mental states

How Pixar’s “Soul” met the Science of Awe

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Five years ago, I (Dacher) received a call from Pixar writer and direc­tor Pete Doc­ter to talk about his new film. The last time I said yes to such a request, I served as a sci­en­tif­ic con­sul­tant for his film Inside Out. So, I was intrigued.

Before my vis­it, Pete offered a brief sketch of the film. The main char­ac­ter, Joe, is a mid­dle-aged jazz pianist in a rut as a mid­dle school band teacher in Queens. Just before his break­through show with a famous quar­tet, he falls into a man­hole and dies, enter­ing into anoth­er realm of con­scious­ness. There he encoun­ters “The Great Beyond”—but escapes to a pre-life realm, the “Great Before,” where he befriends a cyn­i­cal “new soul” named 22. The sto­ry is about their respec­tive quests: for 22 to find her rea­son for liv­ing, and for Joe to get back to life in his body for a once-in-a-life­time gig. [Read more…] about How Pixar’s “Soul” met the Sci­ence of Awe

Next: Will brain sensors be able to infer the mental state of a person–and, for example, identify sarcasm in a message?

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-– Illus­tra­tive image from U.S. Patent No. 8,082,215

Today we high­light a thought-pro­vok­ing patent by Intel­lec­tu­al Ven­tures. (As men­tioned, we are fea­tur­ing foun­da­tion­al Per­va­sive Neu­rotech patents–from old­er to new­er by issue date–to gain a glimpse into future applications)

U.S. Patent No. 8,082,215: Acqui­si­tion and par­tic­u­lar asso­ci­a­tion of infer­ence data indica­tive of inferred men­tal states of author­ing users

  • Assignee(s): The Inven­tion Sci­ence Fund I, LLC (Intel­lec­tu­al Ventures)
  • Inventor(s): Edward K. Y. Jung, Eric C. Leuthardt, Royce A. Levien, Robert W. Lord, Mark A.
  • Mala­mud, John D. Rinal­do, Jr., Low­ell L. Wood, JR.
  • Tech­nol­o­gy Cat­e­go­ry: Neuro-monitoring
  • Issue Date: Decem­ber 20, 2011

SharpBrains’ Take:

Focused on eval­u­at­ing the men­tal state of a mes­sage’s author, the ‘215 patent describes some inter­est­ing aspects of neu­rotech­nol­o­gy that make the patent note­wor­thy. [Read more…] about Next: Will brain sen­sors be able to infer the men­tal state of a person–and, for exam­ple, iden­ti­fy sar­casm in a message?

10 Brain Transformers: A Poem

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brain_mind
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As we enter an era of a trans­form­ing cerebrals

there will soon be “Mind­ful” wearables

to con­cen­trate, med­i­tate and self regulate

Did I just see you drop your jaw­bone at the gate?

Charge your­self to a calm­ing or ener­giz­ing state

Enhance mem­o­ry and you are now feel­ing great

Your life may soon be in a dif­fer­ent motion

With Elec­tri­cal and mag­netic brain stimulation

Not just in games or [Read more…] about 10 Brain Trans­form­ers: A Poem

Can Brain Training and Biofeedback Help Prevent Depression

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In two inno­v­a­tive pilot stud­ies, Ian Gotlib and his col­leagues at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty, Cal­i­for­nia, showed that brain train­ing can be used to help elim­i­nate depres­sion, even before it starts. They stud­ied young girls (10 to 14 year old) whose moth­ers were depressed and who thus were at high­er risk of devel­op­ing depres­sion them­selves lat­er-on. The girls had not expe­ri­enced depres­sion per se but already showed behav­iors typ­i­cal of depressed brains, such as over­re­ac­tion to neg­a­tive stim­uli. [Read more…] about Can Brain Train­ing and Biofeed­back Help Pre­vent Depression