Hautlle Posted April 9, 2012 Share Posted April 9, 2012 A Machine That Turns Brain Waves Into Music AFTER JAPAN’S DEVASTATING EARTHQUAKE LAST YEAR, MASAKI BATOH WANTED TO GIVE PEOPLE A WAY TO COMMUNICATE WITHOUT HAVING TO EXCAVATE ALL OF THEIR MUDDLED, PAINFUL MEMORIES. Following last year’s earthquake and tsunami in Japan, acupuncturist and musician Masaki Batoh found himself and his country devastated. “I believe you American people who experienced 9/11 can understand this fact,” he explains to Co.Design. “We survivors were mentally shattered like our dead victims.” Batoh wanted to articulate that devastation, but the worst experiences can be tough to articulate. Talking can require that you catalog each emotion, and how do you do that when your whole psyche is a mess? How do you share the truth of what you feel, if you have no idea what that truth is? “Human beings lie, but their brain waves never lie,” writes Batoh. And with that mantra in mind, Batoh moved beyond words. He turned to a modified EEG, what he calls a Brain Pulse Machine, to measure the brain waves of earthquake victims and play them back as music. He then mixed these tracks with his own to create Brain Pulse Music, a memorial album to raise money for Japan’s orphans. In a sense, the album is as earnest a reaction to the earthquake as is scientifically possible, containing snapshots of what people were really thinking. I ask if Batoh considers his art abstract, or if he has another label for it. “Medical art of course,” he responds. “I’m very serious. Why not?” Beyond the album, Batoh has found EEGs to be effective as a component to his acupuncture treatments. “For example, a patient in deep anxiety during his treatment might have brain waves that are very unstable,” Batoh explains. “I put some very, very thin acupuncture needles at his certain pressure points. Immediately, and over the next 10 minutes, his brain waves calm down.“ If you’ve ever been hooked up to an EEG monitor, the idea of brain music and EEG therapy may sound a little less out there--to smooth out a real-time graph of your mind, your brain must enter a state I’d compare to meditation. You can tell yourself that you’re relaxed until you’re blue in the face, but the machine knows better--it forces you to be honest with yourself about what you’re really thinking. http://www.fastcodes...aves-into-music [youtubehd]XI4Mge8nLMw[/youtubehd] Not really what you'd expect from the article title, but this is probably just the tip of the iceberg as far as this type of technology is concerned. Looking forward to more innovation in this field. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest narkeworld Posted April 9, 2012 Share Posted April 9, 2012 Pierre Henry did this or something like this in the 70's. His music sounded more like noise stuff, ala Merzbow. I like it a lot. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pcock Posted April 9, 2012 Share Posted April 9, 2012 imagine if you could eventually just imagine music in your head, and hear it come out the speakers as you do. fantastic. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tontonz1 Posted April 9, 2012 Share Posted April 9, 2012 I'm curious as to how he modified the EEG to reproduce sound from signal. EEG has this sort of inherent inverse problem because it produces an output, but the output literally has an infinitesimal amount of possible inputs. Meaning that the machine can chart regional activity throughout the brain, but where the activity is coming from and how much of it is affecting the brain region is impossible to determine. Plus you run into lots of signal/noise that can throw off readings. TMS (transcranial magnetic stimulation) is basically a souped up version of EEG and can show more accurate, detailed brain activity which would, in my scientific opinion, better represent the patients brain state (and therefore more accurately represent the music being reproduced). Thats just me being nitpicky though. It is indeed a major step in the right direction and hopefully this will spur continued research on the topic. I for one am planning on going to graduate shcool for cognitive neuroscience and this field regarding music coinciding with brain activity is a particular interest of mine. Definitely made me happy seeing this on the watmm boards, as I probably wouldn't have heard about it from anywhere else. Thanks for the link hautlle! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest ryanmcallister Posted April 14, 2012 Share Posted April 14, 2012 ** waits for VST plugin version ** Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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