Neuroscience researchers in China have created a method of transforming brainwaves into music by combining EEG and fMRI scans into sounds that are recognizable to human beings. The EEG adjusts the pitch and duration of a note, while the fMRI controls the intensity of the music.  According to Jing Lu and his associated colleagues from the University of Electronic Science and Technology in China,  this brain music, “embodies the workings of the brain as art, providing a platform for scientists and artists to work together to better understand the links between music and the human brain.”

Applying EEG and fMRI data to make better music represents the limitless opportunities of the brain, potentially leading to improvements useful for research, clinical diagnosis or biofeedback therapy. In fact, researchers at the Department of Homeland Security’s Science and Technology Directorate have already looked at a form of neuro-training called ‘Brain Music’, which uses music created from an individual’s brain waves to help the individual move from an anxious state to a relaxed state.

A sample of brain music of a patient at resting state is here:

Beats By Brain

Sources:

Remixed Brain Waves Reveal Soundtrack of the Human Brain – Science News

Brainwaves Translated Into Music for Cerebral Soundtrack – Wired

Listen to the sounds of the human mind: Remixed brain scans reveal our inner music – Daily Mail

A recent study found that musical aptitude seems to have a relationship with reading ability. This study directly relates literacy with inherent musical aptitude that the researchers are able to measure, which is something that you’re born with and that does not magically appear by listening to classical music on repeat. While they do examine the inherent musical aptitude, the study suggests that we might be able to prescribe some sort of musical curriculum that could potentially improve literacy in children. So, yes, all those weird to-be-moms holding heavy duty headphones up to their baby bumps blasting Mozart may be on to something.

This study prodded at the likely relationship by examining 42 normal hearing children. Each child was tested on their reading ability as well as their musical aptitude (specifically whether they can distinguish different melodies and/or rhythms). During the musical aptitude tests, brain stem activity was measured as well. After collecting all this data and completing a few statistical measures, the researchers discovered a significant relationship between musical aptitude and reading abilities.

How did the researchers end up at this finding? Well, when presented with rhythmic sounds or a melody, children with poor reading skills had less brain activity compared to those with higher reading ability. In the study, it appears that both rhythm and tone have a correlation with reading. The results show that there are “common neural and cognitive mechanisms for reading and music abilities that may operate, at least in part, via corticofugal shaping of sensory function.” They were even able to conclude that musical aptitude is estimated to predict about forty percent of the difference in reading ability between children.

Impressive, no? If researchers, educators and parents take this information to heart, we may have some super species of musical and well-versed children on our hands. But in all seriousness, this study does conclude that if we can pinpoint the parts of the brain that connect music and reading skills, we could definitively show the strong relationship between musical aptitude and reading ability.

If the relationship is concrete, maybe more arts and music education would be worked into public and private schools to improve literacy in children. And what a fine world that would be.

Subcortical processing of speech regularities underlies reading and music aptitude in children – BioMed Central

What comes to mind when you think of Friday? Friends. A night off from work. Movies. Fun. Rebecca Black? Yikes. I don’t mean to remind you of such a low point in the history of American pop-culture but there is, in fact, a small amount of useful information to be extracted from the phenomenon that is Rebecca Black. Why did her music spread like an epidemic through the minds of millions of teens and adults worldwide? This event can be loosely related to what the Germans like to call an öhrwurm.

The term öhrwurm literally translates in English to “earworm”, and can be described as that inescapable occurrence of getting a song stuck in your head for an hour, a day, or even months at a time. The term is misleading in that the repetition of music does not occur in the ear but within the brain. For an experience that is so familiar to most people there is still much unknown as to how and why one contracts this stuck song syndrome.

One man that has put some time into the issue is Professor James Kellaris of the University of Cincinnati. He coined the term “cognitive itch” to describe his theory of the instance of getting a song stuck in one’s head because the only way to satisfy the feeling is to repeat the song over and over inside the mind (kind of like scratching an itch). He has found that there are certain kinds of music and songs that tend to induce an unusual reaction in the auditory cortex. This extra attention that is paid to a small part of a song produces the “itch”, which then starts the vicious cycle of repetition. Simple songs that are catchy and repetitive are found to be the one’s most often plaguing the mind, as well as songs with unpredicted rhythm changes. This is why “Don’t Stop Believin’” or “Hey Jude” will continue to live on decades after their original heyday in American culture.

