[shockwave]

Sony aims to beam sights, sounds into brain

Thursday, April 7, 2005 Posted: 1:43 PM EDT (1743 GMT)

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."
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[sgt stutter]

[KopiKat]

Uh oh, Matrix, here we come....

-KK
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[PolluX]

Here is the patent

Kind of scary if you ask me...although what's more scary is that they've awared a patent to a company that basically allows them control over an entire field of technology that hasn't even been developed yet.

*edited to add*

The link should work, but a couple of places I've put it...it hasn't. If not then you should search for Patent #6,536,440

[Stevo]

Cool.
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[Rebel_Rouser]

Ya thats kind of disturbing to me.
In a way it kind of reminds me of Batman Forever, with Edward Enigmas little brain wave invention
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Longest Running Show in Broadway History 1/9/06

[.Bez]

I can't wait for DoD:X, where you really die!!! WTF I am going to apply for a patent for money trees, only becuase of the inspiration that one day they might grow. BETTER YET!!! NO ONE STEAL THIS FROM ME. I am applying for a patent on selling marijuna, becasue one day it will be legal and I want to own it all, Muhahahahah. Be cool stay in school.....do the booz you lose.....don't smoke, it's a joke.......IF YOU SMOKE I WILL KILL YOU!

[KillerRoofcutter]

Oh jezz, Touch too? *Thinks ahead 20 years in future* Squad, Move out! Sniper! *Sniper shoots me* AHHHHHH! HUGE PAIN IN HEAD OHHH OH MY GOD AHHHHHHH MEDIC MEDIC MEDIC!
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