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We Induced Smells With Ultrasound

writetobrain.com

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Re: We Induced Smells With Ultrasound

#191

Post by thaw13579 »

glenstein wrote: post #169
Sxubas wrote: post #151

I'm a little bit skeptical but i dont have any objective argument or experience in the field to justify it. I didn't want to post it, but I was surprised that almost no one in the hn comments had the same feeling. Don't get me wrong, I would love this finding to be replicable, it would be pivotal as what other nerves could we stimulate to change perception (think pain, mental health issues, loss of senses). Also, I w…

Chiming in as a reply to your comment since I had a similar feeling. There's no... institution!? No university or other institution listed. They list author names, which is something. But no institution, no paper, no heritage of research concepts. No citations outside of a few NIH ones not especially specific to their particular experiment. No real meaningful discussion of mechanisms. The domain itself doesn't have a…

I wonder where they got their equipment and research space. A charitable explanation is that they purchased it out of their own pockets, but otherwise, they really should acknowledge their support if it's from a university, federal grant, foundation award, etc. In my opinion as someone with domain experience, they don't show any novel solutions to accomplish this, it's mostly just that they have the time and resources to experiment try out, so it's especially important to acknowledge who enabled it.

Re: We Induced Smells With Ultrasound

#192

Post by thaw13579 »

glenstein wrote: post #169
Sxubas wrote: post #151

I'm a little bit skeptical but i dont have any objective argument or experience in the field to justify it. I didn't want to post it, but I was surprised that almost no one in the hn comments had the same feeling. Don't get me wrong, I would love this finding to be replicable, it would be pivotal as what other nerves could we stimulate to change perception (think pain, mental health issues, loss of senses). Also, I w…

Chiming in as a reply to your comment since I had a similar feeling. There's no... institution!? No university or other institution listed. They list author names, which is something. But no institution, no paper, no heritage of research concepts. No citations outside of a few NIH ones not especially specific to their particular experiment. No real meaningful discussion of mechanisms. The domain itself doesn't have a…

I agree there are some red flags here to me. One is the priority claim "As far as we know, no one seems to have done this kind of stimulation before - even in animals." The other is the definitive conclusion based on weak experimental design and documentation, "Can ultrasound make you smell things that aren’t there? Turns out, yes!"

These are big scientific claims, but the work is clearly too premature to make those conclusions, and it lacks the connection to prior work and peer review needed for making priority claims. It's really great hacker-tinkering work though, and it could turn into solid science if they take more care with it.

If this effect is real and truly novel, my cynical expectation is that someone already established in focused ultrasound will read this, apply a more rigorous approach, and get the recognition that they are hoping for through more establish channels.

Re: We Induced Smells With Ultrasound

#194

Post by macbem »

biinjo wrote: post #163
macbem wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, does lacking the sense of smell influence your sense of taste? Do some things taste wildly differently to you versus how your friends would describe them? I have a very weak sense of smell that comes and goes (sometimes I get weeks without being able to smell anything other than the strongest scents) and it definitely has an impact on my appetite and how much I enjoy certain foods. I have noticed th…

Genuine question: how would they know if it has always been a certain way? If they _lost_ their sense of smell, they had something to compare it with.

That's why I asked about comparison with friends etc. Senses are highly subjective, hard to describe and I'm not a matter expert so I'm not hoping for a quantitative answer, but despite all this I believe there still are some learnings to be had from such discussions. HN is mainly a curiosity-driven forum - without this, we'd just complain about AI eating the world ad nauseam.

Re: We Induced Smells With Ultrasound

#195

Post by b800h »

jasongill wrote: post #156
b800h wrote: post #154

And this is why high-powered prenatal ultrasound has always concerned me (in fact the NHS advises against the commercial scans for this reason).

The NHS does nothing of the sort, in fact, they recommend them as safe and routine. https://www.nhs.uk/pregnancy/your-pregnancy-care/ultrasound-... > The scans are painless, have no known side effects on mothers or babies, and can be carried out at any stage of pregnancy. If you read the linked article, you'd see that most of it focused on how extremely hard it was to get the ultrasound to do anything - it required a…

The NHS are less strident about this these days (I haven't checked since my sons were born - they used to dissuade 5d scans entirely), but this guide gives a flavour of the caution they invoke around private scans:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/uk-nsc-commercial...

Re: We Induced Smells With Ultrasound

#196

Post by atomicthumbs »

exr0n wrote: post #114
SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely, it’s a “we know the only thing anyone cares about right now is AI, so, look this is kind of like AI, sort of, if you squint”

Haha, luckily not! It's a very speculative link, so we didn't want to talk about "AI" too much in the main post. But we originally got interested in this concept because we are interested in other forms of input to the brain (other than the classic reading, listening, watching, etc). The nose is interesting because it seems to have many independent basis vectors and very sharp discrimination ability, so it might be a…

Do you have a testable hypothesis about this or are you flailing in the dark?

Re: We Induced Smells With Ultrasound

#198

Post by jasongill »

b800h wrote: post #195
jasongill wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The NHS does nothing of the sort, in fact, they recommend them as safe and routine. https://www.nhs.uk/pregnancy/your-pregnancy-care/ultrasound-... > The scans are painless, have no known side effects on mothers or babies, and can be carried out at any stage of pregnancy. If you read the linked article, you'd see that most of it focused on how extremely hard it was to get the ultrasound to do anything - it required a…

The NHS are less strident about this these days (I haven't checked since my sons were born - they used to dissuade 5d scans entirely), but this guide gives a flavour of the caution they invoke around private scans: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/uk-nsc-commercial...

Not sure if you actually read this document before posting it, but it is just a general cautionary statement, not about any specific test (and surely not about prenatal ultrasounds which have been proven safe).

All this says is effectively "all screening carries risks such as false results and overdiagnosis, so people should carefully assess benefits, harms, evidence, and costs before choosing private tests".

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