Lasers that put voices in your head

Via Physorg.com:

A recently unclassified report from the Pentagon from 1998 has revealed an investigation into using laser beams for a few intriguing potential methods of non-lethal torture. Some of the applications the report investigated include putting voices in people's heads, using lasers to trigger uncontrolled neuron firing, and slowly heating the human body to a point of feverish confusion - all from hundreds of meters away.

A US citizen requested access to the document, entitled "Bioeffects of Selected Non-Lethal Weapons," under the Freedom of Information Act a little over a year ago. There is no evidence that any of the technologies mentioned in the 10-year-old report have been developed since the time it was written.

The report explained several types of non-lethal laser applications, including microwave hearing, disrupted neural control, and microwave heating. For the first type, short pulses of RF energy (2450 MHz) can generate a pressure wave in solids and liquids. When exposed to pulsed RF energy, humans experience the immediate sensation of "microwave hearing" - sounds that may include buzzing, ticking, hissing, or knocking that originate within the head.

Studies with guinea pigs and cats suggest that the mechanism responsible for the phenomenon is thermoelastic expansion. Exposure to the RF pulses doesn´t cause any permanent effects, as all effects cease almost immediately after exposure ceases. As the report explains, tuning microwave hearing could enable communicating with individuals from a distance of up to several hundred meters.

"The phenomenon is tunable in that the characteristic sounds and intensities of those sounds depend on the characteristics of the RF energy as delivered," the report explains. "Because the frequency of the sound heard is dependent on the pulse characteristics of the RF energy, it seems possible that this technology could be developed to the point where words could be transmitted to be heard like the spoken word, except that it could only be heard within a person´s head. In one experiment, communication of the words from one to ten using ´speech modulated´ microwave energy was successfully demonstrated. Microphones next to the person experiencing the voice could not pick up these sounds. Additional development of this would open up a wide range of possibilities."

The report predicts that communicating at longer distances would be possible with larger equipment, while shorter range signals could be generated with portable equipment. Putting voices in people´s heads could cause what the report calls "psychologically devastating" effects. The technology might even allow for communicating with an individual hostage surrounded by captors, although this would require "extreme directional specificity."

With another weapon, electromagnetic pulses could be used to disrupt the brain´s functioning, although this technology was still in the theoretical stages at the time.

Under normal conditions, all brain structures function with specific rhythmic activity depending on incoming sensory information. Sometimes, the brain synchronizes neuronal activity in order to focus on a specific task, but the degree of neuronal synchronization is highly controlled. However, under certain conditions (such as physical stress or heat stroke), more areas of the brain can fire in a highly synchronized manner, and may begin firing uncontrollably.

The report describes a method for replicating this highly synchronized neuron firing across distances of several hundred meters. High-voltage (100 kV/m) electromagnetic pulses lasting for one nanosecond could trigger neurons to fire, disrupting the body´s controlled firing activity. Short-term effects may include loss of consciousness, muscle spasms, muscle weakness, and seizures lasting for a couple minutes. These high-voltage pulsed sources, which would require an estimated frequency of 15 Hz, exist today.

Another form of non-lethal torture described in the report is microwave heating. By raising the temperature of the body to 41°C (105.8°F), humans can experience sensations such as memory loss and disorientation, and exhibit reduced aggression. According to the report, humans can survive temperatures up to 42°C (107.6°F), at which time prolonged exposure can result in permanent brain damage or death.

The microwave heating technique was tested on a Rhesus monkey, where a 225 MHz beam caused an increase in the animal´s body temperature. Depending on the dosage level, the temperature increase occurred within a time of 15 to 30 minutes. After the beam was removed, the animal´s body temperature decreased back to normal. The report suggests the technique could be useful for controlling crowds or in negotiations.

While the investigations reveal intriguing techniques for non-lethal torture, the report does not mention plans for carrying out specific experiments or studies in the future.

Incapacitating Flashlight

Via ABC News:

Soon cops' flashlights might not only temporarily blind bad guys: they might also stop them in their tracks by disorienting them and making them nauseatingly sick. When suspects turn away or reel, cops or border-security agents can nab and handcuff them.

