The Music of the Brain

It comes as no surprise to say that the brain contains music. It holds memories of eternal songs, the tune that has been stuck in our heads lately, and even the potential for original compositions that later become one of the other two. But it's a different matter when we say we can compose a song using brain activity, as Chinese scientists did in 2012. The musical score based on the neurological activity of a 31-year-old woman is the foundation of this brain music that you can now listen to on NeoTeo.

Through books and biographies, the world's prodigious musicians have been portrayed as beings whose minds dictated the most beautiful compositions, music that surged from the brain and took shape in reality. Even today, though less frequently, the super poetic mathematics of sound that some call music continues to be created from minds that think in scales, tones, intensities, variations, and styles. But what if it were music that composed over the daily activity of the brain? That is the case with a Chinese study that has managed to build a musical score based on the neurological activity of a 31-year-old woman.

The Study

In the study, conducted in November 2012, they added to the mix measurements of blood flow from a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machine. The combination of EEG and fMRI allowed tone and intensity to be handled separately, increasing the randomness of the composition. To demonstrate it, Lu and Yao recorded the brains of a 14-year-old girl and a 31-year-old woman. With this new method, electrical brain fluctuations are transferred to set the tone, and blood flow to measure intensity. The result is so surprising that with a little training and more sophisticated scores, a mind could become the most cerebral composer in the history of music.

Listen to the Brain Music

Here are four audio samples from the study:

The scientists are hopeful that experiments with such significant results could open a door to a complete understanding of our brain. Neuroscientist Jing Lu and his colleague Dezhong Yao from the University of Electronic Science and Technology also spoke of previous work, in which researchers had managed to transmit the brain's musical transmissions through an EEG helmet. And although many tests remain before the randomness of waves can represent a melody worth downloading to MP3, the previous time the music was so strange that it was even presented as the scale-free music of the brain.

Source:PLOS ONE