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Neurofeedback & Music

12:29 / 23.07.03

From Ananova wire service:

Scientists have improved the performance of musicians by up to 17% by teaching them to control their thoughts.

and

Researchers from Imperial College London used a technique called neurofeedback to help the students change their brain activity.

Sensors were attached to their heads that filtered out specific brainwaves.

These influenced a video game displayed on a screen, which the students learned to control by altering particular thought patterns.

The training led to improvement in a number of areas, including musical understanding, imagination, and communication with the audience. Two experiments were conducted, involving a total of 97 students. In both, students were assessed on two pieces of music before and after the neurofeedback sessions by a panel of expert judges.

and

But students given the "deep relaxation" neurofeedback protocol improved the most. Their improvement ranged between 13.5% and 17%.

*

14:59 / 23.07.03

How does one put a percentage on the improvement of a musical performance, I wonder? Still, neat. I wonder when I could get that videogame...

15:58 / 23.07.03

The percentage came from a panel of judges (professors?) evaluating two performances along a set of criteria that included creative interpretation and connection with the audience -- probably treating the performances like they would auditions.

*

16:23 / 23.07.03

Wow. Objectivity out of subjectivity. Actually it reminds me of Fermi's methods. Fermi derives accuracy from estimation by relying on the flaws in the estimates to balance each other out, and these judges derive a quantifiable result from a qualitative system by relying on the discrepancies in the qualitative judgements to balance out.

23:47 / 23.07.03

...so basically, the scientists were manually tweeking the students ability to focus. Wonder if they could compare it to the recent use of ritalin in schools to get some idea on the use of substance/technique to enhance performance.

23:55 / 23.07.03

Weird... and very interesting. I'd heard anecdotal evidence about classical music helping performance at maths and other 'logical' studies, but not something that aided musicians directly. My guess is that since most musicians are under some amount of stress or anxiety pretty much constantly, even temporary release would make a significant difference to their performance. Probably physcially as well as mentally.

Most music colleges in the UK now offer some form of physical therapy, like Alexander Technique or Pilates, so I wouldn't be surprised if they dedcided to branch out. Performance anxiety is perhaps the greastest mental challenge of all.

Has anyone ever done a similar experiment comparing those who meditate frequently?

03:35 / 24.07.03

Probably, but I'm not in a headspace to construct a decent search tonight. No concentration....

...ba da blik...

Anyway, I wonder if they're also doing research with binaural beats?

07:24 / 24.07.03

Slightly off topic, but if anyone's interested in experimenting with this stuff, there's an excellent open source project to build an EEG machine at The OpenEEG project

16:16 / 24.07.03

Thanks Mutley, I was just going to comment on how much I'd love to play with one of these

13:23 / 28.07.03

They've been calling it "bio-feedback" for the past 40 years. Why change the name now?

The Knights Templar Boogie Machine

17:32 / 29.07.03

yeah, why change the name?

18:15 / 02.01.07

Biofeedback is a more general term that covers feedback from all different sources on the body, including heart rate, skin conductivity and temperature, blood pressure, and brain signals. Neurofeedback is specific to the brain.
For others like me who don't have the money or time to build or buy an EEG machine, take a look at www.bwgen.com for a program that creates audio tracks designed to alter your brainwaves. There's no feedback loop from your brain to the computer, but you can get a sense of the states that you are trying to reach.
(First post! All right!)

RichT's boring old name

20:00 / 10.01.07

EEG signals have been used in music for over 40 years now, with Alvin Lucier starting it all with his Music For Solo Performer.

It's interesting the fact that the researchers turned it around here, although would any of the students be actually playing an EEG in the assessed performaces? I suspect their peformances would be improved there.

To be honest I don't think the results of the experiment, at least from what I've read can prove correlation between conscious brainwave control and musical performace ability, I think any other technique which would encourage relaxation and concentration to produce similar results.

Although I'm quite tempted to get some electrodes and plug them into my soundcard now...

21:59 / 10.01.07

centre i used to work for [cue: loud sigh...] is working with creating devices for neural feedback. idea is to get the brain (mind) to use its lesser areas to control where control is generally overridden by the frontal cortex concept-generator bits.

the idea is that we have all the sense data come in, then processed and lost to use as discrete data. NF is to be used to re-access that detail and re-use in novel ways. rekkun musical performance could be altered (what is 'better'?) by this, as could perhaps poetry composition, game playing - a serious commercial uotcome sought for the developing partners - and the like.

keep those eyes peeled...

01:01 / 12.03.07

I'm mostly a lurker here, but I felt a need to post on this.

I've been treated with Neurofeedback(QEEG as it's sometimes called) to treat my ADHD.....I was diagnosed with ADHD at the age of 5 years. My Mom said "Hell NO!!" to putting me on a Ritalin prescription (many sincere thanks to my Mom for that)....anyways, after a lifetime of 'living with it', I found out about Neurofeedback and thought I'd give it a try.

I do believe it made an impact upon my ADHD...did it cure it?..not sure, but I do feel a bit more 'centered' and less 'scattered'.
I cut my visits to the neurofeedback practitioner short as I was moving out of town and was low on money at that time anyways.

Really, the biggest issue, as I see it, with Neurofeedback as a means to treat ADHD is that the insurance companies won't cover it.
Again, I quit doing it when I did due to this.

I do think it's been proven in various ways to have an impact on ones brain waves. An excerpt from the Wikipedia entry on Neurofeedback:
=======================
From 1974 until his retirement in 1995 Quirk trained 2700 felons incarcerated at the Ontario Correctional Institute near Toronto using temperature at the left ring finger, skin conductance (palm to palm), and EEG detected at Ten-20 sites C-3 and C-4. The three year recidivism rate for these felons was 15%, which compares well to the range of 40-70% widely reported in the correction literature.
=======================

Be this as it may, the medical community is slow to recognize it as an alternative to drugs(Ritalin, Adderal, Focalin, etc...).

I'm sure this slowness to accept has -nothing- at all to do with the Big Pharma lobby and it's multi millions of dollars it spends lobbying members of the FDA and the NIMH.

At any rate, all political opinions aside, I think we(humans) are just scratching the tip of the iceberg of what we can do with Neurofeedback.

02:35 / 02.05.07

It's looking like the Pentagon is catching up to Neurofeedback.