Neuroscientists Reconstruct Pink Floyd Song by Listening to Patients' Brainwaves

Neuroscientists have successfully reconstructed a Pink Floyd song from brain recordings. During epilepsy surgeries, researchers at Albany Medical Center played Pink Floyd's "Another Brick in the Wall, Part 1" while recording brain activity from electrodes on patients' brains.

This endeavor aimed to decode the brain's response to musical attributes like tone, rhythm, harmony, and words. After a comprehensive analysis of data from 29 patients, the researchers succeeded in reconstructing a muffled version of Pink Floyd's 1979 song.

The song's partial phrase, "All in all, it was just a brick in the wall," can be heard, including its rhythms. It marks the first time a recognizable song has been reconstructed from brain recordings.

Capturing Musical Elements From Brain Recordings

The study showcases the feasibility of capturing musical elements of speech, known as prosody, which includes rhythm, stress, accent, and intonation. These elements convey meanings beyond the words themselves.

While this technology currently requires intracranial electroencephalography (iEEG) recordings from the brain's surface, it holds the potential for aiding individuals with communication difficulties, such as stroke or paralysis patients.

Dr. Robert Knight, a neurologist and UC Berkeley professor, expressed enthusiasm about the findings. He noted that music's prosody and emotional content offer valuable additions to brain-machine interfaces for individuals with neurological disorders affecting speech.

However, current noninvasive techniques, like scalp EEG, are less accurate and may require further development to be applicable. Dr. Ludovic Bellier, a postdoctoral fellow involved in the study, also shared his excitement for the project.

He highlighted the potential of recording brain activity outside the skull using sensitive electrodes to capture deeper brain regions' signals. That could potentially offer less invasive communication methods for individuals with speech impairments.

"Noninvasive techniques are just not accurate enough today. Let's hope, for patients, that in the future we could, from just electrodes placed outside on the skull, read activity from deeper regions of the brain with a good signal quality. But we are far from there," Bellier said in a statement.

Pink Floyd's 'Another Brick in the Wall'

The study describes the accomplishment as "another brick in the wall of our understanding of music processing in the human brain." The researchers hold a positive outlook regarding the potential for decoding brain waves to enhance communication.

Present brain-machine interfaces offer communication with a robotic quality, but future progress could infuse communication with greater expressive musicality, especially for those in need. The study's achievement corresponds with the ongoing investigation into deciphering brain signals for communication purposes.

While certain methods rely on signals from the brain's motor areas to translate intended speech into text, the recent study suggests that auditory regions responsible for various aspects of sound can capture pivotal components of human communication.

The researchers identified novel brain regions responsible for detecting rhythm and confirmed the right hemisphere's heightened responsiveness to music compared to language. The findings of the team were published in the journal PLoS Biology.