Research so far has been unable to uncover the exact biological mechanisms of this phenomenon. A recent study done at Dartmouth University, however, has shed some light on not only how the auditory cortex (the area where the brain processes most of the external auditory stimuli it receives) may be involved in producing this odd effect, but also on some other areas of the brain and how they are involved in producing the “earworm” as well. Using magnetic resonance imaging techniques it was found that when a patient is exposed to a catchy tune with some parts of the song missing here and there, the auditory cortex does not just shut down or anything during these silent gaps. In fact, if the song is recognizable the brain will fill in the missing pieces and effectively continue the song even when it is not playing! The brain’s ability to retain auditory signatures makes it possible for us to preserve “many structural and temporal properties of auditory stimuli” such as songs. This discovery indicates that the auditory cortices of the brain are most likely involved in the occurrence of earworms. Besides the primary and secondary auditory cortices though, blood flow has been found to increase in such other areas as the primary motor cortex, frontal operculum, insula, posterior cerebellum, and basal ganglia when the brain is exposed to “novel melody” or monotonic vocalization. When a repeated melody is heard, there is also additional stimulation in the planum polare (BA 38). Further study of these brain regions has the potential to reveal more about not just the mystery behind earworms, but also about the complex memory systems of the mind.

It has also been shown that there are people who are more prone to earworms than others based on gender, physical characteristics, and personality. For example, women are more likely to be affected by a stuck song for a longer period of time than men. Supposedly left-handed people and people with anxiety disorders like OCD are more likely to catch an earworm, and so are people who are more musically inclined (most likely because they listen to more music than the average person). So if you are a left-handed, obsessive compulsive female musician and just can’t get rid of that annoying background music that’s been in your head all day, try a few of these tactics: turn on the radio, play a different song for yourself (on one of the many instruments you have at hand), listen to that song, or try to pass the misery along to someone else.

The “earworm” phenomenon, and the ability for a simple melody to last months, or even years inside the mind is just another one of the many fascinating aspects of the brain. Because of this ability, I am stuck here with Britney Spears on replay in my head at the moment. But, hey, at least it’s not “Friday.”

And in case you don’t have an earworm of your own here is a video that will give you a few (and maybe a laugh too…)

Earworms (stuck song syndrome): Towards a Natural History of Intrusive Thoughts – British Journal of Psychology

The Song System of The Human Brain – Cognitive Brain Research

Why Do Songs Get Stuck in Your Head? – Word Detective

Science of Music – Exploratorium

Why Do Songs Get Stuck in Your Head? – The Straight Dope

We’ve all been exposed to jazz at one time or another—whether it be the musings of an accomplished jazz pianist or the improvisational skills of a saxophone player, jazz is something that’s familiar to us. But, when enjoying such a piece of music, we may not have considered the effect it has on the musician’s brain.

Charles Limb, musician and researcher at Johns Hopkins University, is specifically interested in the workings of the brain during musical improvisation. In order to better understand these mechanisms, he studied the brains of accomplished jazz musicians playing music in an fMRI machine.

The two pillars of his study—playing music which has been memorized and over-learned, and playing music which has been entirely improvised—were designed to pinpoint which brain regions were most active in each situation, as well as to see how differing amounts of creativity play a role in brain activity. Limb asked participants to first play a memorized piece of music on a specially designed keyboard, and then to improvise based on the scale progression of the previous piece.

What he found was quite interesting.

In the studies, Limb observed that, compared to the fMRI of brains playing memorized music, those playing improvised music typically had a higher amount of activation in the medial prefrontal cortex, an area attributed to self-expression, and a lower amount of activation in the lateral prefrontal cortex, an area attributed to self-monitoring. He postulates that in order for an individual to be creative, they must exhibit a sort of dissociation in the frontal lobe by which the large part of the brain controlling self-monitoring is not inhibiting self-expression of new, free-flowing ideas.

More recently, Limb has been studying another form of improvisational music, which he believes serves a similar social function to that of jazz—hip-hop. To do this, he has recruited the talents of accomplished hip-hop artists from the Baltimore hip-hop scene and studied their brain activity while they rap. The structure of the study is similar to that of the jazz pianists in that it was separated into two parts—one to study brain activity while performing a memorized piece and one to study brain activity while improvising. The participants were asked first to rap a piece written by Limb (which they had not seen before), and then to improvise based on a guideline of periodically prompted words. Though the study is not yet complete and no conclusive results are available, what Limb has seen so far has been quite promising.

Outside of Limb’s unique research, no extensive work has been done yet to study these phenomena. However, these results prove to be very promising in that they can offer new ways to think about creativity and the brain. Perhaps sometime in the future, with more sophisticated methods of brain imaging, it will be possible to understand the workings of the brain in other creative realms, such as dance. These and many other questions are coming closer to having answers.

Charles Limb: Your Brain on Improv – Video on TED.com

TED Blog – Hip-hop, creativity and the brain: Q&A with Dr. Charles Limb