I don't have links handy -- just taking a brief break from work -- but
transcranial magnetic stimulation has recently been in the news for its
effects on memory formation. And it's been used for years as a means of
suppressing activity in some areas of the brain, for experimental purposes.
The applications for Big Brother / North Korea style interrogation are
obvious.

On Wed, May 12, 2010 at 8:26 AM, Jason Olshefsky <[email protected]>wrote:

> A curious idea indeed.  "Transcranial magnetic stimulation" (big magnetic
> fields focused inside your head) focused on the visual cortex can induce
> hallucination of floating discs or lines.  Scientists at The University of
> Innsbruck in Austria theorize that very close (~200m) lightning strikes of a
> repeating nature (1%-5% of all strikes) can cause this kind of
> hallucination.  As such, they feel it's possible that "ball lightning" may
> actually be a hallucination.
>
> http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/25166/
>
> For some reason this combination struck me as having some kernels of
> speculative fiction.  I had heard of magnetic field stimulation before --
> generally in terms of inducing brain wave activity -- but the combination of
> ideas just sparked something new.
>
> --- Jason Olshefsky
> http://JayceLand.com
> http://JayceLand.com/blog
>
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