As part of an art experiment that was set to blur the line between species a woman named Marion Laval-Jeantet decided to inject herself with horse plasma.  She is half of the French art duo called “Art Oriente ojet” (who you can check out here).  She could not inject the plasma initially but had to build up a tolerance by injecting horse immunoglobulins and glycoproteins over several months.  In February of this year, she was ready for plasma that contained the entire range of foreign immunoglobulins.  What happened was interesting in that her body did not reject them, but entered her blood stream and bonded with her own proteins.  The results are stunning.

“the artist, during and in the weeks after the performance, experienced not only alterations in her physiological rhythm but also of her consciousness. “I had the feeling of being extra-human,” explained the artist. “I was not in my usual body. I was hyper-powerful, hyper-sensitive, hyper-nervous and very diffident. The emotionalism of an herbivore. I could not sleep. I probably felt a bit like a horse.’”

[we make money not art]

What is Transcranial magnetic stimulation?

Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) is an extraordinary technique pioneered by neuroscientists to explore the workings of the brain. The idea is to place a human in a rapidly changing magnetic field that is powerful enough to induce currents in neurons in the brain. Then sit back and see what happens.

Since TMS was invented in the 1980s, it has become a powerful way of investigating how the brain works. Because the fields can be tightly focused, it is possible to generate currents in very specific areas of the brain to see what they do.

Focus the field in the visual cortex, for example, and the induced eddys cause the subject to ‘see’ lights that appear as discs and lines. Move the the field within the cortex and the subject sees the lights move too.

This has led some researchers to think about taking the technology from the lab and into the field where it could have all sorts of uses from the heat of battle to office Christmas party shenanigans.

[Technology Review]