Sony ready to beams messages directly into consumers brains

[Geronimo]

I'm a little surprised that searching OT for "sony brain" didn't turn up any matches. So I'm posting this CNN article on this weirdly disturbing new patent of Sony's for all to discuss it's spooky implications for our futures.

Sony aims to beam sights, sounds into brain
LONDON, England (Reuters) -- If you think video games are engrossing now, just wait: PlayStation maker Sony Corp. has been granted a patent for beaming sensory information directly into the brain.

The technique could one day be used to create video games in which you can smell, taste, and touch, or to help people who are blind or deaf.

The U.S. patent, granted to Sony researcher Thomas Dawson, describes a technique for aiming ultrasonic pulses at specific areas of the brain to induce "sensory experiences" such as smells, sounds and images.

"The pulsed ultrasonic signal alters the neural timing in the cortex," the patent states. "No invasive surgery is needed to assist a person, such as a blind person, to view live and/or recorded images or hear sounds."

According to New Scientist magazine, the first to report on the patent, Sony's technique could be an improvement over an existing non-surgical method known as transcranial magnetic stimulation. This activates nerves using rapidly changing magnetic fields, but cannot be focused on small groups of brain cells.

Niels Birbaumer, a neuroscientist at the University of Tuebingen in Germany, told New Scientist he had looked at the Sony patent and "found it plausible." Birbaumer himself has developed a device that enables disabled people to communicate by reading their brain waves.

A Sony Electronics spokeswoman told the magazine that no experiments had been conducted, and that the patent "was based on an inspiration that this may someday be the direction that technology will take us."

So how long before we start having commercials beamed into our brains ala Futurama?

[Dis]

just how long before microsoft actually controls our brains?

[Geronimo]

I suppose just as long as it takes for someone to figure out portions of the brain that when stimulated have a desirable effect on the subjects behavior from microsofts point of view.

[Skanky Burns]

Nifty

[DRoseDARs]

Ghost in the Shell

[Urban Ranger]

Bunk

[Adrian Hon]

Not clear exactly how ultrasound is supposed to do this At least TMS works, because the magnetic fields help depolarise or hyperpolarise neurones - as far as I'm concerned, it's a much more viable technology. Still, I suppose there must be something to it.

[Urban Ranger]

What's worse is the USPTO giving out patents to things that don't work. Nah, make it that things that don't even exist. Piece of rubbish.

[DaShi]

UR, Why do you reject every piece of new technology? Even the idea of new technology.

[BeBMan]

I wonder if this will raise the brain activity of some people above zero....

[Lord_Davinator]

hmm... disturbing and cool at the same time

[Dr Strangelove]

Yeah, I thought that in order to get a patent an inventor had to prove that his invention worked?

It may be possible to beam energy into the cerebrum and excite neurons, but in order for the beam to elicit a desired sensory experience it would have to stimulate then proper group of neurons in the proper pattern. Most neuron cell bodies are only in the order of 20 to 30 microns in diameter, so hitting just the right ones would be quite a feat. Further more they're densely packed together and surrounded by the dendrites and axons of other nerve cells, so even a slight overlap would have unintended consequences. Finally the device would have to somehow take into consideration the idiosyncratic organization of the individual's brain, i.e., while there is an overall organization shared by most humans when it comes down to the functional role of individual neurons I'm certain that each brain is unique.

Surely Sony is aware that patent have a time limitation?

[Kuciwalker]

Onion?

[Adrian Hon]

Dr. Strangelove makes a good point. To make this work properly would also require a real time, ultrahigh spatial and temporal resolution scan of the brain, far in advance of current fMRI or MEG scanners. Plus it assumes that we could work out how sensory experiences are encoded in neural firing, something which neuroscientists have been working on for decades.

I read the patent and was interested to find a reference showing that ultrasonic pulses can influence neural firing.

Low frequency amplitude modulation combined with wavelength phase interactions from the primary and secondary transducer arrays 200, 202 form a stimulus to activate neurons in the visual cortex area 100 or another other part of the human neural cortex. By controlling the pattern of signal amplitude and phase shifts in secondary array 202, a wide range of patterns can be focused towards visual cortex 100 or any other region of the human cortex. Ultrasonic signals altering neural firings are discussed in "Temporally-specific modification of myelinated axon excitability in vitro following a single ultrasound pulse" by Mihran et al. published by the Ultrasound Med Biol 1990, 16(3), pp. 297-309 and "Transient Modification of Nerve Excitability In Vitro by Single Ultrasound Pulses" by Mihran et al. found in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Colorado, 1990, paper #90-038, which are hereby incorporated by reference in their entirety.

[pchang]

Not only that, but things are not stored in the same area for everyone. It would have to be mapped per person.