The company is testing the implementation of their lighting technology alongside their medical technology in Ambient Experience suites across the world.

And luckily, the other nine modes appear far more serene than the “Australia” theme in our lead shot. Patients, in fact, are allowed to choose their own colour palette, along with accompanying sounds and video that will surround them during procedures. In fact, this media environment can be so relaxing (or simply distracting) that it was said to reduce sedation needs by 28 per cent in one Chicago-based study.

Actually, on second thought, that pink freaks me out even more than the red. [Philips via CNET]

My ex-boyfriend Josh was born mostly deaf, but had some hearing in one ear thanks to a cochlear implant (CI) — a spiral of electrodes threaded into his cochlea to stimulate the auditory nerve, bypassing damaged parts of the ear. The surgery, which is irreversible, wipes out any residual hearing in the operated ear. (It’s a major invasive procedure — fortunately a one-time thing — that puts the patient at risk of facial paralysis.) A microphone connects to a removable external processor that converts sound to digital code; the code is transmitted to the implanted mechanism by way of a magnet. When fed through the cochlea, the decoded digital information is perceived as sound.

Josh wore the external part of the CI during most of his waking hours and we got by with lip-reading and basic signing whenever he took it off. He never once complained about my snoring. If I wanted to have a private conversation with him in the room, I could just detach the magnet on the side of his head. It was also a fun party trick to announce that my boyfriend’s head could stick to the fridge.

Not everyone likes a cyborg, however. In fact, many deaf people would be offended at the suggestion that they do something so drastic to artificially augment their hearing. Last year at Gallaudet, the federally chartered university for the deaf in DC, Josh and the writer Michael Chorost co-taught a class designed to address the deaf community’s division regarding the use of cochlear implants. There’s concern that the technology will eventually render an entire language — American Sign Language — obsolete.

A majority of deaf children are born to hearing parents, many who would sooner opt for insurance-covered implants for their kids than years of sign education, audiologist visits and hearing aids, which are pricey and usually are not covered by medical insurance. Those against CI argue that sign language is categorically better than oral language, and that orally educated deaf children with CIs are missing out on gaining entrance into a rich community and culture. If the CI business “cures” all deaf people, the implications for the signing community are dire.

Gallaudet is a signing university with a vociferous pro-ASL population. In 2006, a newly appointed president was voted out of office ostensibly because she had been educated orally and didn’t learn sign until her twenties. Mike and Josh’s class looked at how other minorities have dealt with “threats” to their communities and tried to apply the lessons from those experiences to suggest ways that signing deaf people can survive the increase use of CIs.

The other day I asked Mike — who wrote Rebuilt and the amazing cochlear implant story in Wired — what he thought was the most exciting stuff happening in the world of CIs right now. Really, I was fishing for things that would improve my life, should I ever date another half-bot: How about solar-charged receivers that don’t require batteries (which used to die so conveniently during fights)? A line of accessories that could keep the thing in place during snogging? A remote control that could allow me to manipulate his every move, want and desire?

Mike didn’t think there was that much to report — I was a little disappointed he didn’t mention cat CIs! The future, according to Mike, is technology that facilitates two-way communication. Hearing people who dream of super-human auditory abilities probably won’t be lining up to get CIs any time soon.

“The engineering is too difficult and the risks are too great,” Mike told me. He sees implantation surgery going in a more practical direction. “People might be willing to get them to facilitate new forms of communication that to us would seem like telepathy,” he said. “I don’t mean the transmission of speech; there’s no point to that, since we can do that. I’m talking about the transmission of brain states — fear, alertness, anger — and, in a certain sense, of memories.”

In short, CI technology, as crazy science-fiction-esque as it seems, is already looking like the old grandpa in the rocking chair, nodding knowingly while the pro-CI and anti-CI groups still battle on like so many Hatfields and McCoys. “The real breakthroughs in neurotech will come not from doing existing things better, but from doing entirely new things,” he said. From an outside perspective, it seems that, if the two sides were to unite and embrace implant technology, the deaf community could come out at the forefront of cyborgology. The deaf community has already been profoundly effected by neurotechnology. It’s a point of view Mike argued elegantly in a much-debated 2007 speech he gave at Gallaudet:

We are heading into a future where the technology is opening up profoundly new possibilities for communication and group awareness…Cochlear implants are the cutting edge of a field called neurotechnology—the science of developing completely new kinds of ways of interfacing with the body and the brain…Who better than the deaf community to actively seize the lead in developing communications technologies that interact directly with the nervous system? And to experiment with new social forms to explore their uses? We already have one foot—more than one foot—in that world.

