In The Matrix movie trilogy, humans were plugged into a powerful computer that created sensory experiences that existed only in their minds. It appears that the Sony Corporation is quietly working on a project intended to make the Matrix a reality. Five years ago, the Japanese entertainment company filed a patent for a method of firing ultrasound pulses at a person’s brain.
This technique, the patent application suggests, will trigger patterns in the brain that will create “sensory experiences” ? including tastes, sounds, smells, and moving images. The patent was granted in March 2003, and Sony has filed regular continuations, including one as recently as December 2004.
If the concept seems familiar, it is because science fiction writers have already imagined it. In books like William Gibson’s Neuromancer and Vernor Vinge’s True Names, as well as in The Matrix movies, sci-fi authors have suggested that computers would someday stimulate the human brain’s sensory receptors.
Sony would not allow the technology’s inventor, who is based in the company’s research facility in San Diego, to speak to reporters. But a Sony spokesperson told the journal New Scientist, which broke the story, “There were not any experiments done. 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.”
Other experts who have reviewed the patent are optimistic it could work. “I looked at it and found it plausible,” said Niels Birbaumer, a German neuroscientist whose landmark research resulted in devices that allow people to control devices using their brain waves.
What are the implications of this new development? The concept provides intriguing possibilities in at least two fields, each of which offers the potential to revolutionize an industry and create billions of dollars in profits:
First, the technology could change the world of entertainment. This would appear to be the most logical application of the technology, because Sony is, of course, an entertainment company. It generated sales of $67 billion from its music, motion picture, television, video game, and computer entertainment businesses in the fiscal year ending March 31, 2005. It co-developed the compact disc, the DVD, and Super Audio CD. It invented such products as the PlayStation video game system and the Walkman personal stereo. The launch of an entertainment system that allows users to experience movies or play video games in a “personal sensory environment” would be a natural next step for Sony ? and a paradigm-shifting event in its industry. Viewers of movies, and players of video games, would feel as if they were actually participating in the content they are watching. Their brains would receive messages as if they were actually seeing, tasting, smelling, hearing, and perhaps even feeling the characters and surroundings.
Already, as word of the patent has leaked, hardcore gamers have posted breathless comments on Internet sites about the possible applications of the new technology. They can’t get enough of the possibilities opened up by playing games like Halo in fully immersive 3-D virtual reality. This is one of those entertainment technologies we’ll be following closely.
Second, this technology could also be a viable treatment for blindness and deafness. The patent application that Sony filed asserts that the technology could enable blind people to see, and allow deaf people to hear. Though it isn’t clear how it would work, the patent application cited research papers that demonstrated that ultrasound impulses have stimulated sensory nerves in frogs. Other research studies have shown that monkeys can control prosthetic limbs using brain signals. In any case, the potential market for these applications alone is enormous. There are 1.1 million blind persons in the United States, costing the federal government more than $4 billion annually in benefits and lost taxable income. And demographic trends will make this even more significant. Currently, 3.5 percent of the senior population, or about 790,000 Americans, are legally blind. As the number of Americans over the age of 65 increases over the next decade, experts predict that there will be 1.6 million blind seniors in the U.S. by 2015, and 2.4 million by 2020. Similarly, about 20 million Americans are deaf or hard of hearing, according to the National Center for Health Statistics of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The lifetime costs for all people with hearing loss who were born in 2000 will total $2.1 billion, according to estimates cited by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. As Baby Boomers age in the coming decades, the number of people with hearing loss is expected to double by 2030. If Sony’s technology could restore these people’s hearing and vision, it has the potential to generate blockbuster profits: It would appeal to a large, affluent market of people who would pay any price for a product to meet such a critical need.
The device that is widely used to detect lies today, the polygraph, is simply too unreliable. It is too inaccurate for the results to be admissible in court cases. A 2002 report by the National Research Council concluded that the polygraph can’t distinguish innocent people from guilty ones. In response, the U.S. Department of Energy began relying less on the use of the polygraph to conduct security checks on its employees.
The polygraph measures changes in heart rate, breathing, and other physiological responses to stress. In theory, these measures indicate that a person is lying. But research has found that the same responses can be triggered by fear, anxiety, and anger, even when the person is telling the truth. At the opposite extreme, a liar who teaches himself to remain calm while hooked up to the machine can appear to be telling the truth.
Now, according to a report in New Scientist, a new lie-detection device is being developed at the U.S. Department of Defense Polygraph Institute. Because it does not require the subject to be hooked up to electrodes, tubes, and blood-pressure cuffs, it should provoke less stress ? and fewer “false positive” readings for fabrications.
The new technology is called “thermal facial imaging.” It uses a camera pointed at the subject’s face. Employing high-resolution infrared imaging, it reveals what is happening below the surface of the skin. Specifically, it monitors the flow of blood through the blood vessels. When the subject tells a lie, the blood moves in tell-tale patterns.
For example, the unit’s operators look for bright red circles around the eyes. This betrays the “fight-or-flight response,” which would be typical of a person confronted with a question that requires a lie.
This conclusion is strongly supported by research by James Levine of the Mayo Clinic and Loannis Pavlidis of the University of Houston in Texas. Their studies revealed that when a person is startled or afraid, blood flows away from unimportant areas in the head, such as the cheeks, and toward crucial areas where it’s needed most, like the eyes.
In the study, which was published in The Lancet, the researchers used a thermal camera to see what happened when subjects were startled by a metal plate crashing to the floor. In every instance, blood rushed to the person’s eyes.
In a related study, Levine and Pavlidis asked people to make up stories. Then, they asked questions designed to reveal that they were lying. Once again, the camera showed that blood rushed to the eyes, demonstrating a solid link between the fib and the facial response.
Levine and Pavlidis have joined with Andrew Ryan at the Polygraph Institute in several experiments to determine if they can detect liars in the aftermath of a staged “crime.” In the experiments, subjects participate in a fake event and are then asked to try to deceive the questioner. With the camera focused on them, the method identified liars 84 percent of the time.
Further studies will be needed, but if the technology continues to yield highly accurate results, we foresee three major developments:
First, this type of accurate lie detector will be quickly rolled out for use in military and homeland security applications. The military could improve its effectiveness at interrogating prisoners of war. Air marshals and border guards could more effectively identify terrorists as they attempted to enter the country.
Second, the legal system would be transformed by technology that could identify when a person was lying. If judges could be relatively certain whether a defendant or a witness was telling the truth, the savings in legal costs and in wrongful convictions would be immense.
Third, private businesses using thermal facial imaging could dramatically improve applicant-screening processes. Corporations could improve their screening of job applicants to weed out embezzlers, hackers, drug abusers, and other undesirable employees that cost employers billions of dollars every year.
References List : 1. Neuromancer (Remembering Tomorrow) by William Gibson is published by Ace Books. ⓒ Copyright 1984 by William Gibson. All rights reserved.2. True Names and the Opening of the Cyberspace Frontier by Vernor Vinge is published by Tor Books. ⓒ Copyright 2001 by Vernor Vinge. All rights reserved.3. New Scientist, April 9, 2005, “Sony Patent Takes First Step Towards Real-Life Matrix,” by Jenny Hogan and Barry Fox. ⓒ Copyright 2005 by Reed Business Information, Ltd. All rights reserved.
