Ultrasound for virtual reality? How does this work?

Hi:

How does ultrasound do this?

Quotes from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_reality :

“On April 7, 2005, Sony went public with the information that they had
filed for and received a patent for the idea of the non-invasive beaming
of different frequencies and patterns of ultrasonic waves directly into
the brain to recreate all five senses.[2] There has been research to
show that this is possible.”

Quotes from http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article378077.ece :

“The patent has few details, describing only a device that would fire
pulses of ultrasound at the head to modify the firing patterns of
neurons in targeted parts of the brain.”

This is so interesting. Please don’t feel insulted by the cross-posts. I
only posted to relevant NGs.

No offense but please respond with reasonable answers & keep out the
jokes, off-topic nonsense, taunts, insults, and trivializations. I am
really interested in this.

I am so interested in how ultrasound can “recreate all five senses”. Yet
I am also extremely frustrated because I can’t find any additional
information on this topic.


Thanks,

Radium

 

: Hi:
:
: How does ultrasound do this?
:
: Quotes from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_reality :
:
: “On April 7, 2005, Sony went public with the information that they had
: filed for and received a patent for the idea of the non-invasive beaming
: of different frequencies and patterns of ultrasonic waves directly into
: the brain to recreate all five senses.[2] There has been research to
: show that this is possible.”
:
: Quotes from http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article378077.ece :
:
: “The patent has few details, describing only a device that would fire
: pulses of ultrasound at the head to modify the firing patterns of
: neurons in targeted parts of the brain.”
:
: This is so interesting. Please don’t feel insulted by the cross-posts. I
: only posted to relevant NGs.
:
: No offense but please respond with reasonable answers & keep out the
: jokes, off-topic nonsense, taunts, insults, and trivializations. I am
: really interested in this.
:
: I am so interested in how ultrasound can “recreate all five senses”. Yet
: I am also extremely frustrated because I can’t find any additional
: information on this topic.
:
:
: Thanks,
:
: Radium


Even the blind, deaf, tactileless, tongueless and odourless know
when they are hot or cold. That's more than five senses; maintaining
body temperature is the first requirement for survival of the individual.
Taste and smell are linked, both require the presence of a molecule
of the substance being tasted or smelt and are essentially the same sense.
As a laboratory subject I can vouch for being unable to "remember" taste,
smell or touch, but I can remember visual scenes and music. Yet I do
have the memory of the taste of beef or ice cream or pickled onions
so that I recognise them when I taste them. I just cannot recall that
taste in their absence.
If there is some way in which a mechanical vibration of the neurons
and/or synapses can trigger memory of past tastes, colours, audio
frequencies or other sensations then I don't know how it works but
would not rule out the possibility of it doing so, although I'd expect
to find it hallucinatory in its nature and therefore undesirable.

 

Sounds to me like horse-puckey! (I guess that accounts for the
senses of hearing and olfaction, at a minimum... <g>)

Even if we suppose that their ultrasound system can target
the brain at very fine resolution, and that it can stimulate any
neurons it focuses on, that's a *looong* way from having a
useful system. My suspicion is that they are simply able to
produce the same sort of random sensations that neurosurgeons
elicit by direct contact or stimulation during neurosurgery.
If they aim for the visual cortex, they get visual sensations,
auditory from the auditory cortex, and so on. If the stimulation
apparatus is really nailed down tight to the subject's head,
they may even be fairly repeatable distinct sensations, such
as "smell of violets" or "moving bar of red light". But they won't
be the same for the next subject, nor even the same subject
on another day unless the setup can be reattached exactly the
same. That's partly due to the limits of trying to locate any
given brain region by "stereotaxis" (measurements relative to
known landmarks on the skull or whatever), and partly due to
the fact that brains are all different at fine enough detail (because
they have been shaped by different experiences as well as
heredity).

So to use this in any practical way would involve some sort of
semi-permanent attachment to the subject, followed by a
*looong* learning period of tweaking the controls, and mapping
out the response regions. In essence, it would be a larger-scale
version of what cochlear prosthesis recipients have to go through
to eventually achieve what can be called "hearing". The device
can be adjusted to adapt somewhat to the subject, but the
subject has to do a large amount of learning to interpret the
output of the device.

Best regards,


Bob Masta

D A Q A R T A
Data AcQuisition And Real-Time Analysis
www.daqarta.com
Scope, Spectrum, Spectrogram, Signal Generator
Science with your sound card!

 

Crossposting trimmed somewhat

Few details. Exactly.
"New Scientist says in its Saturday issue that it was denied an
interview with the unnamed inventor..."

Hmmm. The inventor of this brilliant idea doesn't admit
to having a name, and they won't let the press talk to
the supposed inventor.

"Elizabeth Boukis, the Sony Electronics spokeswoman, said
that the work was a "prophetic invention" and no experiments
at all had been performed on it. 'It was based on an inspiration
that this may someday be the direction that technology will
take us,' she told the magazine."

Hmm. They don't have any idea how it would be possible.
They just want to get the royalties if anyone ever does
figure out a way to do it.

That would be because there isn't any. Somebody unnamed
had a science-fiction idea without details, and Sony management
decided to pay to file a patent on it.

I can think of only one plausible technology that might have
prompted these speculations. There's something called
"time reversal" in signal processing. It has nothing to do with
making time run backward. The name has to do with the
fact that the technique involves reversing the time order
of a recorded signal.

When coherent waves (such as ultrasound) hit a body
with a complicated structure, they experience a lot
of scattering and the signal becomes severely
decoherent. By measuring the scattering and using
time-reversal techniques, you can compensate for
that scattering in such a way that you could cause
the sound wave to come to a sharp focus at any
desired point inside the body. Such a technique has been
successfully applied to noninvasive destruction of kidney
stones.

I suspect somebody asked "if you apply time reversal
techniques to focus ultrasound on specific neurons,
can you stimulate them to fire?" And probably somebody
found the answer was "yes".

- Randy

 

Sorry "Radium" but your spamming stupid posts are well known here.
While this one is considerably improved over most, why would you have
the chutzpa to think that we should fall all over ourselves because
YOU are "really interested" in something. How about you CONTRIBUTE
something "interesting" here instead? Just who are you to tell ME to
be "reasonable"?

I dunno. Seemed to have worked with the Laser!

 

Balance. Don't forget the sense of balance.