The flashlight, which is being developed for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), uses a range finder to measure the distance to the target's eyes so that it can adjust the energy of the light to a level that won't cause permanent damage. Then it rapidly shoots out pulses of light from an array of ultrabright light emitting diodes (LEDs).

The flashes incapacitate a person in two different ways, says Robert Lieberman, CEO of Intelligent Optical Systems, based in Torrance, CA, which is making the device. The flashes temporarily blind a person, as any bright light would, and the light pulses, which quickly change both in color and duration, also cause what Lieberman calls psychophysical effects. These effects, whose effectiveness depends on the person, range from disorientation to vertigo to nausea, and they wear off in a few minutes.

It's not clear why the changing light pulses cause this effect, even though the effect has been well documented, Lieberman says. Helicopter pilots, for example, have been known to crash because they get disoriented by the choppy flashes of sunlight coming through the chopper's spinning blades.

The DHS is funding research on the new nonlethal weapon. According to a DHS press release, cops, border-security agents, and the National Guard could be armed with the new flashlight by 2010. The device is part of a larger effort to develop nonlethal weapons that can help law-enforcement and military personnel control crowds and riots, both in antiterrorist actions and in hostage situations.

The LED flashlight comes with a few caveats. The person being targeted could easily look away, or he or she might be wearing heavily tinted glasses. And the device would not be useful to, say, a security agent who is chasing a suspected attacker. "It is designed to be used on someone coming at you," Lieberman says. Also, the flashlight's effects are less during the day. But Lieberman notes that security agents will more likely face situations in which they need the device at night.

Glenn Shwaery, who researches nonlethal technology at the University of New Hampshire, says that authorities would use the flashlight, and other light-based "dazzler" technologies, to distract a suspect so that they can close in on him or her. "If you disorient or distract somebody and cause them to look away, then they can't focus on their task, which could be aiming a weapon at someone, or looking at a screen with sensitive information, or dialing a phone," he says.

There have been efforts to make dazzlers using lasers, but LEDs could be a safer choice. "Getting an eye-safe wavelength with a laser has been very difficult," Shwaery says. Because laser beams are energetic and focused, they could cause permanent damage to the eye. Shwaery adds that the new LED flashlight would be safe because it uses a range finder and adjusts the energy it throws out. "The ideal goal for nonlethal technologies is that they be scalable."

Researchers at Intelligent Optical Systems are now analyzing combinations of wavelengths and light intensities that have the strongest effect on people while remaining safe. They also need to make the device smaller and easier to carry. Right now, it's about 15 inches long and 4 inches wide. This fall, the team plans to test the flashlight extensively on people at Penn State University's Institute of Non-Lethal Defense Technology.

Scientists Discover "Shadow Person"

From Cosmos Magazine:

by Erica Harrison

SYDNEY: Ever feel as though you're being followed? As if someone is behind you, shadowing your every move? It might be your ‘shadow person', created by unusual activity in a specific brain region, a new study shows.

The paper, published in the British journal Nature, describes the case of a 22-year-old woman with no history of psychiatric problems who was being evaluated for treatment of epilepsy. When a region of her brain called the left temporoparietal junction was electrically stimulated, the woman described encounters with a ‘shadow person' who mimicked her bodily movements.

"Electrical stimulation repeatedly produced a feeling of the presence of another person in her extra-personal space," said Olaf Blanke, co-author of the study conducted by a team of researchers from University Hospital in Geneva, Switzerland.

When the patient was lying down, stimulation of this brain region caused her to feel that someone was behind her. She described the person as young, of indeterminate sex, "a shadow who did not speak or move, and whose position beneath her back was identical to her own", according to the researchers.

When the patient sat up, leaned forward and clasped her knees, she felt that the figure was also sitting, embracing her in its arms - a feeling she described as "unpleasant".

During a language task, in which the seated patient held a card in her right hand, she described the person sitting next to her and trying to interfere with the task. "He wants to take the card … he doesn't want me to read," she said.

