Play the Future: Sony Patents Mind-Control Device

[David Land]

Folks,

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18624944.600

http://tinyurl.com/6gf46

Dave

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Sony patent takes first step towards real-life Matrix
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07 April 2005
Exclusive from New Scientist Print Edition
Jenny Hogan
Barry Fox

IMAGINE movies and computer games in which you get to smell, taste and 
perhaps even feel things. That's the tantalising prospect raised by a 
patent on a device for transmitting sensory data directly into the 
human brain - granted to none other than the entertainment giant Sony.

The technique suggested in the patent is entirely non-invasive. It 
describes a device that fires pulses of ultrasound at the head to 
modify firing patterns in targeted parts of the brain, creating 
"sensory experiences" ranging from moving images to tastes and sounds. 
This could give blind or deaf people the chance to see or hear, the 
patent claims.

While brain implants are becoming increasingly sophisticated, the only 
non-invasive ways of manipulating the brain remain crude. A technique 
known as transcranial magnetic stimulation can activate nerves by using 
rapidly changing magnetic fields to induce currents in brain tissue. 
However, magnetic fields cannot be finely focused on small groups of 
brain cells, whereas ultrasound could be.

If the method described by Sony really does work, it could have all 
sorts of uses in research and medicine, even if it is not capable of 
evoking sensory experiences detailed enough for the entertainment 
purposes envisaged in the patent.
“This was a prophetic invention. It was based on an inspiration that 
this may someday be the direction technology takes us”

Details are sparse, and Sony declined New Scientist's request for an 
interview with the inventor, who is based in its offices in San Diego, 
California. However, independent experts are not dismissing the idea 
out of hand. "I looked at it and found it plausible," says Niels 
Birbaumer, a pioneering neuroscientist at the University of Tübingen in 
Germany who has created devices that let people control devices via 
brain waves.

The application contains references to two scientific papers presenting 
research that could underpin the device. One, in an echo of Galvani's 
classic 18th-century experiments on frogs' legs that proved electricity 
can trigger nerve impulses, showed that certain kinds of ultrasound 
pulses can affect the excitability of nerves from a frog's leg. The 
author, Richard Mihran of the University of Colorado, Boulder, had no 
knowledge of the patent until New Scientist contacted him, but says he 
would be concerned about the proposed method's long-term safety.

Sony first submitted a patent application for the ultrasound method in 
2000, which was granted in March 2003. Since then Sony has filed a 
series of continuations, most recently in December 2004 (US 
2004/267118).

Elizabeth Boukis, spokeswoman for Sony Electronics, says the work is 
speculative. "There were not any experiments done," she says. "This 
particular patent was a prophetic invention. It was based on an 
inspiration that this may someday be the direction that technology will 
take us."