Sony aims to beam sights, sounds into brain

[BJ_M]

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."

[Tidy]

There is no way I would EVER play a video game that directly interacted with my neurochemistry. The medical uses I can understand but video games as a possible use scares the heck out of me.

[hexxisoft]

thats that lawnmower man shit. no thank you.

[EvilWizardGlick]

The whole evolution of gaming is toward total immersion. The experience needs to be as REAL as possible.
The real motivator will be the sex industry. In a William Gibson documentary he stated a theory that the sex trade is the first to adopt new technologies and thus further their spread and innovation. This holds true with everything from the printed word to the digicam and the internet.
Once we start seeing immersive porn, then games will follow. Not the other way around.
But this is still very new. There have been no tracking studies to establish long term effects.
On the other hand it makes space and deep sea exploration much more interesting and effective.

[BJ_M]

There is no way I would EVER play a video game that directly interacted with my neurochemistry. The medical uses I can understand but video games as a possible use scares the heck out of me.

they already do (true)

[MOVIEGEEK]

Reminds me of the movie "Forbidden Planet" where the mind machine destroyed all life.

[Tidy]

There is no way I would EVER play a video game that directly interacted with my neurochemistry. The medical uses I can understand but video games as a possible use scares the heck out of me.

they already do (true)

Since when, they cause changes in brain Chemistry but video games do not directly modify your brain chemistry.

[FulciLives]

Another movie that comes to mind here is David Cronenburg's eXistenZ

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[BJ_M]

There is no way I would EVER play a video game that directly interacted with my neurochemistry. The medical uses I can understand but video games as a possible use scares the heck out of me.

they already do (true)

Since when, they cause changes in brain Chemistry but video games do not directly modify your brain chemistry.

through your visual cortex -- it has been documented and a lot of studies done.

[Xylob the Destroyer]

SIGN ME UP!!!
Remember those "PlayStation9" commercials that $ony had around the time the PlayStation2 launched???
Now obviously they'll never be able to come up with something quite that advanced (at least not during my lifetime!)
The farthest this will probably ever get during my lifetime is something along the lines of "smell-o-vision"

[jntaylor63]

Wow!

This would take those "Virtual Sex with ....." DVD's to a whole new level.


Just a matter of time... I see it as something like the movie Brainstorm:

www.imdb.com/title/tt0085271/

Its wasn't wet-wired, just a head strap with input sensors. It was a wild flick, it showed how they recorded a guy having sex and you could later watch it from his point of view.

[RottenFoxBreath]

if it comes to fruition,theres no godamn way,ill mod my console,some bastard might alter the bios to attack my nuts when im playing tekken 69.

[EvilWizardGlick]

Everything from running to sex will change your brain chemistry.
Anything you do that creates or alters neural pathways changes your brain chemistry.
People tend to throw brain chemistry around as if it is fixed for individuals or whole segments of the populace. It is not.
The big problem here is the potential for brain damage. Not changes in chemistry but changes in the tissue itself.
Thus the need for tracking studies.
The next argument will be about addiction. That is never pertinent. There is a fairly steady rate of addictive personalities. They fix on everything from food to sex. They would be addictive no matter what they fixed upon.

[Xylob the Destroyer]

so
create your own hack and give yourself a steel cup

[cal_tony]

When execs at Sony watched the movie Matrix, a bell must of went off in someones head and he said, -- hey! we can actually do that.
The future isn't NOW but it's getting closer. It's been awhile since technology has taken a big step. Last big things I can think of is the landing on the moon and the landing on Mars with a probe.
So, this sounds very very interesting,
but will it require a new type of DVD player

[EvilWizardGlick]

About five years ago the first brain interface was proven successful. A quadroplegic could move a cursor around a screen using just his brain.
Well before that a small company came up with a new type of mouse. One that would interpret the small electrical changes in skin to move a mouse.
This is just a culmination of those types of research.

