Technology developed to read brains and identify songs you're listening
What's the story
In a study carried out by researchers from Brazil, India, Germany, and Finland, a Magnetic Resonance (MR) machine was used to read participants' minds and figure out what song they are listening to. The machine was doing this by analyzing and decoding the signals it was receiving by their brains. The study was able to read participants' minds with 85% success.
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Machines to translate our musical thoughts into songs: Researcher
"In the future, machines will be able to translate our musical thoughts into songs. It will answer questions like what musical features make some people love a song and is our brain adapted to prefer a specific kind of music," Sebastian Hoefle from Brazil said.
Details
The machine identified brain patterns related to musical elements
The study constituted of six volunteers who were made to hear 40 different pieces of music in genres like classical, rock, pop, and jazz. The machine then captured the neural fingerprint of each song on participants' brains. The computer took into account musical elements like tonality, dynamics, rhythm, and timbre to identify the brain patterns related to them and showed up to 85% accuracy.
Information
Mind-reading technology can help establish communication with clinical patients
The study showed that if brains can be decoded with accuracy, then through machine learning, communication can be made possible without the need of written or spoken language. By enhancing brain-computer interfaces, the technology can also be greatly used to communicate with locked-in syndrome patients.