Sony
patent takes first step towards real-life Matrix
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.
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."
