Thanks to an innovative use of a patient’s neural activity, scientists have been able to recreate the classic Pink Floyd track ‘Another Brick In The Wall’.
This was carried out by researchers, who were analysing the implanted electrodes in the brains of 29 epilepsy patients. These patients were being treated at New York’s Albany Medical Centre between 2009 and 2015.
The classic Pink Floyd track was reproduced after the patient’s neuronal activity was recorded via specially trained computers, having played the song to the patients beforehand.
As it turned out, researchers were able to pinpoint the specific spot on the temporal lobe, where patients reacted to the track’s guitar riff.
This would suggest that this part of the brain deals with guitar rhythms.
“restore the music that person had”
Speaking about this recreation, neuroscientist Gerwin Schalk told the New York Times, “You can actually listen to the brain and restore the music that person heard”.
On the track itself, Schalk said that the Pink Floyd single was also a hit with the patients.
“If they said, ‘I can’t listen to this garbage the results would not have been the same”, he said.
The wordless melodies and lyrics were also useful in analysing how the brain responds to both.
This experiment also hopes to aide scientists in their research into neurological diseases, and their impact on human communication.
They also aim to find “speech prosthetic” devices that would help people, and find the same tone of real vocal speech.
“The things that make us a lively speaker,” Schalk also added, “and not a robot”.
Speaking Of Pink Floyd
Speaking of Pink Floyd, Blink-182’S Travis Barker and Kourtney Kardashian revealed which track from the band made them fall in love with each other. The pair tied the knot last year.
Find out which one they mentioned via Nova’s report here.
