Music of the Brain
Ever wonder how your mind sounds like? No, I’m not talking about Kings of Leon’s Use Somebody stuck in your head, but of how would your brain activity could be converted to sound. Some really hip researchers have done just that converting brain waves using electroencephalograms to sound pitches, i.e., notes. Here’s the “why” of this research:
But the question is: why convert brain waves into sound? Well…because it’s cool. No really, there’s another reason. Humans actually hear pretty well in a pretty wide range. More importantly, we can hear very small changes in pitch and rhythm. And sound patterns (because of our extensive use of language) may be easier for us to distinguish compared to really complicated visual patterns. So the idea is to turn brain activity into sound, and see if you can come up with anything. Perhaps, for example, people could compare a normal brain with an epileptic one, and hear differences. Of course, differences during a seizure would be pretty obvious, but it’s possible, if the technique got refined enough, that people could be trained to “hear” differences resulting from things like schizophrenia or Alzheimer’s, which could aid in diagnosis, and thus in treatment.
Here’s a brain on R.E.M. during sleep.
via Marginal Revolution
