Music of the brain stress level

Abstract

The following report describes the development of a sonification system that takes a

human brain EEG and transforms it into a piece of music. 2 EEG signals would

undergo the sonification process and the musical pieces between an EEG under stress

and an EEG under relaxation were taken and compared. This sonification system

could be in the useful in analyzing the complex nature of the signal, especially in the

area of neurofeedback therapy.

The system was created using Matlab to extract the useful signal information and to

apply the sonification rules. This produced the musical note data. A music creation

software is used to convert the musical note data into the musical piece. The

sonification rules adopted were from a separate study entitled “Scale-Free Music of

the Brain”.

The 2 musical pieces created had distinct differences in the areas of pitch and volume

changes with the musical piece from the EEG under stress having sharper changes.

In the area of rhythm, the EEG under relaxation produced a musical piece that had a

livelier rhythm than the musical piece of the EEG under stress.

The resulting musical pieces could mislead the listener as the fast rhythms of the

EEG under relaxation might indicate that the musical piece was from the EEG under

stress instead. Therefore, a change in the sonification rules could be useful in making

the 2 pieces more characteristically distinct.