Sony....has patented a device to evoke smells, flavours and even a sense of touch in audience's brains, in the hope of enhancing the movie-watching experience. Sony has been granted a series of patents that outline how the device works. According to the documents, pulses of ultrasound would be fired at the audience's heads to alter the normal neural activity in key parts of the brain. Changes in the neural firing timing induce various sensory experiences, depending on the location," the company's first patent states. Elizabeth Boukis, a spokeswoman for Sony Electronics, said the device remained only an idea at the moment. According to Sony's patents, carefully directed ultrasound beams could evoke different sensations in people's brains, including tastes, smells and touch, and even moving images. "One of the advantages is that no invasive surgery is needed to assist a person, such as a blind person, to view live/recorded images," the patent says.
"
Latest
Latest News
Each news summary is created according to strict standards. Here's how we do it.
Each summary is created using a consistent editorial procedure. The target length is approximately 16 lines of 11-point Arial text in a 650-pixel-wide column. Up to 25% of a summary may be set in bold to emphasize the most important ideas. Summaries are composed of verbatim excerpts presented in the same sequence as they appear in the original news source, with very minor editorial additions. Where material has been omitted between excerpts, the omission is indicated with ellipses (...). Any words added by an editor for clarity or context appear in [brackets]. Our original news editor was Fred Burks. Tod Fletcher edited most summaries from 2007 through 2014, and Mark Bailey has served as news editor since 2014.