SexyVita
A Wanton of Words
- Joined
- Sep 28, 2007
- Posts
- 1,446
Controlling the Jock [SexyVita and swm2486]
I bent over the controls of the device in intense concentration, keeping my eyes on the readout. I'd been frustrated for weeks by my inability to find the right settings to induce an emotional response in my subjects, two male chimpanzees named Bobo and Nalu. I had designed and built the device, which I called the Neural State Manipulator, or NSM for short. It used waveforms at a variety of different frequencies, all undetectable to human senses, to induce various mental states, or at least that was what it was supposed to do. So far all it had done was waste two years of my three year graduate program. Due to the entirely experimental nature of what I was attempting, the university had limited me to using chimps as subjects. But if I could show that it was possible to induce emotions in the chimpanzees, I was hoping to eventually extend the trials to humans.
Across the lab, Dr. Leonard and George Hoff, another grad student, and my unofficial nemesis, were noisily discussing some point of vital importance to George's thesis work. I tried to ignore them as I continued to make minute adjustments to the NSM. I was sort of the oddball of the psychology grad program because instead of working on applied psychology, like George, I was pushing the boundaries of psychology and neuroscience by attempting to induce mental and emotional states mechanically. I had double majored Iin psychology and electrical engineering as an undergrad and then had spent nearly two years trying to convince my faculty advisor to let me build the NSM. If I couldn't make it work now, I was going to be the laughingstock of the department.
I made one more adjustment and suddenly the conversation across the lab cut off mid-sentence. I might not have noticed ordinarily, but the conversation didn't pick up again, which given those two, was highly unusual. After a minute, I looked up to find Dr. Leonard and George just standing there, slack jawed, as if they were just about to say something. I looked from them to the NSM and back. Then it hit me. They're standing right in the path of the waveforms! But what had I done? This wasn't an emotional response like I was hoping for, they were more like catatonic.
I walked over to them, careful to stay outside the range of the beams myself, but they didn't acknowledge me at all. I waved a hand in front of Dr. Leonard's face. Nothing. "Dr. Leonard, can you hear me, it's Liz." Still no response. I went back to the NSM and switched it off. Immediately the conversation resumed. I breathed a sigh of relief, at least whatever I'd done didn't seem to be permanent. Then after a minute, I was ecstatic. This meant the NSM did work, well... sort of. It may not have produced the result I'd been hoping for, but it did produce a change in the neural state of a subject. Now if I could just figure out what the change was!
Just about then, George and Dr. Leonard finished their conversation and Dr. Leonard walked over to me. "Liz, you wanted to speak to me?"
"Um, no..." I said, flabbergasted. I barely even knew Dr. Leonard save for having taken a class or two from him. Dr. Bartlett was my faculty advisor and I don't think Dr. Leonard even knew what I was working on.
He looked very confused for a moment. "How odd... I had the strongest feeling that you wanted to talk to me."
"No, I'm sorry if I gave you that impression." I said.
He shook his head as if to clear the cobwebs from it. "Oh, it's no trouble. I must have confused you with one of my other students." He said as he walked off, still looking confused. For a moment I sat wondering what had just happened before a thought occurred to me. I had asked Dr. Leonard if he could hear me while he had been under the influence of the NSM. It was a long shot, but what if I had put George and Dr. Leonard into a trance state? I went to my desk and pulled out a book, flipping through it for the right section. When I found it, I read:
"The hypnotized individual appears to heed only the communications of the hypnotist. He seems to respond in an uncritical, automatic fashion, ignoring all aspects of the environment other than those pointed out to him by the hypnotist. He sees, feels, smells, and otherwise perceives in accordance with the hypnotist's suggestions, even though these suggestions may be in apparent contradiction to the stimuli that impinge upon him. Even the subject's memory and awareness of self may be altered by suggestion, and the effects of the suggestions may be extended (posthypnotically) into the subject's subsequent waking activity."
Well, if I had found a way to put a human into a hypnotically suggestible state without all the typical preliminaries, that would certainly be something, at least. But how to prove it? Using it on my colleagues seemed like a bad idea, and since the university wouldn't authorized human trials unless I proved it worked on the chimps, I couldn't just ask for volunteers. For just a moment I was tempted to test it out on some random person, but what if there were side effects, or if the suggestions I gave them messed them up somehow? I might be a bit socially awkward, but I'm not a monster. I don't want to endanger anyone unnecessarily and especially not unknowingly.
I sighed. I packed up the NSM for the day, making careful note of the settings that had caused the apparent trance state. The NSM itself was a rather small device. It used a 10" touchscreen as the main interface and so it might have passed for a large tablet computer except that it was about two inches thick. Still, it was small enough to fit in my backpack, even after I put the protective case around it. I figured I'd head off to the caf for dinner. Maybe I'd have some brilliant idea when I wasn't expecting it.
