Researchers Induce Smells With Ultrasound, No Chemical Cartridges Required (uploadvr.com) 51
An anonymous reader quotes a report from UploadVR: A group of independent researchers built a device that can artificially induce smell using ultrasound, with no consumable cartridges required. [...] The team of four are Lev Chizhov, Albert Yan-Huang, Thomas Ribeiro, Aayush Gupta. Chizhov is a neurotech entrepreneur with a background in math and physics, Yan-Huang is a researcher at Caltech with a background in computation and neural systems, and Ribeiro and Gupta are co-researchers on the project with software engineering and AI expertise.
Instead of targeting your nose at all, the device directly targets the olfactory bulb in your brain with "focused ultrasound through the skull." The researchers say that as far as they're aware, no one has ever done this before, even in animals. A challenge in targeting the olfactory bulb is that it's buried behind the top of your nose, and your nose doesn't provide a flat surface for an emitter. Ultrasound also doesn't travel well through air. The solution the researchers came up with was to place the emitter on your forehead instead, with a "solid, jello-like pad for stability and general comfort," and the ultrasound directed downward towards the olfactory bulb.
To determine the best placement, they say they used an MRI of one of their skulls to "roughly determine where the transducer would point and how the focal region (where ultrasound waves actually concentrate) aligned with the olfactory bulb (the target for stimulation)". [...] According to the researchers, they were able to induce the sensation of fresh air "with a lot of oxygen", the smell of garbage "like few-day-old fruit peels," an ozone-like sensation "like you're next to an air ionizer," and a campfire smell of burning wood. While technically head-mounted, the current device does require being held up with two hands. But as with all such prototypes, it likely could be significantly miniaturized.
Instead of targeting your nose at all, the device directly targets the olfactory bulb in your brain with "focused ultrasound through the skull." The researchers say that as far as they're aware, no one has ever done this before, even in animals. A challenge in targeting the olfactory bulb is that it's buried behind the top of your nose, and your nose doesn't provide a flat surface for an emitter. Ultrasound also doesn't travel well through air. The solution the researchers came up with was to place the emitter on your forehead instead, with a "solid, jello-like pad for stability and general comfort," and the ultrasound directed downward towards the olfactory bulb.
To determine the best placement, they say they used an MRI of one of their skulls to "roughly determine where the transducer would point and how the focal region (where ultrasound waves actually concentrate) aligned with the olfactory bulb (the target for stimulation)". [...] According to the researchers, they were able to induce the sensation of fresh air "with a lot of oxygen", the smell of garbage "like few-day-old fruit peels," an ozone-like sensation "like you're next to an air ionizer," and a campfire smell of burning wood. While technically head-mounted, the current device does require being held up with two hands. But as with all such prototypes, it likely could be significantly miniaturized.
Try New Havana Syndrome for Noses! (Score:4, Interesting)
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Back in the 1990s when I used to attend a lot of "extreme" metal gigs, there was a local grind metal band who where on this permanent quest to discover the "brown note", a mythical infrasonic frequency that would cause the listener to shit their pants. Thankfully for us punters, no such tone exists. One could imagine however using an ultrasound frequency like the researchers suggest to induce a perception of smelling shit. Heck, even get the audience to puke. Thankfully said band are now all in their 50s-60
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Playing with things we dont understand (Score:4, Insightful)
Playing with things we dont understand. I am flooded with visions of foot xray machines being useful, asbestos not catching fire, uranium paint glowing not being any problem, heavy lead making gasoline octane ratings higher....
So many useful things here people. Did you know if you take small electric shocks across your temple your vision flickers! Just touch the metal radiator at the back of the classroom that is ungrounded for some reason, then touch your temple. Everyone tried it. I knew better.
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Playing with things we dont understand. I am flooded with visions of foot xray machines being useful, asbestos not catching fire, uranium paint glowing not being any problem, heavy lead making gasoline octane ratings higher....
So many useful things here people. Did you know if you take small electric shocks across your temple your vision flickers! Just touch the metal radiator at the back of the classroom that is ungrounded for some reason, then touch your temple. Everyone tried it. I knew better.
Taking a solid blow to the head can often induce a brilliant sensation of a flash in the eyes. Something I'd be happy to provide these researchers, should they be interested in experiencing the sensation.
Re:Playing with things we dont understand (Score:5, Interesting)
Taking a solid blow to the head can often induce a brilliant sensation of a flash in the eyes.
That's caused by some of tiny threads that attach your retina to the back of your eyeball being torn loose. Then they become "floaters", providing a permanent reminder of the experience.
My wife had so many floaters in both eyes, her retina specialist at UCLA's Stein Eye Center performed a procedure that purged her vitreous fluid and replaced it with saline.
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My wife had so many floaters in both eyes, her retina specialist at UCLA's Stein Eye Center performed a procedure that purged her vitreous fluid and replaced it with saline.
My condolences to your wife, and may she never experience a serious blow to the head or an eye.
I know a bit about this because I have cataracts and a vitreous detachment in one eye. Lots of floaters, but probably not bad enough - yet - to need a vitrectomy. But cataract surgery is only a matter of time, and I also have IFIS...
