"Fish! Is that true?"

Today, I read an extremely interesting piece of speculative work. It goes something like this - imagine that there's this Amazonian electric fish, that is very intelligent, in fact as intelligent and sophisticated as you or I. However it has the special ability to perceive electric fields. It has this sense in addition to others such as taste, sight and so forth. Now, how does it communicate to us the way it perceives the world around it through the electric eyes? (pun unintended.)

If I were a superscientist from the future, I can study the entire process of the fish sensing the electric data, right from the sensors on its skin to the neural pathways in its brain.
I can map out the entire flow diagram and say, "Hey fish, this is what's going on in your brain."
The fish says, "Sure, that's what's going on. But I also feel electric field. Where's the feeling in that diagram?"
"What's that", I ask.
"That's part of the actual, ineffable experience of the field, which I can never seem to convey to you because you're totally field-blind."

We can study the neurophysiology of this fish and figure out how the electric organs on the sides of the body transduce electrical current, how this information is conveyed to the brain, what part of the brain analyzes this information and how the fish uses this information to dodge predators and so on. Fine, but we'll never know what it feels like to sense electricity. For us, it will always remain a third-person account.

For centuries, philosophers have assumed that this gap between brain and mind poses a deep epistemological problem - a barrier that simply cannot be crossed. Modern day devices such as the transcranial magnetic stimulator - an extremely powerful, fluctuating magnet that activates neural tissue with some degree of precision can be used to try out such experiments. People who have been blind from birth, and whose visual pathways in the brain haven't degenerated have reportedly perceived light through this device, even though their eyes are completely insensitive to brightness.

Consider now another possibility. Suppose there was some elaborate method by which the brain of the fish was directly linked to a strategic part of our brains, would we be able to perceive electricity? This procedure is theoretically possible. What then of the mind-body barrier that the philosophers were talking about?