The Elvira Experiment

Give us an overview of your project

two ideas put together.

music can cause trance states. trance states are marked by increases of theta waves from the brain, measurable with an EEG (about 6-8 Hz)

for years neurology insisted the cortex was hard-wired after infancy. this does not prove to be true. the area of the brain that processes somatosensory information can shift to process audio. neural maps physically rearrange themselves in reaction to ongoijng environmental needs. to the brain, all input is the same.

What brought you to this project?

curiosity. i read (too much) and wonder what the conversation would be like if only all these authors could sit around the same table.

particularly, this project, puts together recent developments in neurology, music (therapy) and anthropology. with some input from electrical engineering.

Fill us in on the background

There are experiments, where live visual info is represented as tactile "animation" for blind people. (Pictured is Bach Y Rita's experiment where visual info is delivered via electrodes felt by the tongue)

What happens is, the brain is rather flexible and able to "see" information processed by tactile senses, using another section. given an unnatural presentation of the data (animating what is normally tangible) and feeding the data to the tactile center, allows a brain to do the job of the visual center. Using a similar brain re-mapping strategy, music (which is processed uniquely from simply noise) can be “heard” via touch.



i also talked with a few people who had good insights. there's no way to mention everybody, but here are some names that stood out.
Dr. Neal Lesh (AI guy)
Ed Arthurs (retired, from Bell Labs)
Bill Shapiro (the audiologist/programmer who works with my ABI (Artificial Brainstem Implant))
Dan O'Sullivan (my spiritual advisor ... of course i am a robot)
Danny Rozin (the mechanics of his physical mirrors are not unlike what i am proposing. he sends a list of numeric values from a camera to an array of motors. i am using a mic instead, but need to isert a lot of "filtering" to make the data more meaningful for music purposes. but i'll also be sending the numbers to an array of motors.)

these are classes where we covered one or more of these topics:
art and the brian - michael barnwell,
the world pixel by pixel - danny rozin,
computers for the rest of you - dan o'sullivan,
interactive design for children - frank migliorelli,
live image processing and performance - luke dubois,
intro to physical computing - tom igoe,
communications lab - marrianne petit

Who is your target audience

the odd researcher, curious intellectual and circus freak.

Run us through an ideal scene/scenario

i am deaf. when i feel stressed, perhaps i should sit on a bass drum.

What's it made of? What's the gameplan?

The goal here is to see the results of the test. The test was far from ideal in so many ways, but the results were "good enough". The readings showed quite clearly that theta waves do increase dramatically in the presence of sensory info when music is delivered via some sence. While there was a large range of changes for each sensory test over a 12 minute period, the range was about double whether there was or wasn't stimuli. Furthermore, it made no significant difference (the points were intertwined and probably quite arbitrarily fluctuated) which sense the music came from!

Particullarly with so short a test, not much could be said. But the brain reacted similarly whether the same info arrived via the eyes, the ears or the skin. The reaction was not merely to sensory data, but a reaction that tends to indicate music. (For instance, this trance-like reaction, presumably does not happen in responce to seeing a firetruck, hearing children playing, stubbing one's toe, etc)


In so short of a test, the trance state is not fully reached. The speed it happens varies from individual to individual (and often, not at all) but the brain does at least begin reacting immediately (even in cases where it never actually gets very far).

There are also a great deal of variables that are just not going to overcome stress in under 12 minutes. many subjects were students with finals coming up. their waves were usually the most chaotic. one subject, with very well-tuned waves had just returned from vacation the night before. on one day of testing, it was cold and rainy. every test instance had huge caveats with it.


Meanwhile, I built a grid of motors to create music tactily, and silently. A huge endeavor, that was almost over whgen I discovered the current software i wrote would not do the job I wanted.

while Processing is ideal when you are in a crunch for time, Java has harsh memory limits. analyzing audio via FFT requires lots of memory fast. (uploaded with this is a chart, showing that a sample rate of 1024 clearly does nbot articulate notes in the lowest register of the piano range. And that is actually avbout where we need to look most.) It ends up the software I wrote would not analyze the frequencies low enough. C/C++ probably would.

But even Tom has never written C code for communicating via seriual (to a circuit board). This is an easy task for Processing. But in C, I would be on my own. Serial conmunication is not in hot demand, annd no source code or tutorials could be found in time.


Instead, I customized a sub woofer. It was attached to an inflatable lounge chair, this as the speaker received sound, you could feel it all over your body. The music was faintly audible, but very feel-able. Hardly ideal, but by comparing the results of the audio only stimuli, the results were useful. They were about the same.


Interestingly, the visual music test averaged slightly higher (with a slight dip during the Mozart piece?) Which actually may be accounted for by the slight neural density of V1. The Visual cortex is one of the only slightly unhomogenous regions of the grey matter. It is a bit more dense with neurons. Not that it is permanently located, but it is certainly eager to have lots of input to process.


while i have hardly hit on a definitive result, this battery of testing does very nicely indicate that music induced trance via other senses and neuroplasticity is rather viable. This is what, after 4+ months i wanted to see, and found the answer was "yes".

What did you learn/discover/break?

I got my answer. That's all that counts (at least for me). Though it wasn't easy and it took a huge round-about way to get here. Further details were no shortcoming of this experiment. They would require a few thousand dollars (I budgeted this) and at least another year, though probably two. In fact, it is somewhat amazing I was able to do this within the money/time constraints at hand. But it paid off.


Though music triggers the trance state, it is not the auditory nature of the frequencies per se. Pitches are the catalyst. The music is essential, but not that it need be auditory stimuli. Rythmic lights and vibrating motors, serve the same purpose as a (often several hour) shamanistic ritual song. We are simply rarely exposed to these alternative musical stimuli that long.