Photo: Alan Berner/The Seattle Times
Neurologist and musician Thomas Deuel, wearing a wired-up electrode cap, is researching brain activity in musicians and developing the encephalophone for people with limited motor ability so they can play by thinking.
Imagine being able to play music just by thinking about it! That day is coming, according to Brendan Kiley at the Seattle Times.
He writes, “In April of 2016, Seattle choir director and fifth-grade teacher Margaret Haney checked into the emergency room with an unusual problem — suddenly, she couldn’t sing.
“Haney had been in the classroom, trying to lead her students through George Gershwin’s ‘Summertime’ when, as she put it, ‘I failed miserably, like I never have.’ …
“The physicians ordered some brain scans and discovered she was suffering from ‘amusia’ — the inability to make music — due to a viral encephalitis infection in one section of her brain.
“After the tests, she was referred to Dr. Thomas Deuel, a Swedish neurologist who plays trumpet and guitar, studied musical composition and molecular biology at Princeton University, and then jazz at New England Conservatory in Boston. …
“Deuel had been working with DXARTS, a University of Washington program that incubates collaborations between scientists and artists. DXARTS was launched in 2001, with an emphasis on projects that boldly crisscross borders: video, performance, music, virtual reality, robotics and all-around tech-art hacking.
“Lately, Deuel had advised DXARTS on building a lab, with state-of-the-art technology to study the relationship between neurology and art (particularly music), and explore deep connections between the body and the brain. Deuel had also teamed up with UW-based physicist Felix Darvas on a neuro-musical invention: the encephalophone (pronounced ‘en-sef-ah-lo-fone’), an instrument you can play simply by thinking. …
“To play the encephalophone, a musician wears an electroencephalogram (EEG) cap fitted with electrodes that read brain waves and transmit them to a synthesizer. The EEG caps looks like a beanie without the propeller but protrudes a cluster of wires hooked up to amplifiers and computers. The instrument is a kind of ‘brain-computer interface,’ and sounds like an electric piano, electric strings, or whatever other kind of music the connected synthesizer can produce. …
“[DXARTS co-founder Juan] Pampin hopes the encephalophone will be developed enough to host a public concert of ‘brain performers’ by late 2018. …
“And Margaret Haney? Doctors … treated her with antiviral medication to halt the spread of the infection — and the instrument helped relieve her amusia.
“[Deuel says] learning to play the encephalophone ‘helped her make pitch. We weren’t able to completely cure her, but she was able to get back to singing again. We can’t prove that we’ve done a lot with just one patient, but it was a promising start.’ ”
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More fascinating developments!
The cross-fertilization of different disciplines often seems to be the catalyst for breakthroughs.