Thought Control Game Helps Musicians

Thanks to Ananova for their article discussing a videogame controlled by brainwaves that helps musicians play better. According to the piece, "Scientists have improved the performance of musicians by up to 17% by teaching them to control their thoughts... Sensors were attached to their heads that filtered out specific brainwaves. These influenced a video game displayed on a screen, which the students learned to control by altering particular thought patterns." At the end of all this, "a panel of expert judges" proclaimed the 'deep relaxation' neurofeedback as having a significantly positive effect on the musicians' playing.

Comments

Re:How scientific.

[fleafan]

The scale of improvement among Royal College of Music students taking part in the study was equivalent to one grade.

I'll take a wild guess and say that the Royal College of Music has six grades, where one grade ~17% of the total skills you are supposed to learn.

Aside from that, being a musician myself, I know from personal experience that being relaxed and focused really helps your playing, not only technically but very much creatively. This mental state is what musicians refer to as being in the mood, and it slightly resembles the kind of trance that you achieve when you meditate.
Consider why so many musicians use drugs. Being drunk makes you unfocused and most musicians play like shit when they're drunk. Weed (for some) on the other hand often narrows your focus. This is also very much the case for amphetamine and cocaine.
The ability to consciously put yourself in the mood is a very important one for musicians, so this is not as far-fetched as it might seem. I wish the article went into more detail.

Re:More research

[gmaestro]

It will be interesting to see if they can apply this same type of technology to help increase other types of brainwave activity.

They do use this kind of thing (biofeedback) for certain mental conditions, like ADD. When the learner has "focused" brain waves, s/he does better at the game.

This article reminds me of the "Mozart effect." Fellow musicians proclaimed it to be the reason we teach music . . . until the "effect" was proven quite temporary. But hopefully this will turn out to have some long term effects, as the learner takes an active role in the process, whereas subjects in the the Mozart experiments were entirely passive.

Other Areas?

[Saige]

I can't help wonder what other types of activities would get enhancement from these biofeedback techniques. Could I use the attention-focusing biofeedback system for a while, and find my ability to focus attention to one thing improved overall? And similarly with learning to relax better when I need to?

I would love to see such things made more widely available if there are benefits for the rest of us.