Sony Corp. has been granted a patent for beaming sensory information directly into the brain.
The technique could be used to create videogames or TV programmes and would aim 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.”
Niels Birbaumer, a neuroscientist at the University of Tuebingen in Germany, has 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.
So far no experiments has been conducted, and the patent is meraly “based on an inspiration that this may someday be the direction that technology will take us.”