Tomorrow, I may get a brain implant that will help me not repeat myself or remember where I put my keys. Or remember where I put my keys. A large part of the deaf community, however, have already ventured farther down that road than I may ever see. Or, for the matter, hear.

Anna Jane Grossman is the author of Obsolete: An Encyclopedia of Once-Common Things Passing Us By (Abrams Image) and the creator of iamobsolete.net. Her writing has appeared in dozens of publications, including the New York Times, Salon.com, the Associated Press, Elle and the Huffington Post. She has a complicated relationship with technology, but she does have an eponymous website: AnnaJane.net. Follow her on Twitter at @AnnaJane.

Nonetheless, trials on 164 patients with unipolar, non-psychotic major depressive disorder using the device proved that treatment with short magnetic-field pulses to the left prefrontal cortex can be a viable alternative to medication. After 30- to 40-minute daily sessions, half of the patients in the trial experienced significant improvement, while a third reported complete resolution. Plus, the only statistically significant side effect was mild discomfort in the treatment area. Currently, patients can receive NeuroStar treatments in a psychiatrist’s office while remaining completely awake and alert.

Given all of the uncertainty and danger surrounding many psychiatric drugs, NeuroStar seems like it’s worth a shot for people suffering from serious bouts of depression. It could also be a sign of things to come. Perhaps technology like this will one day be implanted directly into our brains — making us feel awesome all the time. [NeuroStar and Medical News Today via PopSci]

Since the levels of exposure faced by the factory workers are about 50 times that of the average person, we definitely need those extra studies to figure out what the safe threshold for BPA exposure would be, if there is one. So until there are numbers applicable to you, feel free to cringe every time you near anything containing BPA. Like your keyboard. Or that mouse. Or your glasses. [Oxford Journals via NPR]

Photo by Florida Dude

The American Society of Plastic Surgeons is in an uproar about the things people are doing in their bathrooms. It’s not that those surgeons are just worried about losing money on procedures, they’re bound to gain clients from all the DIY mess-ups anyway, but they appear genuinely concerned about regulations and safety. And I agree, because somehow former Gizmodo intern Benny Goldman letting the Jezebel team cajole him into a bikini wax doesn’t seem so insane when you read about people ordering Botox from websites called Discount MedSpa and putting videos of their DIY injections onto YouTube (Warning: the clip may make you cringe).

We all like to look pretty, but there are safer ways to get rid of hair, folks! And somehow it’s better to have wrinkles than order Botox from a website that looks like it was made in Microsoft Word. [Wired]

The gum would be used to test, painlessly, for malaria in children while the chocolate would serve as a way of getting some of the disease-feeding fat out of a patient’s body. There’s already some promise in these methods and the Gates contribution should certainly keep research going. [Telegraph]

Technically the GE Vscan is not a mobile phone, but it certainly resembles any old clamshell on the market today. Instead, the Vscan a pocket-sized ultrasound intended to reduce the amount of patient referrals (and thereby expenses) by making ultrasounds convenient enough to be performed in-house (and by house, we mean individual doctor’s offices, not your house…yet).

I can’t speak to the healthcare logistics at work, but I do know that mums love seeing photos of kids on their mobile phones. Now if only this bad boy were linked to Picasa we’d really have something. [GE Reports]

Scientists in Georgia and China developed Hobbie-J’s superior brain by modifying the NR2B gene, which in turn increased NMBA receptor sites on the brain’s individual neurons (which are sort of like pores). Bigger pores equals every so slightly increased transfer duration of neuron-to-neuron messages, allowing Hobbie-J learn things more efficiently. But Hobbie-J also has a better memory as well, remembering novel toys up to three times longer than peers.

Apparently the super rat processed complex situations better, but Hobbie-J wasn’t capable of any sort of higher level cognition associated with larger-brained mammals. Or we just weren’t smart enough to notice. [Physorg via PopSci]

For the last 16 minutes and 27 seconds I’ve been watching this video in absolute awe. It’s the story of John Kanzius who designed, built and tested a machine (on himself), all in hopes of curing his leukaemia.

Good God, I’m happy that this story is finally coming out, but it’s so heart wrenching to see Kanzius’ struggle, desperation and utter drive to find a way to zap leukaemia despite doctors’ cautions to the very end. [CBS via Make]