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Brain Stimulation For Entertainment?
An anonymous reader writes: Transcranial magnetic stimulation has been used for years to diagnose and treat neural disorders such as stroke, Alzheimer's, and depression. Soon the medical technique could be applied to virtual reality and entertainment. Neuroscientist Jeffrey Zacks writes, "it's quite likely that some kind of electromagnetic brain stimulation for entertainment will become practical in the not-too-distant future." Imagine an interactive movie where special effects are enhanced by zapping parts of the brain from outside to make the action more vivid. Before brain stimulation makes it to the masses, however, it has plenty of technical and safety hurdles to overcome.
I'm gonna be the LAWNMOWER MAN
What happened to stimulating the brain via the old fashioned method by having an exciting, provocative story populated by diverse and interesting characters? Have Hollywood fallen so far that the only way they can stimulate people's brain now is by the direct application of voltage?
Nuh uh. I don't trust any entertainment company enough to allow them to zap my brain. Not in a million years.
Are movies really going to be that bad in the future that they need us to have our brains zapped to keep our attention?
Why wait? Start giving out LSD with the movie tickets.
One word: wirehead.
http://makezineblog.files.word...
I'm here to stimulate your medulla oblongata!!!
More like: Before brain stimulation makes it to the masses, it has plenty of technical and safety measures to override.
-kgj
BTL Od!
... the porn industry.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Is everyone ready for sex and the three seashells?
Movies that don't even involve the "analog hole"? That you couldn't even handicam if you wanted to?
The MPAA will have a field day with this tech.
If you are going to directly stimulate the brain, why bother with the 'entertainment'? We bother with that because our direct means of stimulating the appropriate brain regions are not exactly ready for prime time on health and safety grounds.
There might be some affect states that we can't reach without both electrical and chemical stimuli; but if you are even approaching that level you certainly won't be paying much attention to your environment.
Or an experience akin to sexual stimulation?
I have no idea is this is possible, but if it is, will there be any realistic prospect of keeping people from indiscriminate use? And will we see significant groups of people become addicts to such stimulation? Students? Schoolchildren? The jobless?
We already have drug addicts and porn addicts. The former seem to have difficulties (depending on the drug) to keep themselves from overdosing on it if provided access to unlimited quantities of their drug. The latter don't seem to be much of a health risk to themselves though, even if people do get fired for watching porn on the job.
So there really do seem to be public health issues at stake here, and I'd like to know more about the whole thing before taking a position. But it looks potentially scary.
Conveniently, we already have a name for it.
Larry Niven Wiki
For $9.99 per month, you can add the sensation of flavor to your government-supplied gruel.
A higher quality version of that memory you are trying to access may be available. Rent for $5.99, buy for $19.99.
Pay $5 to climax. Supersize your orgasm for $3 more.
In the Year 3000!
In the Year 3000!
You can already enhance the movie using hypnosis. Hypnosis yourself to be and feel everything from the perspective of one character and become part of the story yourself. Almost no one does this and it's far, far safer than shocking your brain or using focused magnetic fields. We'll have fully automated cars before any commercial brain stimulation devices. The liability is way higher: "I've been having headaches since I started using this" etc...
Recall Bender's electricity addiction in "Hell is Other Robots".
Leaglize Wireheading!!!!!
The brain is a living organ far more complex than any supercomputer, with a larger and faster storage device, that we've ever created.
We have not even once created either life or intelligence from scratch.
Knowing that, let's do the equivalent of banging on the brain with a hammer and see what happens.
here, hold my transcranial magnetic stimulator.
I keep thinking of Alien Entertainment from XCom, Alien Unknown.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S... ..."
"Harvard psychologist Deirdre Barrett argues that supernormal stimulation govern the behavior of humans as powerfully as that of animals. In her 2010 book, Supernormal Stimuli: How Primal Urges Overran Their Evolutionary Purpose,[9] she examines the impact of supernormal stimuli on the diversion of impulses for nurturing, sexuality, romance, territoriality, defense, and the entertainment industry's hijacking of our social instincts. In the earlier book, Waistland,[2] she explains junk food as an exaggerated stimulus to cravings for salt, sugar, and fats and television as an exaggeration of social cues of laughter, smiling faces and attention-grabbing action. Modern artifacts may activate instinctive responses which evolved in a world without magazine centerfolds or double cheeseburgers, where breast development was a sign of health and fertility in a prospective mate, and fat was a rare and vital nutrient.
http://www.healthpromoting.com... ..."
https://www.drfuhrman.com/libr...
