From a brief look at the citations, there doesn't seem to be any scientific basis behind it. The cited patents are either from the same inventor, describe optical manipulation of the nervous system or are related to systems where EM human exposure is relevant (e.g. MRI and X-ray machines). The one paper cited talks about a threshold voltage required to excite neurons but nothing about intensity levels relevant for this patent. I might be wrong as I didn't do an indepth search of the cited patents made by the same inventor.
From the title, I was hoping this was going to be a very elaborate description of how computer monitors emit light in patterns your brain can recognize and think about.
Haha yes. I belive a set of symbols known as the "alphabet" can be projected from the screen onto the human retina using targeted electromagnetic transmissions, triggering thought processes. [citation needed]
While this indeed is the old-school way, and still remains occasionally useful for its unparalleled flexibility, these days the industry has mostly abandoned the more systematic ways of creating thought structures, and embraced the "explorer" / "zoo" approach. A number of high-complexity patterns of colors have been identified and catalogued, many of which are derived from the likeness of the natural world, while others are reminiscent of children's drawing. These, when projected onto the human retina, tend to trigger strong thoughts, even if not very sophisticated.
> in response to stimulation of the skin with weak electromagnetic fields that are pulsed with certain frequencies near ½ Hz or 2.4 Hz, such as to excite a sensory resonance
1. As a kid, I remember going to some science museum that had a thing you could touch that could be either warm or cool or quickly switching between them, and that last setting felt surprisingly hot. Is that a similar effect?
2. Aren't flashing lights supposed to be bad for siezures? That's the eyes instead of the skin, but is the mechanism related somehow?
Flashing lights can cause seizures yes. That's why you'll often see a warning at the start of more visually frenetic videogames.
Famously an old Pokemon episode gave several hundred kids seizures. The wikipedia article contains the scene if you're feeling particularly brave :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denn%C5%8D_Senshi_Porygon recommend not watching fullscreen and being ready to click away, as it is a bit intense -- I'm not epilectic but it makes me feel _weird_.
I also remember back in the day learning OpenGL I accidentally wrote a program which would flash between my desktop and a solid color at 60hz. It was literally painful to look at in the few seconds it took to shut it down.
My sister discovered she had photosensitive epilepsy when she passed out on the floor of a broadcasting school while doing editing work.
The Pokémon incident is probably also why Nintendo applies filters to old emulated NES games during rapidly flashing segments including on the NES Classic (such as when Kirby uses the Crash ability in Kirby's Adventure). They're pretty serious about this issue. I don't particularly enjoy adulteration of my old favorites, but my sister is grateful for the feature.
> I remember going to some science museum that had a thing you could touch that could be either warm or cool or quickly switching between them, and that last setting felt surprisingly hot. Is that a similar effect?
What you're describing is a variation of the thermal grill illusion -- in short, activating both heat and cold sensory receptors at the same time is perceived as extreme heat. As far as I'm aware, this phenomenon is specific to the temperature sense, and it has nothing to do with "resonance".
Your comment doesn't add much value here. Which parts do you find implausible? Note that they are referring to CRT monitors, which do emit a strong electromagnetic field
Nervous system manipulation via magnetic field has been demonstrated to work - using field strengths of 6+ Tesla from an electromagnet that is physically touching shaved skin close to the targeted region of the brain.
Getting a signal through the 30-60cm gap between monitor and user - when field strength drops off by the cube of distance - from a 60w monitor (most of which is going to luminescent output) - is not merely implausible, it's a bad joke.
That’s the whole resonant aspect of the patent. I think you must have missed that. It’s not about creating an impulse, it’s about synchronization of existing signals to create powerful stimulus.
You can do very surprising things to neuronal activity with weak electric fields (this is actually what I study). Some rough estimates (in brain):
- 100 V/m: force almost any neuron to spike, essentially on command. Electroconvulsive therapy hits this strength or a bit less.
- 20 V/m: force a neuron to spike, if it’s got the right shape and is properly aligned with the electric field.
- 0.2-1 V/m: Alter the timing of spikes, so they occur sooner or later than they otherwise might. At this level, you are often competing with ongoing brain activity, so the net effect might be more or less rhythmic spiking. Can do this safely and non-invasively in humans.
- 2-10 V/m: As above, but definitely win that competition so neurons tend to fire in sync with this field. Can kinda do this in awake humans, but it’s not comfortable.
- 0.04 V/m: Likely upper bound on the CRT field in the brain. It’s probably even weaker.
This is interesting — could you link your research? And are these DC fields you're applying using electrodes across the cranium? Or AC using an external coil?
If this is too long or scattered, I've got a review article for a "general audience" coming out soon in PLoS Biology.
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The family of techniques I work on is called "transcranial electrical stimulation", or tES. It involves placing electrodes (either saline-soaked sponges or silver disks coated with a conductive paste) on the user's intact scalp. Weak currents (< 4 mA) are passed between them to create electric fields inside the head. Various forms of tES are distinguished by the waveform of that current: using direct current is called transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS); using alternating current is called tACS instead.
