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Commercial air travel is a largely terrible experience, and aviation companies patent a lot of ways to make it either slightly less miserable<\/a> or an even more dystopian hell<\/a>. Where does reading passengers\u2019 emotions to offer them transcranial stimulation therapy fall? I\u2019ll leave that up to you.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Brazilian aerospace manufacturer Embraer filed a patent application<\/a> for a \u201cbrain stimulation system to provide a sense of wellbeing\u201d back in 2016, and it was granted last year. But I only discovered it thanks to a more recent Mastodon post by attorney Jeff Steck<\/a>, and I am fascinated. <\/em>Embraer\u2019s reasonable starting premise is that lots of people become anxious on long car, train, and airplane rides, \u201cturning a short trip into a long one.\u201d From there, it envisions a complex system that covers:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n In other words, your airplane seat could read your face, tell if you\u2019re anxious, and (if you so desire) deliver an electrical or magnetic signal to theoretically calm you down.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Transcranial magnetic or current stimulation is an accepted treatment for depression and a potential option for some other mental health conditions<\/a>, and you can already buy noninvasive devices that provide it for home use. An airline delivering it based on facial analysis would raise a huge<\/em> host of privacy and personal data security issues, but companies file patents that are never commercialized all the time. So I\u2019m not personally expecting electrification as a perk on my next flight \u2014 although the Jerry Seinfeld jokes about it practically write themselves.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n