Ultrasound can blow your mind, man..

An article available at Physorg.com called "Ultrasound shown to exert remote control of brain circuits," states that scientists at Arizona State University have "developed pulsed ultrasound techniques that can remotely stimulate brain circuit activity." This is pretty interesting in itself, but I'm most interested in this part:

"We were quite surprised to find that ultrasound at power levels lower than those typically used in routine diagnostic medical imaging procedures could produce an increase in the activity of neurons while higher power levels produced very little effect on their activity," Tyler says.

Note that we are talking about ULTRAsound here, not infrasound. A key difficulty in considering infrasound as part of the "high strangeness" sometimes reported in bigfoot encounters is the fact that, although such effects are associated with infrasound, these generally require an enormous amount of energy to produce. In other words, the sounds, even though you can't hear them, have to be very loud to produce the effects. If what the ASU researchers are using can be done with much less energy, it may lead us in a new direction. But of course, the scientists aren't thinking about bigfoot when they do their work and any appropriation of their results by bigfoot researchers is going to be considered patently unscientific, as it should. I'll simply point out that we should probably put this thought into our heads and think about the implications. As a researcher quoted in the article points out some implications

One might be able to envision potential applications ranging from medical interventions to use in video gaming or the creation of artificial memories along the lines of Arnold Schwarzenegger's character in 'Total Recall.' Imagine taking a vacation without actually going anywhere?

We can add a few of our own, and maybe come a bit closer to explaining the some of the strangest reports we know. Feel like someone is staring at you? Feel like you suddenly aren't welcome around these parts? Maybe your head is being zapped by ultrasound.

Which reminds me of another of the weird things bigfoot is supposed to be able to do -- light up their eyeballs. You might have read here that there is a species of shrimp that creates light via the use of salt water and -- wait for it -- ultrasound.

Keep in mind that I'm not advocating this as any kind of explanation at this point, just keeping the wheels turning.

Via Posthuman Blues

..and yes, light to non-existent posting will continue while I struggle to get through these classes..