This is really easy to set up: all you need is a current source and some conductors; you could probably get going for $15. However, it's been very unclear—and controversial—what it actually does. Some groups find giant effects on behavior and disease symptoms; others report that these don't replicate. There are lots of reasons this might happen, but one common suggestion is that the stimulation doesn't do anything at all! To sort this out, my colleagues and I have been recording neural activity from macaque monkeys receiving tES. Macaques are very similar to humans, and we use the same gear meant for people (mostly this one: https://www.neuroelectrics.com/solutions/starstim). Under these conditions, we find that it does affect neural activity---but often not in the ways people expect.
In our first study, we applied tDCS while the animals did a "foraging" task. We found that animals learned faster with stimulation. While it didn't cause massive changes in brain "excitability" (one hypothesis), stimulation changed how visual flowed from a sensory area to those involved in learning/memory. Here's the paper: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29033331/ This blog had a nice write-up: https://hackaday.com/2017/11/13/shockingly-darpas-brain-stim...
That study was mostly aimed at seeing if tES did anything at all, but the single-neuron data was a bit muddled since the hypothesis wasn't too clear. We therefore switched to using alternating current, which was thought to "entrain" neurons so that they fire rhymically at the same frequency. We found that it did--and could even affect neurons in deep brain structures. Paper: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30833389/
One problem is that tACS drives nerve fibers in the skin, causing an itchy feeling near the electrodes. In theory, this could indirectly change neural activity as the resulting sensory activity propagates through the brain. To distinguish this from a "direct" effect of the electric field on the brain, we numbed the skin with topical anesthetic. We found that tACS had similar effects on neurons in both cases, suggesting that it does indeed directly affect the brain. Paper: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33001971/
So....if all that works, why is it so hard to use tACS to improve behavior? In our prior experiments, we had targeted conditions where ongoing brain activity was unstructured, the better to detect faint changes in spike timing. In human studies, however, tACS users mostly want to enhance an ongoing oscillation, where neurons are already firing in sync. Using a combination of experiments and modeling, we show that under these conditions, tACS and "natural" brain activity vie for control of spike timing, and the resulting competition can make neurons fire more or less rhythmically. I'm excited about this result because we do often want to break up brain oscillations (e.g., in epilepsy) and it explains why things have been so hard. Paper: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35613140/
Nice, I'll be paying attention. I've been planning on messing around with tdcs for a while now but I've never sat down and actually built the (admittedly really simple) device needed. Possibly a dumb question but do you have to use electrodes that require that gel substance for good conductivity, or are dry eeg electrodes sufficient? Or is this irrelevant if the signal comes from a current source?
One usually specifies the stimulation in terms of current (1 mA, for example). You want to deliver that with as little voltage as possible and because V=IR, that means minimizing the electrode resistance.
Minimizing voltage is good because the power delivered is proportional to V², and the power is what makes stimulation uncomfortable by heating/burning the skin (and I guess, the tissue below if you go really crazy). Most commercial systems have a voltage cut-off so they'll deliver (say) up to 2 mA but no more than 12 volts.
The good news is that gel and saline are both very cheap. I bought $50 worth of SIGNAGEL in 2015 and the lab has hardly made a dent in it. Do shop around though, because some "wellness" places mark it way up.
While resonance is possible, the resonating wave must still overcome the resistance (or whatever analagous "friction" like quantity for the system) in order for the amplitude of the wave. Given the loss from screen-to-skin propagation through air and the loss of the reflected component from air to skin transmission, it is highly unlikely that the wave can be sustained from the initial intensity of a screen.
In the patent, they calculate the strength of the electric field produced in a few different scenarios. The largest value is 0.21 V/m at 70 com from the screen. It’s not clear to me if that’s at the skin (but in the air, where the subject’s head begins) or in it. Even assuming the stronger case, most of the induced current won’t flow into the brain: skin is so much more conductive that current applied to the head mostly shunts through the skin, and only about 20% enters the brain. (This is also the best case where the anode and cathode are both on the head; the path is much weirder with a mostly insulated person). Thus, the field strength in the brain is almost certainly much lower than 0.04 V/m.
We know that fields of about 20 V/m in the brain (i.e., 500x stronger) can cause a neuron to fire, but even that’s under the best possible circumstances; You often need 40-100 V/m. Much weaker fields can alter the timing of spikes, making neurons fire a bit sooner or later than they otherwise might; I’ve shown that fields of 0.3 V/m do have an effect in monkeys.
I’m loathe to say that a much smaller field has no effect whatsoever, but if so, it must be a very tiny one indeed.
People have been mucking around with external electric fields to modulate neural activity for literally millennia! A Roman physician used electric fish to treat gout and headaches.
Obviously not (see numbers I crunched above) but....
a) The long and fascinating history of brain zapping only starts with fish. There were all kinds of cockamamie inventions in the 1700s-1900s, some of which were a lot of closer to this purported effect. There was also a lot of interest in using weak electric currents to improve sleep c. 1965-1975 ("electrosleep"). Anyway, I just thought it was a cool fact worth a mention.
b) It was actually an Atlantic Torpedo (a ray), which is still stronger than this. Weakly electric fish might actually be in the ballpark: they only emit about a volt--and in freshwater.