I bent over the controls of the device in intense concentration, keeping my eyes on the readout. I'd been frustrated for weeks by my inability to find the right settings to induce an emotional response in my subjects, two male chimpanzees named Bobo and Nalu. I had designed and built the device, which I called the Neural State Manipulator, or NSM for short. It used waveforms at a variety of different frequencies, all undetectable to human senses, to induce various mental states, or at least that was what it was supposed to do. So far all it had done was waste two years of my three year graduate program. Due to the entirely experimental nature of what I was attempting, the university had limited me to using chimps as subjects. But if I could show that it was possible to induce emotions in the chimpanzees, I was hoping to eventually extend the trials to humans.
Across the lab, Dr. Leonard and George Hoff, another grad student, and my unofficial nemesis, were noisily discussing some point of vital importance to George's thesis work. I tried to ignore them as I continued to make minute adjustments to the NSM. I was sort of the oddball of the psychology grad program because instead of working on applied psychology, like George, I was pushing the boundaries of psychology and neuroscience by attempting to induce mental and emotional states mechanically. I had double majored Iin psychology and electrical engineering as an undergrad and then had spent nearly two years trying to convince my faculty advisor to let me build the NSM. If I couldn't make it work now, I was going to be the laughingstock of the department.
I made one more adjustment and suddenly the conversation across the lab cut off mid-sentence. I might not have noticed ordinarily, but the conversation didn't pick up again, which given those two, was highly unusual. After a minute, I looked up to find Dr. Leonard and George just standing there, slack jawed, as if they were just about to say something. I looked from them to the NSM and back. Then it hit me. They're standing right in the path of the waveforms! But what had I done? This wasn't an emotional response like I was hoping for, they were more like catatonic.
I walked over to them, careful to stay outside the range of the beams myself, but they didn't acknowledge me at all. I waved a hand in front of Dr. Leonard's face. Nothing. "Dr. Leonard, can you hear me, it's Liz." Still no response. I went back to the NSM and switched it off. Immediately the conversation resumed. I breathed a sigh of relief, at least whatever I'd done didn't seem to be permanent. Then after a minute, I was ecstatic. This meant the NSM did work, well... sort of. It may not have produced the result I'd been hoping for, but it did produce a change in the neural state of a subject. Now if I could just figure out what the change was!
Just about then, George and Dr. Leonard finished their conversation and Dr. Leonard walked over to me. "Liz, you wanted to speak to me?"
"Um, no..." I said, flabbergasted. I barely even knew Dr. Leonard save for having taken a class or two from him. Dr. Bartlett was my faculty advisor and I don't think Dr. Leonard even knew what I was working on.
He looked very confused for a moment. "How odd... I had the strongest feeling that you wanted to talk to me."
"No, I'm sorry if I gave you that impression." I said.
He shook his head as if to clear the cobwebs from it. "Oh, it's no trouble. I must have confused you with one of my other students." He said as he walked off, still looking confused. For a moment I sat wondering what had just happened before a thought occurred to me. I had asked Dr. Leonard if he could hear me while he had been under the influence of the NSM. It was a long shot, but what if I had put George and Dr. Leonard into a trance state? I went to my desk and pulled out a book, flipping through it for the right section. When I found it, I read:
"The hypnotized individual appears to heed only the communications of the hypnotist. He seems to respond in an uncritical, automatic fashion, ignoring all aspects of the environment other than those pointed out to him by the hypnotist. He sees, feels, smells, and otherwise perceives in accordance with the hypnotist's suggestions, even though these suggestions may be in apparent contradiction to the stimuli that impinge upon him. Even the subject's memory and awareness of self may be altered by suggestion, and the effects of the suggestions may be extended (posthypnotically) into the subject's subsequent waking activity."
Well, if I had found a way to put a human into a hypnotically suggestible state without all the typical preliminaries, that would certainly be something, at least. But how to prove it? Using it on my colleagues seemed like a bad idea, and since the university wouldn't authorized human trials unless I proved it worked on the chimps, I couldn't just ask for volunteers. For just a moment I was tempted to test it out on some random person, but what if there were side effects, or if the suggestions I gave them messed them up somehow? I might be a bit socially awkward, but I'm not a monster. I don't want to endanger anyone unnecessarily and especially not unknowingly.
I sighed. I packed up the NSM for the day, making careful note of the settings that had caused the apparent trance state. The NSM itself was a rather small device. It used a 10" touchscreen as the main interface and so it might have passed for a large tablet computer except that it was about two inches thick. Still, it was small enough to fit in my backpack, even after I put the protective case around it. I figured I'd head off to the caf for dinner. Maybe I'd have some brilliant idea when I wasn't expecting it.
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