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Scientists Create Lullabies From Brain Waves
Lord Custos writes "From ABC News: Your Brain Waves are Better than Sleeping Pills! Everyone has a song in them...literally. And you can use it to put yourself to sleep. Canadian scientists have discovered that deep sleep can be induced in insomniacs by copying the insomniacs brainwaves, turning it into 'music',
and then playing this 'audio transcription' of their own sleep brainwave pattern back to them."
So do very mentally distrubed people play more intense music? What about crazy people, does theirs sound like Pink Floyd or something?
Can i get it now?
As a long suffering insomniac (which is why I'm up at 3:15am instead of snoozing) I have GOT to get me one of these.
Unless of course they're using it for some vile twisted Twilight Zone plot to convert all us insomniacs to soldier for some evil army. Of course one advantage is that we'd all tend to fall asleep at the worst possible times.
Isn't this actually 'old'? It's a well known fact you synchronize your brainwaves to the music you hear if it falls into an acceptable pattern. Heck, even look at commercial stuff like CoolEdit, which has a brainwave pattern generator built in for editing music. It even has some scripting to make your brain ready for specific things (like sleep brainwave patterns).
There are even commercial devices based on the concept. Like the flashing-glasses-beeping-headphones combo machines. And it seems only natural that you'd sleep better when you can listen to a sleep brainwave pattern tuned exactly to yours, instead of a 'general' one...
Filter out the differences among various subjects, figure out what the common patters are and we'll have a nice, common bit that should work for anybody. Cool idea. I don't have trouble sleeping most of the time, but this would be nice to have at my disposal for those "project crunch" moments.
Will it still put me to sleep if I play it really, really loud?
I wonder if it sounds anything like cat /dev/urandom > /dev/dsp. Personally, i think Seti@home executable sounds the coolest, followed by any NTFS filesystem. Dont ask me why, but sometimes it sounds like trance/techno music, even has the right BPM.
I hope mine doesn't sound anything like Brittany Spears!
take a look at this software project AutoZen.
from their site: "AutoZen is a software 'brain machine' for Linux. It generates sounds that are meant to cause the brain to temporarily shift to a different dominant frequency and cause the user to experience an altered state of consciousness. It is similar to the devices seen in the 'Sharper Image' catalog and in magazine ads, but the price is a lot more attractive!"
I quess australian aboriginals have knewn this for long. Have you ever heard someone really good play a didjeridu (didgeridoo)? Have sleeping problems? Our first son had some, then one day, we put the didjeridu cassette in the player, and not just our boy, but rest of the family felt asleep in a matter of minutes. If you have never heard with it sounds like, here is some samples. If brain waves don't sound like that, I am amazed ;))
I wonder if I can
/proc/kcore | /dev/dsp
cat
to put my computer to sleep.
I can just imagine it now - some company would go into buisness taking EEG recordings of celebrities and offering them for sale. Just imagine how many people pay to listen to the brainwaves Bill Gates, or Marylin Mason, Calista Flockhart (food bad, thin good, food bad, thin good), etc etc. I guess it all depends on your taste.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
I don't know if it's because it's late, but listening to those samples really is making me tired.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
It's an interesting experiment and I started paying attention when they mentioned that there was a placebo (it's amazing how many of these so-called experiments don't).
The fact that it works on sleep in itself is interesting but I wonder how these might apply to, say happines, or intense concentration or dare I say horniness. Just play back the brainwave of your choosing and you put yourself into the optimal state for whatever it is you want to be doing.
Sunny
Be my Friend
What better place than here to find insomniacs?
Cowboy Neal is obviously no exception to the rule:
"Posted by CowboyNeal on Thursday August 29, @02:15AM"
// file: mice.h
#include "frickin_lasers.h"
from the end of the article: "And here's the neat part. It won't become addictive. There won't be any serious side effects, like those caused by various medications that are now available." It seems to me that it could addictive. Many addictions result from the body lowering production of naturally ocuring substances because it's being replaced with the addictive substance. Remove the substance and you go into withdrawl. Who's to say that, over time, the brain wouldn't lose the ability to generate these patterns naturally? People noted the simularity of music and brain waves a long time ago. I bet with hi-fi equipment we could pull out some very cool sounding stuff. - it would be interesting to transcribe brain waves of anger/sex/high states.
"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
As the saying goes "lies, damned lies and statistics", this research proves it again: "Ten persons who had suffered from insomnia [...] For the placebo group, the improvement was only about 15 percent as compared to 75 to 85 percent for the experimental group". That means that three quarters of a person in the (5 persons) placebo group slept better, whereas 3.75 to 4.25 persons slept better with their own brain music. "10 persons is not a large group, but the project builds on numerous other related studies". Yeah right. Maybe psychiatrist Leonid Kayumov listened too much to his own brain music? (So maybe it is addictive! ;)
my other sig is a 500 page novel
I guess most people will have noticed the link appear on their browser, but this is an unusual troll mixing useful information with an infamous link.