Re:Playing with things we dont understand (Score:5, Insightful)
Playing with things we dont understand.
Yes, that's generally how scientific progress and discovery works. All of the things you mentioned were not well-understood in their time, thus the uses were flawed. I noticed that you didn't include things like MRIs, antibiotics, vaccines, or any other "poorly understood initially" type of technology that has had a resoundingly positive impact on human society. I understand caution, but from my reading (aka skimming) of TFA, it doesn't seem like this group of researchers is planning to rapidly monetize this discovery. Is it not enough that the discovery itself is fascinating? Who is to say that this research won't lead to medical therapies that help people REGAIN their sense of smell after it is lost by some other means?
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They may not be, but you can bet that SOMEONE is.
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Well that simply is not true. Leaded gasoline was in use for decades before anyone realized there were problems with it,
They already knew lead was bad, they just thought that the exposure would be too dilute to worry about. What they didn't anticipate was just how many automobiles would eventually be on the road.
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Though it's entirely possible that I'm misremembering and they already knew it was going to cause damage when they sold the oil compan
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Actually the asbestos companies learned that their product caused mesothelioma in the 1930s, about the same time the tobacco companies realized that their product caused lung cancer, emphysema, and mouth cancers. The executives of both companies spent the next 40 years covering up the facts and condemning millions of their customers to long, drawn out, painful deaths.
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That's my stalker troll, I think most of its post are a fairly poorly programmed bot of some type. I've seen it crap out a dozen or more after a single post of mine, most of them the same tired copy/pasta, but many of them seem to be human-written as well. From its manner of writing I suspect it's the same one that follows rsilvergun and used to follow creimer. Seems a pretty pitiful life.
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Re:Playing with things we dont understand (Score:5, Interesting)
I totally get this, and also we have quite a lot of experience with cranial ultrasound; we've been using it for imaging in newborns since the 1970s.
So yeah: We are indeed testing a new thing but we do have a tremendous amount of data on the effect of ultrasound, at various intensities, on human tissues.
Also, it was radium that made paint glow, not uranium.
Uranium was used in ceramic glazes (Fiesta's orange was the most famous example); despite widespread worry about "omg it's radioactive" the dose you'd receive from using those dishes for your food is less than a background dose, and much lower than you get if your house has radon. In practical terms, it's very safe.
Yes, still probably don't eat off them; keeping your dose "as low as reasonably achievable" does entail not getting any dose from a pretty orange bowl if you can just use a different bowl.
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The problem from eating it is not radiation, but the traces of uranium you might get into your body.
Similar with leaded glass, which looks a bit like crystal.
They mitigated that later by coating leaded glass with a thin layer of normal glass, I guess you can do the same with your example.
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My uncle says that a Geiger counter is sometimes used to verify that Fiestaware really is antique and not a counterfeit.
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We actually do understand ultrasound very well. In general, unlike x-rays, it seems to provide positive side effects where it is used on living tissue, promoting healing. Ultrasound is not an unknown.
Listen, ... (Score:5, Funny)
... do you smell something?
interesting but (Score:4, Interesting)
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Combined in the right proportions, rose, bitter almond, and sandalwood can create the smell of masala fart.
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Sameo sameo? (Score:2)
Duran Duran got there first (Score:4)
"I smell like I sound, I'm lost and I'm found; And I'm hungry like the wolf."
Apologies, I had a long commute when this came out, and it played incessantly.
Crowd control / detterance weapon (Score:2)
I wonder if it could be made into an effective non-lethal crowd control / deterrence weapon.
I bet you could get people to vacate an area pretty fast if suddenly the only thing they could smell was the strong sent of decaying flesh or similar. One of those sents that everyone is programed instinctively to move away from.
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Ultrasound also doesn't travel well through air.
No problem. Just pump up the volume. [youtube.com]
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> One of those s[c]ents that everyone is programed instinctively to move away from.
If that were true Antifa riots wouldn't be a thing.
This tech announcement definitely needs a (Score:2)
Like most consumer electronics... (Score:1)
....porn will lead the way.
On second thought, I really hope not.
Skyrim SE VR 2035 (Score:3)
Can't wait until I can smell the drauger of Skyrim.
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Can't wait until I can smell the drauger of Skyrim.
I was just thinking how awesome it would be to actually smell those mountain flowers while doing Skyrim VR. Talk about immersion.
Medical Applications (Score:2)
Mark of the Beast Radar Ping (Score:1)
The quantum nose (Score:2)
This is interesting and is similar to the concept that odor is not just about the "lock and key" mechanism theory of the sense of smell. For example, cyanide and benzaldehyde (a chemical in almonds) both smell like almonds but have different chemical structures. The theory is that the molecular vibrations are what the brain interprets as the smell of almonds. So your nose may be "listening" instead of "smelling".
seizure prone (Score:2)
How many supervillian plots..? (Score:2)
How many supervillain plots in comics, TV or movies started with the villain's corporation introducing some kind of tech like this, only to later use it to manipulate people?
Loss of Smell (Score:3)
I'm curious what would happen to people who use this who have lost their sense of smell due to Covid or some other problem. Would it give them the sensation of smell again? Or would it do nothing at all.