most ingenious ones. That is why you need to pay attention to the Hyundai Ioniq Roadable Synapse, the first neuroscience-applied concept car. Born in part from ideas of conceptual artist Jonathon Keats the concept was presented at Art+Technology LAB.

Hyundai Ioniq Roadable Synapse imagines an alternative  to driverless cars by bringing cognition into play. They say the user’s cognitive processes could be interpreted to provide novel sensory experiences while driving. One way to manifest this is through adjustable audio effects.

Vehicle speed is conveyed to the driver by adjusting the tempo of the soundtrack playing on the stereo system; autobody aerodynamics are conveyed by adjusting the left-right speaker balance, vehicle RPM with an increase or decrease in soundtrack pitch, and driving efficiency by the level of audio distortion.

If you think about this hard and long you might be able to make some sense of it. Of course, Hyundai Ioniq Roadable Synapse is only a speculative idea, but as we said before sometimes you get marvelous insights from your oddest thoughts. Will this technology be applied to production car in near future? Well, it isn’t a really a technology to begin with. It’s an artist’s flight of fancy. But it is admirable nonetheless. Kudos for thinking outside the box.