Turning Brainwaves Into Music

[Palace]

Professor Dan Lloyd, Ph. D., uses medical imaging to "tune in" to the inner soundtrack of your mind, by turning brain scans into music.  Lloyd created software which translates data from a brain scan to a Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI), which is a communication tool between music and computers.  This enabled him to apply the information to a mainstream synthesizer, which in turn produced melodies composed by nothing more than data from the brain.

Lloyd used this to compare brain scans from people with dementia and schizophrenia to healthy subjects and found a noticeable difference in the music they created.  Doctors may one day be able to use brain music to diagnose conditions like schizophrenia.  "With brains in schizophrenia, there's a tendency for things to drift out of sychrony and so it comes out a little jazzier," said Lloyd.

There is more information @ http://bit.ly/brain music

  I hope you enjoyed this information I typed from the The Scan paper I got from Dominican MRI center thiis morning.

[CHD63]

Palace .....

This is fascinating!  Unfortunately the link led to a cartoon related to it, but not more information.  I may have to do some searching on this topic.  Have you read Oliver Sacks' "Musicophilia?"  (Tales of Music and the Brain)  Not the same thing as Dr. Lloyd's study, but fascinating nonetheless on how the brain perceives music ...... and now, how it produces music!

Clarice

[Palace]

Hello Clarice,


Yes, the cartoon is funny because, it shows the information was lost.  There are many ways to look at humor.  Thank you for the quick "chime in" and I hope others will.

Since I'm a watercolorist I have the book, "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain."  (Betty Edwards)

I'm going to expand my library with current books regarding the brain.



Palace

[Crazycat]

They'd have a ball with me! Sort of like Charles Ives, meets Ligeti, meets Stockhausen meets The Beau Brummels......

[Palace]

I also have "The Mind's Eye" by Oliver Sacks besides the book Clarice spoke of. 

[Palace]

I was in a coma for almost two weeks, 14 months ago.  

Sometimes with a head injury to the right side of the brain we have to relearn with enthusiasm as, in the case of music perhaps.  It can take a couple of months to enjoy music again.

In an example of a dominant-hemisphere stroke, it can leave a "persistent alteration in auditory experience."  Some people experience an intense, altered state of "transformation" and emotional response to music can be lost following certain strokes.  It could take a year or two for recovery in some cases.

In the case with amusia---the loss (or congenital lack) of ability to make structural judgments about music, some people rendered virtually amusic by brain injuries were nonetheless still able to enjoy music and to make emotional judgements about it.

Having been in a coma from meningitis I was concerned about my emotional state when listening to Rachmaninov preludes and other music I always relaxed with.  If anything, I've noticed I "break-down" with emotion moved to the state of tears where before, it was just a stage production in my mind.  I've always had the "gift of choreography with modern jazz dancing."  (including foreign to me, pieces of great music to accompany a hallucination)

[Palace]

Damage to the lateral portions of the frontal lobes can lead to inertia and indifference.  Damage to the medial or orbitofrontal areas has a very different effect, depriving one of judgment and restraint and opening the way to a nonstop stream of impulses and associations.

Zelenka's "Lamentations" opened feelings for one person where "Three Teenage Italian Tenors" moves me to tears.  (unexpected reaction to certain music)  wimp.com/threetenors/

Certain rock music might "stir even, spiritual and very sensual emotions and feelings with the same person, as does myself" who feels strong emotions with classical music.