"An abundance of food, by itself, is not a cause of health problems. But modern technology has done more than to simply make food perpetually abundant. Food also has been made artificially tastier. Food is often more stimulating than ever before--as the particular chemicals in foods that cause pleasure reactions have been isolated--and artificially concentrated. These chemicals include fats (including oils), refined carbohydrates (such as refined sugar and flour), and salt. Meats were once consumed mostly in the form of wild game--typically about 15% fat. Today's meat is a much different product. Chemically and hormonally engineered, it can be as high as 50% fat or more. Ice cream is an extraordinary invention for intensifying taste pleasure--an artificial concoction of pure fat and refined sugar. Once an expensive delicacy, it is now a daily ritual for many people. French fries and potato chips, laden with artificially-concentrated fats, are currently the most commonly consumed "vegetable" in our society. As Dr. Fuhrman reports in his excellent volume Eat to Live, these artificial products, and others like them, comprise a whopping 93% American diet. Our teenage population, for example, consumes up to 25% of their calories in the form of soda pop!
Most of our citizenry can't imagine how it could be any other way. To remove (or dramatically reduce) such products from America's daily diet seems intolerable--even absurd. Most people believe that if they were to do so, they would enjoy their food--and their lives--much less. Indeed, most people believe that they would literally suffer if they consumed a health-promoting diet devoid of such indulgences. But, it is here that their perception is greatly in error. The reality is that humans are well designed to fully enjoy the subtler tastes of whole natural foods, but are poorly equipped to realize this fact. And like a frog sitting in dangerously hot water, most people are being slowly destroyed by the limitations of their awareness.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
that is all
Enhanced unpleasant experiences for interviewees.
Filed under, "What could possible go wrong."
In a college course called "Physics for Artists" at the U of IA back in 1974, I pursued the frequency following effect of strobe lights as an adjunct to art displays to induce the desired state of consciousness. Fortunately the EEG technology was too expensive to complete the project for my college sophomore budget -- fortunately because it is the kind of thing that if shown in a public exhibit could definitely cause seizures. Milder forms are already probably being used in theater with rhythmic light and sound, but attenuated in a studied manner.
Seastead this.
I however will be Jack, just need to find me a Cyber Sally and then i'm set!
hey y'all, watch this... gimme my transcranial magnetic stimulator -- you can have my beer.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
I can't wait to get my kicks from liquid helium cooled superconductors!
Yeah, it's called LSD.
Just another addiction.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
...in the form of waiting for it to be mass-produced in a country that gives about as much of a damn as the market for such hardware. (You know the one.)
Let's start with 440,000 volts and 10,000 amps.
"When the message came, it found Tedesco in his usual character. He was lying on the air-draft with his brain pleasure centers plugged into the triggering current. So deeply lost in pleasure was he that the food, the women, the clothing, the books of his apartments were completely neglected and forgotten. All pleasure save the pleasure of electricity acting on the brain was forgotten."
Drugs sex and rock and roll is all the stimulation besides electroshock therapy that I can handle. Well, OK, sometimes Slashdot, a good book, or the bible ; )
http://www.splendad.com/ads/sh...
Table-ized A.I.
I've participated in some TCS experiments back in college. Unless they discover some new way to do TCS there is no way anyone is ever going to find the technology usable in an entertainment environment. Remember that in order to cause the neurons to discharge magnetically you have to send a strong enough magnetic field through the skull and through a certain amount of liquid. In addition, the field has to be changed constantly as well.
For anyone that has never done TCS, what this effectively results in are constant static discharges on your scalp and this happens at a fairly rapid frequency. Plus, depending on the location of the magnets, the magnets might also be causing muscle neurons to discharge as well, so your face will be constantly twitching. All of this leads to a fairly tiring experience.
That's a bit scary. You could literally program the masses with this tech. Somebody on screen drinks a Pepsi and the viewer gets a pleasant sensation. Or somebody drinks a Coke and the view feels slightly nauseated.
I read Spider Robinson and Larry Niven. Direct stimulation of th epleasure center of the brain is a really bad idea, ok?
"Make it stop", "Make it stop", "Make it stop".
The Terminal Man.