Nexus - 0218 - New Times Magazine-pages

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that we may someday be able to use the human brain asa VGA and business partner Dr Dwight Wayne Batteau, Professor of monitor! Physics and Mechanical Engineering at Harvard and Tufts. I wrote my own patent application with the help of a friend and In the Dolphin Project we developed the basis for many poten- patent attorney from Shell Oil Company and submitted the appli- _ tial new technologies. We were able to ascertain the encoding cation to the patent office. mechanism used by the human brain to decode speech intelligence When I was 15 years old, I gave a lecture at the Houston _ patterns, and were also able to decode the: mechanism used by the Amateur Radio Club, during which we demonstrated the _ brain to locate sound sources in 3-D space. The brain acts like a Neurophone to the audience. The next day we were contacted by Whitehouse correlator. These discoveries led to the development a reporter from the Houston Post newspaper. He said that he had of a 3-D holographic sound system that could place sounds in any | a relative who was nerve-deaf from spinal meningitis and asked if location in space as perceived by the listener. we might try the Neurophone on his relative. The test was a suc- We also developed a Man-Dolphin language translator. The cess. The day after that, an article on the Neurophone as a poten- = Man-Dolphin translator was able to decode human speech so that tial hearing aid for the deaf appeared and went out on the intema- complex dolphin whistles were generated. When dolphins whis- tional wire services. tled, the loudspeaker on the translator would output human speech The publicity grew over the next two years. In 1961, Life maga- sounds. We developed a joint language between ourselves and zine came to our house and lived with us for over a week. They our two dolphins, The dolphins were located in the lagoon of a took thousands of photographs and followed me around from small island off of Oahu, Hawaii. We had offices at Sea Life Park dawn to dusk. The article appeared in the 14 September 1962 and Boston. We commuted from Boston to Hawaii to test out our issue. After that, I was invited to appear on the I’ve Got a Secret various electronic gadgets. show hosted by Gary Moore. The show was telecast from the We recorded dolphins and whales in the open sea and were able NBC studios in New York. During the ed) to accurately identify the locations of var- show, I placed electrodes from the ==" ious marine mammals by 3-D sound- Neurophone on the lower back of Bess © localisation algorithms similar to those Meyerson while the panel tried to guess * The Neurophone i Isa used by the brain to localise sound in what I was doing to her. She was able to powerful brain-entrainment space. ‘hear’ a poem that was being played © The brain is able to detect phase differ- through the bes re Ss Oe | device. if we play alpha or ences of 2 microseconds. We were able poem was recorded by Andy Griffit to confirm this at Tufts University. The another guest on the show. Since the sig- _ theta signals directly through pinnae or outer ear is a 'phase-encoding' nal eee Py was _ - the Neurophone, we can array that gencrates a time-ratio code that ceived by Bess Meyerson, the pane . * is used by the brain to localise the source could not guess what I was doingtoher. @ntrain any brain state we of set in 3-D space. The localisation As a result of the Life magazine article like. time ratios are run from two microsec- and the exposure on the Gary Moore onds to several milliseconds. A person Show, we received over a million letters —<&£@—&£$—£@_ —_—— with one car can localise sound sources about the Neurophone. —————— ee non-linear) 0 a 5 degree angle of accu- The patent office started giving us problems. The examiner said racy anywhere in space. You can test this by closing your eycs that the device could not possibly work, and refused to issue the while having a friend jingle keys in space around your head. With patent for over twelve years. The patent was finally issued after you eyes closed you can follow the keys and point to them very my patent lawyer and I took a working model of the Neurophone accurately. Try to visualise where the keys are in relation to your to the patent office. This was an unusual move since inventors head. With a little practice, you can accurately point directly at rarely bring their inventions to the patent examiner. The examiner __ the keys with your cycs closed. If you try to localise a sine wave, said that he would allow the patent to issue if we could make a__ the experiment will not work. The signal must be non-linear in deaf employee of the patent office hear with the device. To our character. You can localise the sine wave if the speaker has a non- relief, the employee was able to hear with it and, for the first time __ linearity or distortion in the output wave form. A sine wave can- in the history of the patent office, the Neurophone file was _ not be localised because phase differences in a sine wave are very reopened and the patent was allowed to issue. hard to detect. The brain will focus on the distortion and use it to After the Gary Moore Show, a research company known as ‘Measure time ratios. Clicks or pulses are very easy to localise. Huyck Corporation became interested in the Neurophone. I If you distort your pinnae by bending the outer ears out of believed in their sincerity and allowed Huyck to research my _ shape, your ability to localise the sound source is destroyed. The invention. They hired me as a consultant in the summer months, _80-Called cocktail party effect is the ability to localise voices in a Huyck was owned by a very large and powerful Dutch paper com- noisy party. This is due to the brain's ability to detect phase dif- pany with offices all over the world. ferences and then pay attention to localised areas in 3-D space. A At Huyck I met two friends who were close to me for many favourite ‘intelligence’ trick is to have sensitive conversations in years, Dr Henri Marie Coanda, the father of fluid dynamics, and ‘hard rooms’ with wooden walls and floors. A microphone ‘bug’ G. Harry Stine, scientist and author. Harry Stine wrote the book, will pick up all the echoes and this will scramble the voice. The Silicon Gods (published by Bantam), which is about the Almost all embassies contain ‘hard rooms' for sensitive conversa- potential of the Neurophone as a brain/computer interface. tions. If you put a microphone in the room with a duplicate of the Huyck Corporation was able to confirm the efficacy of the human pinnae on top of it, you will be able to localise the speakers Neurophone but eventually dropped the project because of our 44 tune out the echoes—just like you were at a party. problems with the patent office. In order to localise whales and dolphins under water, we used The next stage of Neurophone rescarch began when I went to metal ears 18” in diameter that were attached to hydrophones. work for Tufts University as a research scientist. In conjunction When these ears were placed under water, we were able to accu- with a Boston-based corporation, we were involved in a projectto © ately localise underwater sounds in 3-D space by listening to the develop a language between man and dolphin. Our contracts were SOunds by earphones. We used this system to localise whales and from the US Naval Ordnance Test Station out of China Lake, 40lphins. Sound travels five times faster under water, so we made California. The senior scientist on the project was my close friend the ‘pinnae’ larger to give the same time-ratio encoding as we find in the air. We also made large plastic ears that were tested in NEXUS¢19 FEBRUARY - MARCH 1994