http://brainpowers.blogspot.com/2005/08/sony-plans-to-beam-sights-and-sounds.html

Wednesday, August 31, 2005
Sony Plans to Beam Sights and Sounds Directly Into Your Brain 

CNN

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."

SOURCE: CNN

