Skull-blogging: The Torch in my Ear

Imagine our disappointment here at Riddled Research Laboratory, to discover that someone else has already thought of selling a small torch that plugs in one's ear, with the idea that light will pass through the bony bunker encasing the middle ear and illuminate one's brain. In fact they claim to have patented the notion, although I am not convinced that the patent would stand up to a challenge in court, given the existence of prior art from Elias Canetti.

Earlier invention

Also the Valkee company departs from Riddled in the goal of this cerebral illumination. They do not hope that shedding light on the brain will interfere with the transmission of neural biophotons and bring swift easeful oblivion. Rather, they argue that it will ameliorate the ravages of Seasonal Affective Disorder during the long arctic nights lit only by the Aurora Borealis... ease jetlag... improve cognitive functioning and athletic performance... because brain photoreceptors blah blah melatonin blah blah.

Alternative title: Don't skate on polar ice
It's too thick to be sliced by the light
Of long and white polar nights

Valkee pursued this argument with a series of clinical trials: in World Journal of Neuroscience (a jizzmop of a journal from SCIRP where 'peer review' consists of waiting for the cheque to clear), then in Medical Hypotheses (a gift to lazy bloggers, noted for its contributions to the gaiety of nations). More recently a study was commissioned for ‎€10,000 and published in Frontiers of Physiology (a Med. Hyp. wannabee), where the peer reviewer was a Korean dance instructor in the editor's employ.

Be that as it may, we were not downcast for long. As we consoled ourselves at the Old Entomologist with a round of Glander's Vegemite Gose, it occurred to us that if the goal is to bring light to the brain without drilling holes in the customer's head, then the thinnest, most light-permeable part of the skull is not the temporal bone, but the ethmoid bone. In other words (and fewer of them), what we need is a miniaturised torch that fits up the nostril.

Any light that does not filter up through the cribiform plate into the brain will be scattered back down and out the other nostril, providing useful illumination if one happens to be reading an atlas during the long polar night, while illustrating the concept of sinus-oidal projection.