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As indicated by the name, video games are a very visual medium. But that hasn't stopped participants in a study at the University of Washington (UW) successfully playing through a game without ever actually looking at it, hearing it or using any of the standard five senses. Instead, they were guided through virtual mazes via direct brain stimulation, in a demonstration of technology that could one day form the basis of sensory prosthetics to help visually-impaired people navigate the real world, or provide a new way for anyone to interact with virtual ones.
The five players taking part in the UW study interacted with the game through a process known as transcranial magnetic stimulation, where a magnetic coil is placed on the back of the skull to directly stimulate certain parts of the brain safely and painlessly. This technique has shown the potential to treat migraines, aid learning, improve memory and allow direct brain-to-brain communication.
[...] "The way virtual reality is done these days is through displays, headsets and goggles, but ultimately your brain is what creates your reality," says Rajesh Rao, senior author of the study. "The fundamental question we wanted to answer was: can the brain make use of artificial information that it's never seen before that is delivered directly to the brain to navigate a virtual world or do useful tasks without other sensory input? And the answer is yes."
At last we know how Luke was able to counter the drone with the blast shield down: direct brain stimulation.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 08 2016, @09:42AM
I foresee an application in military: Use this for drone pilots, so they don't need to see their targets, and thus can kill efficiently without getting PTSD. Bonus points for them not even knowing whom they kill, so they can be used to aim at targets they wouldn't agree to kill if they knew. Heck, they may be tricked into thinking they are just playing a video game for training!
No, I'm not cynical, just realistic. Every technology mankind invented has been used to improve killing.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday December 08 2016, @10:17AM
I will admit that on reading the summary, episode 2, /Playtest/, came to mind first. You're right in the long-run, but they've got to get past the glitches firts.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 08 2016, @12:33PM
you didn't even read the summary.
the fucking magnet makes a light appear in the subject's field of vision.
LIGHT.
that's the way it works, it's not a sixth sense, it just triggers the sight sense other than through the eyes.
so your hypothetical soldiers will see their targets.
why the hell would it matter if the soldiers see the target anyway?
the only reason remote controlled killing machines are used is to reduce the danger to the killers.
people enjoy maiming and killing other people, stop acting like it's actually a problem for the military to find killers.
(Score: 2) by Wootery on Thursday December 08 2016, @06:12PM
It was going so well, then you went batshit crazy.
why the hell would it matter if the soldiers see the target anyway?
Have you not heard of PTSD? I mean, the AC you're replying to mentioned it by name, so you really have no excuse for ignorance.
people enjoy maiming and killing other people, stop acting like it's actually a problem for the military to find killers.
The subject is PTSD, not recruitment.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 08 2016, @07:35PM
you're right, I did not read the comment carefully.
about PTSD: if I have been brought up to believe that "the enemy" is actually subhuman and soulless, why would I develop PTSD from killing them?
Is it simply a response to carnage, independent of how we feel about the human being slaughtered?
(Score: 2) by darnkitten on Thursday December 08 2016, @10:56PM
The Nazis ran into exactly that situation--the soldiers taxed with killing 'defectives,' political prisoners and Jews developed psychological problems, ranging from severe depression to [what we now recognize as] PTSD to suicide, which prompted them to start using gas vans and later to develop more efficient methods of mass killing, as well as investigating both psycological and pharmacological ways of 'hardening' their soldiers against their perceived 'weaknesses.'
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 08 2016, @11:16PM
"it's not a sixth sense, it just triggers the sight sense other than through the eyes."
From the article:
"We're essentially trying to give humans a sixth sense," says lead author, Darby Losey.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Thursday December 08 2016, @03:02PM
You saw the movie [wikipedia.org] too, eh?
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by Wootery on Thursday December 08 2016, @06:09PM
The AC who replied to you is clearly a moron, but does have a point: no, this can't be used to do anything useful without 'seeing'. All it means is that the user perceives vision through a source other than their eyes. It has no impact at all on something like PTSD.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 09 2016, @06:28AM
That already exists, it's called a button. If you still need manual targeting, release a new CAPTCH that tells people to click on the images with a person. I'm sure some sites are popular enough that you can get a near real-time feed going. I know I've assassinated may innocent signs in my lifetime, how about you? Which piece of text have you censored from a book lately just so you could post a comment on a random website?
However the military started using brain-related tech decades ago. There was an article about training someone to identify important images, such as what a tank looks like from areal surveillance imagery. Then you hook up the person to an EEG (or maybe it was a little more involved than that?) The software could determine if the person identified an image of interest in the picture before the person became consciously aware of that thought. Thus the software used a person's brain as a sensor to scan through tons of pictures far faster than a human could do it alone.
I think this tech would be more used for torturing people. A constantly moving bright light that you can never not see. Or how about a visual censor? Your head mounted camera detects a movie you don't have a license to watch so it blots out that part of your vision. I'm surprised no one has demoed that yet with the current AR tech. It's completely doable today. I claim patent rights!