Can we scan the enemy's brainwaves and put him to sleep? Can we scan the brainwaves of foreign dignitaries while they visit the White House, put them to sleep and steal their pocket change and state secrets while they're out cold? How long will it take to weaponize these lullabies? Can the weapon be mounted on a satellite or disguised as a pack of cigarettes?
Dammit, you should have figured these things out before announcing this. We need to know and we need to know now.
Hell, the Audigy already has every OTHER feature imaginable. "Now includes Sleep Blaster(TM) Technology via a FireWire-enabled aluminum foil hat!"
---
Siggy, siggy, siggy, can't you see? Sometimes your puns just irritate me.
Find couples that sleep very deeply together and analyze their brain waves to see if they are similar. If they are then obviously the two couples can sense each others brainwave.
A great follow up story to that would be to test to see how people detect other's brainwaves.
My prediction is that the person that we fall in love with (or are comfortable with) has a very complimentary brain-wave-pattern to our own, thus making us comfortable with them on more than just a physical/conscious level.
(Sorry about the disjointed thoughts... it is 3AM.
...And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me." - Martin Niemoeller (1892-1984)
Like many folks, I don't do drugs. (Thanks Nancy.) But, I am curious about the alledged mind expanding possibilities. If you scan someone through a trip and play it back to them to see if it compares, could you not at least experience to a lesser degree how that person tripped? If so, bring on the acid.
Someone hates these cans.
Get CoolEdit and some headphones. Use its Brainwave Synchronizer filter and experiment with alpha, delta waves (or whatever) and there you go! Pretty neat stuff actually.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Go here, scroll down to (or search for) Brainwave Synchronizer. Click Low or High Speed listen. Requires a JavaScript enabled browser.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
This may be the drug you're looking for.
Analyze existing musical lullabyes and see how they compare to sleep brainwave patterns.
... my brains would probably just produce a heap of white noise, as I can't make up my mind.
---
"The chances of a demonic possession spreading are remote -- relax."
The problem with this is that it has to be customized for each person. A more convenient solution that is already in use in infant soothing toys is a simulated heartbeat noise, like the kind a fetus would hear while inside the mother. It reminds the baby of being inside the womb, and comforts them into falling asleep faster. But I've found that this also works well even on adults, as I think this "comfort pattern" that is etched in our brains from before birth remains in our subconscious as long as we live. Far easier than mapping your brainwaves, and you can pick one up in a department store for under $50.
I wonder how effective a live version of this would be? Say you had the device read your mind and a computer turns it into "music" in real-time, then plays it back through headphones. You would be hearing your own thoughts. Would you fall asleep faster? Halucinate? No effect at all? Has their been any research to see if we can understand raw brainwaves, even if they are our own? Say we record a thoughts with music just like the article, then hear it, would we jump to what we thinking about during the recording? Would it begin an feedback loop?
10 Think a thought
20 Hear that thought
30 Think about heard thought
40 Goto 20?
Urgo: "I want to live. I want to experience the universe and I want to eat pie!"
Jack: "Who doesn't??"
As I understand it, sleep activates the brains method of "garbage collecting". In other words, while you sleep your thoughts get better organized and your mind detaches unused information. If you're willing to forego THAT (read: become a raving lunatic), then go right ahead and do without sleep. Just let the rest of the world know when you hit the one-week barrier again, so we can stay out of your reach.
But it would depend on your definition of "nap". Does it last 1 hour? 2 maybe? I seem to recall the garbage collection stuff being related to REM sleep, which starts about 1 hour into your sleep (figure pulled entirely from memory). So naps of 2 hours or so should definately help you keep your mind, but in the long run you'll probably just have to come to turns with the fact that we're DESIGNED (creationist?/Darwinist? - still true) to need sleep.
Black holes are where God divided by zero
Similar to AutoZen is SBaGen, which lets you build scripts to be played over time. For Linux, Windows, and OSX.
-- [ta]
The poster is referring to "light and sound machines", which can induce brainwaves using blinking lights and beeping. They're great for helping to induce a hypnotic state and also to induce sleep. Do a Google search to find out more...
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
The good Doctor (Asimov) wrote a story about this very effect: "When the Saints".
In the story, a musician is hired by a psychologist to assist in a research project. They are recording the brainwaves of depressed patients, diffing them against the brain waves of normal folks, inverting the difference, and feeding that back into the patient with sound and laserlight. It works, sort of, for a while.
They hire the musician because (rough quote) "...while the laser light is precise enough to convey the information, the sound isn't. We need somebody to work out what part of the sound is important, and what part isn't."
The musician takes the tapes and goes away for a while. When he returns, he says, "Here's a tape. Try this." The psychologist cues the tape up for the patient. After the session, the patient says "I think I'm cured - before I always could feel the depression in the back of my mind, but it's gone now!" "Did you notice anything different about the therapy?" "Well, maybe the light was a bit sharper..." "What about the sound?" "I really didn't notice the sound..."
After the patient leaves, the psychologist asks the musician what he did, and would he consider a position on the staff.
