Mindscrew music -- but more importantly, laser bats!

^{Seth Horowitz, in a blurry iPhone snapshot of the photo that ran with the Globe's story. Yes, that is a bat in his pocket.}

We totally get why the Globe chose to frontload yesterday's profile of Brown University assistant research professor Seth Horowitz with his accomplishments in the field of neuro-fuckery -- after all, we're mighty intrigued by the notion that you can use sounds to "hijack the auditory system" to improve concentration, cure insomnia, and make your boss vomit. (And yet not a single "Brown note" joke, Globe? For shame.)

But that's not nearly the best part of this article. As far as we're concerned, the lede has been buried, and here it is:

Horowitz works at Brown University’s bat lab, strapping lasers to small brown bats to learn how their hearing helps them orient themselves in the air. (He subtitled a recent grant proposal “Bats with Frickin’ Laser Beams On Their Foreheads.’’)

Science doesn't get much better than this, folks.

But back to the noise thing: the upshot of this story is that Horowitz and composer Lance Massey have teamed up to sell their brain-hacking bio-music to the public, under the aegis of RealSleep and NeuroPop, whose logo we find more than a little disturbing. Actually, their whole mission -- to manipulate your helpless thinkmeats via sound waves -- is kinda terrifying. We've seen this idea play out before -- most recently in Joss Whedon's cult flop Dollhouse, where it brought about the end of the world. So, how far is Dr. Laser Bat from robo-calling his way to our own thought-pocalypse? Better stock up on tinfoil hats now.