[m2x]

sounds like fun. I'll give it a go

[vitualis]

We should be reminded that this patent is bollucks. There has been no experimentation done.

The makers of Star Trek should patent the concept of the warp drive, transporter, etc., now.

Regards.

[gll99]

Not being a expert in law, I'm surprised that patents would be granted without a working prototype. That general idea has been around for a long time in print and film so unless the idea is extremely specific to one function it should be difficult for Sony to show that it is their own concept.

[adam]

The requirement of a patent is that you present all the information necessary so that someone skilled in the art (whatever particular art that may be) can reduce your invention to practice. You don't have to give them a prototype and you don't have to show that you have actually done whatever it is you say you can do. If the validity and plausibility of the process is self evident in the patent claims and included documentation, (specs, research, drawings, formulas, etc...) then you can get the patent. If the patent reviewer doesn't find, as a matter of fact, that their invention would work if implemented, then they cannot grant the patent.

BTW gll99, patents are always extremely specific to one function. Sony will not obtain a monopoly on beaming such info directly to the brain, as their invention supposedly will do, rather they have the monopoly on the specific method they use for this. Someone else could still find another way to do it and obtain a patent on that.

[gll99]

adam

BTW gll99, patents are always extremely specific to one function. Sony will not obtain a monopoly on beaming such info directly to the brain, as their invention supposedly will do, rather they have the monopoly on the specific method they use for this. Someone else could still find another way to do it and obtain a patent on that.

That makes sense. I guess that there are many cameras made but each company has some unique features that others cannot duplicate without license. The instant film camera is one that comes to mind. I can't recall exactly but didn't Polaroid win the patent war?

[BJ_M]

HP has 5000 patents on ink jet printers for example .. talk about hedging your bets

[Shocker Milwaukee]

This topic seems to conjur images from several movies. For me it was "Strange Days."

[crazy14muzic]

This whole concept reminds me of Batman Forever. The riddler beaming images directly into the brain while extracting info for himself.

By the way, who gets the patent on time travel!!!!?

[vitualis]

I somewhat agree with you adam, but I still disagree with this patent.

There is absolutely no evidence that highly focussed ultrasound beams could manipulate the brain in the way described in the patient. There is so little known about it, the patent could not in itself TELL you how to do this. However, if it does become possible in the future, Sony is going to put their hands up saying that it is a patent infringement which is absolute bollucks.

Hell, I could apply for a patent describing a way of directly linking into various cortical and subcortical functions with carbon nanofilaments and it would be more physiologically plausible than Sony's ultrasound patent.

Regards.

[adam]

I know nothing of the technology so I can't comment on its viability. I'm just telling what the US standard for patent application is. You are suggesting that all that they have created is an "idea" and the patent standard is that an idea can only be patented if it can be reduced to practice. So I assume in their patent application and accompanying documentation they presented enough data that they could show that, that leap from idea to practice was possible.

They have actually received several patents on this technology:

http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=/netahtml/search-bool.html&r=6&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=ptxt&s1='Dawson,+ Thomas'.INZZ.&OS=IN/"Dawson,+Thomas"&RS=IN/"Dawson,+Thomas"

http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=/netahtml/search-bool.html&r=9&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=ptxt&s1='Dawson,+ Thomas'.INZZ.&OS=IN/"Dawson,+Thomas"&RS=IN/"Dawson,+Thomas"

http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=/netahtml/search-bool.html&r=11&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=ptxt&s1='Dawson, +Thomas'.INZZ.&OS=IN/"Dawson,+Thomas"&RS=IN/"Dawson,+Thomas"

Make sure you look at the images too, though it is all greek to me.

[Sillyname]

Another movie that comes to mind here is David Cronenburg's eXistenZ

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

The Gristle Gun :P

[Marvingj]

The Ultimate 3-D Movie......WOW!!!

[hudsonf]

By the way, who gets the patent on time travel!!!!?

H.G. Wells

[SIRCOOKS]

im ready.....i hope thiers a xxx game involved though...lol