Sony Invention Beams Sights, Sounds Into Brain

Reuters ^ | 5/6/05 | Wire

[Callahan]

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

The technique could one day be used to create videogames 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."

[ThinkDifferent]

They can patent a device they have never even tried out?

Beat me to it. This is absolutely ridiculous and a perfect example of how a bad patent system stifles innovation rather than encouraging it. There are dozens of examples of "prior art" for this sort of thing in science fiction; sure, the authors never actually created the technology, but neither did Sony.

[Chode]

I'm more than what i was...

[Drammach]

Prior Art

Zowie.. Arthur C. Clark just called..

He needs a lawyer to sue all those communications satellite manufacturers..
Mmmmmmm. Big money.. Lotsa litigation..

[Drew68]

One word...

PORN!

Yep! The first person who can take this technology and create the "sensory experience" of actually having sex will become a billionaire.

[scab4faa]

[Lazamataz]

I predict that when the tech becomes available there will be so many spinoffs it's not even funny. Think criminal misuse and making people see and hear what you want. And of course the Chinese will pioneer the tech to brainwash people.

If you can alter brain function, you can shut it down.

This is a killing weapon.

[tiredoflaundry]

sounds like the "orgasamatron" from that Woody Allen movie!

[raybbr]

You beat me to it. Great movie.

[Right Wing It]

Grow up kid, this isn't for children who don't have control over their horomones. Find some other forum to post that. No one wants to hear what you do in your free time.

[Right Wing Assault]

I bet there's some guy running to the nearest patent attorney right now. Uh, see you folks later! Gotta go!

[Drammach]

Killing weapon..

Or mind control device..
If you can affect/control the cerebellum you can affect/control the cortex..

[cgbg]

If we could every liberal to hook up into a video game that had them being mugged in a bad neighborhood that would be the end of liberalism! :-)

[scab4faa]

Oh ok newbie I'll listen to you..

What does the word porn, upset you?

Poor thing.

[Fitzcarraldo]

Thus begins the symbiotic age, which was preceeded by the Information Age, which will be followed by the Autonomous Age (computers exceeding human capabilities), leading to the Technological Sincularity, beyond which it will be impossible to predict anything because super-human computers will be running things, probably without human control or oversight.

Vernor Vinge on the Singularity

[Drammach]

I predict that when the tech becomes available there will be so many spinoffs it's not even funny.

"Brainster" ... Download Video & Music directly to the brain..

[ModelBreaker]

I predict that when this technology becomes widely available whole swaths of the population will permanently check out of reality. My wife says I'm half way there with my Xbox.

The first commercially successful application will be pornography.

[cgbg]

There are many great sf books on the singularity concept.

I am currently reading and really enjoying Karl Schroeder's "Ventus" about a planet controlled by nanotechnology. If you click on my name I have brief comments on many sf books.

[Fitzcarraldo]

Thanks for your list - right now I'm reading "Blood Music" by Greg Bear.

[Trampled by Lambs]

Can't count how many Sci fi - cyber punk novels I've read where this very thing happens.. people become addicted to it. What if they could directly manipulate the pleasure centers of the brain.. talk about porn...

One book I read called them button-heads and they would hook up and forget to eat or bathe and would wither. What the hell was the title of that book...

[Drammach]

because super-human computers will be running things, probably without human control or oversight.

Vinge's 2nd concept, IA ( Intelligence Amplification ) seems to agree with this article's scenario...

While AI has been stalled out and may be a dead end for decades to come, IA may have a future..
With IA, the human provide the "intelligence", or the conscious, creative mind that controls and directs..
Technology "simply" enhances the abilities and powers of the controlling intellect..

The scary thing there is, the outcome of such advancement depends entirely on human morality, and adherence to concepts of right and wrong..