Because it was possible to induce the sensation repeatedly, and because the ‘shadow person' closely mimicked the patient's posture and movements, the researchers conclude that the patient was experiencing a perception of her own body.

"The strange sensation that somebody is nearby when no one is actually present has been described by psychiatric and neurological patients, as well as by healthy subjects," said Blanke. Until now, however, it was not understood how the illusion was triggered in the brain.

The temporoparietal junction is known to be involved in creating the concept of ‘self', and the distinction between ‘self' and ‘other'. According to the researchers, stimulation of this region interfered with the patient's ability to integrate information about her own body, leading to her experience of a ‘shadow person'.

Although the woman was aware of the similarity between her own movements and those of her doppelganger, she didn't recognise the experience as an illusion of her own body.

Similar shadowy encounters have been described by people with schizophrenia, as well as by healthy subjects, leading the researchers to believe that: "Our findings may be a step towards understanding the mechanisms behind psychiatric manifestations such as paranoia, persecution and alien control."

The phrase of the day is "Feraliminal Lycanthropizer"

Great article on the Fortean Times website about sonic weapons -- loads of interesting material pertaining to military applications, ghost hunting and behavior modification, but I was struck by this passage in particular:

"The link between periods of insanity and exposure to specific infrasound frequencies forms the basis for the ‘Feraliminal Lycanthropizer’, a device claimed to stimulate atavistic animality, sexual excitement, and a loss of inhibitions in its target. As described in an essay published in Dainty Viscera magazine, the Feraliminal Lycanthropizer creates two infrasound frequencies – 3Hz and 9Hz – which, combined, generate a lower, third frequency of 0.56Hz. The machine also uses a combination of four subliminal, looped, audio tape recordings – playing both forwards and backwards – outside the normal audible pitch."

Freaky.

Depatterning

From the Toronto Star:

Brainwashed `guinea pig' seeks more damages
Canadian victim of CIA experiment in '50s tries to launch class-action suit against Ottawa

January 08, 2007

Dene Moore
CANADIAN PRESS

MONTREAL–Janine Huard says she was a young mother of four with mild post-partum depression when she checked herself in for psychiatric treatment at a Montreal hospital more than five decades ago.

Huard says what happened after that still haunts her today and she will be in a federal courtroom this week seeking to launch a class-action lawsuit against the Canadian government for Cold War-era brainwashing experiments carried out on her and hundreds of other patients.

"I was a guinea pig," she said.

On and off for more than a decade at McGill University's renowned Allan Memorial Institute, Huard says she received massive electroshocks and was fed more than 40 experimental pills a day.

Huard, who will be 79 at the end of the month, says she was drugged and subjected to so-called "depatterning," during which repetitive recordings were played in her ear for weeks on end, one of them telling her she was of no use to her family.

"I came out of there so sick that my mother had to live with me for 10 years," Huard says. She says she lost memories and suffered from migraines.

The ordeal came at the hands of Dr. Ewan Cameron, an Edinburgh-educated, New York-based doctor who pioneered "psychic driving," by which he believed he could erase the memories of patients and rebuild their psyches without psychiatric defect.

The idea intrigued the CIA, which recruited Cameron to experiment with mind control techniques beginning in 1950. The McGill experiments were jointly funded by the CIA and the Canadian government.

Cameron gave patients LSD and subjected them to the massive and multiple electroshock treatments. Some underwent sleep deprivation or total sensory deprivation. Others were kept in drug-induced comas for months while speakers under their pillows broadcast messages for up to 16 hours a day.

The CIA eventually settled a class-action lawsuit by test subjects, including Huard.

The allegations have not been proven in court. A federal court hearing is scheduled to begin Wednesday to decide whether to approve a class-action suit.

In 1994, 77 of the mostly unwitting Canadian patients were awarded $100,000 each from the federal government, but only those who suffered "total depatterning," meaning they were rendered to a childlike state.

More than 250 others were denied compensation. In 2004, a federal appeal court overruled that decision and awarded a former patient the $100,000.

Federal lawyers have argued that too much time has passed for patients to appeal a federal panel decision.

Have to look up more about this "depatterning".