(Roughly quoting the musician)
"No need - the work's already been done. I noticed the patterns were like some music I know - revival hymns. I gave him the best of the lot - When The Saints Go Marching In"
Dr. Asimov wrote this for an Audio magazine, and the story appears in some of his story collections. Good stuff.
www.eFax.com are spammers
my inner monologue of music music by chance be the right stuff to put me out. I can sleep pretty much all the time unless I have major stimulants in my system.
in fact, today I slept through my alarm and was late for work.
also, for me personally, if I turn up classical music I get vaguely annoyed and can't sleep - but if I crank say Tool, Rage Against the Machine, or even older stuff like Killing Joke - then I'm out like a light.
My freshman year of college I scared my roommate on the first day there by falling asleep on the floor with White Zombie blasting on the stereo. he opened the door into my head and I didn't wake up.
I personally don't care about these studies to help me sleep - I do that quite well. I want to know how to stay awake.
There are some odd things afoot now, in the Villa Straylight.
This kind of work has been done for about 25 years at The Monroe Institute in Virginia, USA. They have a number of recordings of brain synchronization tones available for sale that induce sleep, deep trance states, and encourage self-awareness in various ways.
Some of them come with voice overlays to encourage the user to have certain kinds of insights and experiences. It's great to see this kind of research becoming more mainstream; there's a lot of potential for helping kids with ADD, insomniacs, etc.
it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.
SCIENCE!!
Assuming that the pattern of brain activity is always roughly the same when you're trying to fall asleep, this follows logically from a tenet of biological psychology called Hebb's principle. It states that when two neurons fire together, the connection between them is strengthened.
To explain, I'm going to invent a symbology. X,Y,Z, and K represent neurons in different regions of the brain. I'll create an arbitrary pattern that represents when each of those neurons fire. Let's say that as you fall asleep you normally have a pattern like: XYZYYKKZXK. (I intentionally avoided using A, B, C here for the musical connotations therein.) Let's say it's mapped into music now:
XYZYYKKZXK (neurons firing)->
ABCBBGGCAG (notes played)
When you hear the note A, a particular region of your auditory centers is activated. When you hear B, a slightly different region is activated, and so on. Coincidentally, a lot of your auditory processing takes place in your brain stem, which is also where a lot of sleep-related functions take place, such as shutting down the body's muscles so you don't sleepwalk every night, but this coincidence isn't necessary for this explanation to work.
So you listen to your personalized auditory mapping and attempt to fall asleep. Because you're trying to fall asleep, even if you're insomniac, neurons for X will be a little more likely to fire, then neurons for Y, then Z, and so on. At the same time, neurons for A are firing, then B, then C.
According to Hebb, the synchonicity of these events will cause a physical connection between the neurons to strengthen, regardless of how much neural distance separates them. All the neurons in between will get activated a little bit, and the more they fire together, the more the entire system of connections becomes stronger. You've directly mapped sleep waves into music, so the synchronicity will be very strong. Consequently, the connection between the auditory centers and your sleep centers will get stronger very quickly.
Make that connection strong enough, and you will eventually be able to cause XYZK to fire by playing ABCG, in essence sending a message to your brain stem via your speakers. Do this long enough, and the feedback may go in the other direction as well: you may start to hear the music every time you fall asleep, regardless of whether it's actually playing.
Theoretically this would work by mapping those brain waves into just about anything you can perceive, not just sound, although it may work better with sound. For example, mapping it into images would certainly work; you could take the entire discussion above, replace "auditory centers" with "visual centers", and you get the same explanation.
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
Can we measure brain waves when people are excited, or sexually aroused, and then make music out of that? I bet it would sell like crazy.
Well! This is a most interesting discovery. Let's take a quick trip into the minds of various people in various cultures, and find out just what they've got knocking around in their gray matter.
From the mind of a somewhat suicidal insomniac in San Francisco: Van Halen's "Jump."
From that of a gay preacher in Biloxi, MS: Barry Manilow's "It's a Miracle."
From the neurons of the 3M rep for adhesive products in Irkutsk, Russia: Lionel Richie's "Stuck on you."
A cabbie on the run from Heathrow airport in London to the downtown hotels was found to have "You Picked a Fine Time to Leave me, Loose Wheel" rattling around in his skull (and lug nuts rattling around in his trunk -- pardon me, 'boot').
In Australia, a most sleepless LAN technician, one Arthur 'Sparks' McGill, was startled to find Icehouse's "Electric Blue" firmly embedded in his alpha waves.
Finally, back here in the States, Slashdot's owner, Rob "Commander Taco" Malda surprised no one by having that (in)famous filk track Mr. Compatibility stuck so firmly in his brain stem that not even a jackhammer was able to dislodge it.
That's all for now. Tune in again next week for another installment of "Spot the Looney!"
Bruce Lane, KC7GR,
Blue Feather Technologies
Naw, my wife would get pissed when it starts to play cheezy porno themes.
Table-ized A.I.
Just a few years afterwards, they separated the command posts from the batteries and started moving the batteries after every one to three salvoes.
Money for nothing, pix for free