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Make Way for the BrainStation?
Sony patents sensory technology, paves way for usage.
Today, everyone's favorite Sony Corp. was granted a patent on a technology that could beam sensory information into a user's brain. Thankfully for us, the company is not planning on using it for mass-use brain control to bring about the end of the world... What it can be used for, according to New Scientist magazine, is "improvements over existing non-surgical medical methods known as transcranial magnetic stimulation". This procedure activates nerves using rapidly changing magnetic fields, but cannot be focused on small groups of brain cells.
The official patent describes a technique that aims ultrasonic pulses at specific areas of the brain to induce "sensory experiences" such as smells, sounds and images, and goes on to describe how the pulsed ultrasonic signal "alters the neural timing in the cortex. No invasive surgery is needed to assist a person, such as a blind person, to view live and/or recorded images or hear sounds."
Unfortunately for the public and mad-scientist gamers across the world, a Sony rep has stated that the technology is only "based on an inspiration that this may someday be the direction that technology will take us." No experiments have been conducted, nor have any been scheduled.
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