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Games Entertainment

Thought Control Game Helps Musicians 36

Posted by simoniker from the insert-spooky-theremin-effects-here dept.
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.
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Thought Control Game Helps Musicians More

Thought Control Game Helps Musicians

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  • Lara Croft (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    This should lead the way to a Tomb Raider game in which Lara Croft acts out your innermost unspoken fantasies.
  • Exactly 17%, hm? Not 19.5, or 12, but a 17 percent improvement in musical performance? Their measuring scale, according to the article: "the equivalent of one grade". At least that part is in terms the people IMing in the back of the concert hall to each other will understand, but the 17% part is just ridiculous.

    • Re:How scientific. (Score:2, Interesting)

      by fleafan ( 547786 )

      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

      • I actually knew a guy that only played(piano) when he was drunk. And he was damn good. He had to have someone help him to the piano, but once he got sat down, he played like a professional...

        Offtopic, I know. But an example that maybe most musicians don't play worse when drunk...
    • From the Article: "Their improvement ranged between 13.5% and 17%."

      Where does it say exactly?
      • Yeah, it doesn't say exactly, but one still has to wonder how exactly they measured that. It's not like musical ability is something you can pick up and place on a scale.

        Were they given ratings by judges of some kind and difference in ratings before and after measured out? Or is there some more quantitative measurement they were able to make? Or maybe they just had all the musicians compete at DDR or some other rythem game before and after and compared the scores =P

        • The article states that they were assessed on two pieces of music both before and after the experiment by a panel of judges.

          I'd assume they were known pieces of music. At that point, it'd be quite easy to judge on at least the accuracy of the performance, though they also judged on imagination and communication with the audience (the latter would be pretty hard to judge imo, but the former should be easy if the pieces have some portion in which the student could experiment a bit).

          Most long-time students c
  • Cause I bet the Holophonor would be right at the top.

  • Yikes! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Decaffeinated Jedi ( 648571 ) on Friday July 25, 2003 @07:10AM (#6530701) Homepage Journal
    Sensors were attached to their heads that filtered out specific brainwaves...
    You can read more about this fascinating new study in this month's New England Journal of Evil.

    DecafJedi

  • Sign me up (Score:3, Funny)

    by truffle ( 37924 ) on Friday July 25, 2003 @07:25AM (#6530765) Homepage
    When is the playstation 2 version coming out?
    • You may be joking, but I truly feel the next big 'killer app' of gaming will come in the form of thought control. It is an input device with which you are both intimately familiar, and completely mystified by. How cool would it be to have a fighting game that made your character more powerful (DBZ style) based on how focused you were? Or a music generation game that made music and visuals based on thought patterns? Not only would this be incredibly cool to play, but the 'home science experiment' aspect

  • Cool (Score:1)

    by GigsVT ( 208848 )
    These influenced a video game displayed on a screen, which the students learned to control by altering particular thought patterns.

    Does anyone else think it would look badass to go to an arcade, put a helmet on, and use your brainwaves to kick someone's ass at a fighting game?

    We are one step closer to using the force!
  • It will be interesting to see if they can apply this same type of technology to help increase other types of brainwave activity. Perhaps this could be used to improve overall concentration. I could see this being applied to vital professions to reduce accidents.

    • Re:More research (Score:3, Interesting)

      by gmaestro ( 316742 )
      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

  • Sure if you tell them they'll play better...
  • Greaaaat... this is exactly what we don't need. If this ever takes off on a large scale, people will start developing more advanced techniques for neuralfeedback. Once this happens, and people are able (if at all possible) to control their neural responses well enough, we will see senseless mental masturbation. Just setting up thought patterns in the correct way to cause absolute ecstacy. If this becomes possible, I fear for humanity.
    • You know I think people said the same thing about internet porn when it started to get big. What's wrong with mental masturbation?

      At least with this contraption we don't have to unzip our pants.
      • because a brief moment of limited ecstacy is different than being able to stimulate your entire pleasure center for an indefinite ammount of time. (minutes, hours,.... days)
  • So when does the mind control rock and roll shootout mod come out for Half Life?

  • However... (Score:5, Funny)

    by GypC ( 7592 ) on Friday July 25, 2003 @10:21AM (#6532247) Homepage Journal

    The scientists conducting the experiment neglected to mention that spending the same amount of time rehearsing improved their skills by 25%.

  • Other Areas? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Saige ( 53303 )
    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.

  • I dunno.... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by IIRCAFAIKIANAL ( 572786 ) on Friday July 25, 2003 @12:16PM (#6533400) Journal
    They don't mention if the study was double blind, they don't mention how the judges evaluated the performances...

    It sounds compelling, but they certainly don't give me reason to believe it from the article. Of course, just like every other news story like this (such as the mozart effect [skepdic.com]), we won't see a follow up article if it proves to be bullsh!t and people are going to be repeating this "fact" for many years to come.

    Why yes, I am in a bad mood today :)
  • If we now have thought control I have some ideas for Britney Spears!!!
  • The BBC article [bbc.co.uk] has more details. Also, the BBC article says they improved by an AVERAGE of 17% and some improved as much as 50%.
  • Let's also keep in mind that 17 is the least random number [catb.org].

  • <rant>

    17% of what? measuring qualitative data with quantitative measures makes very little sense. think about it: can a pizza be "17% more cheesy" than another pizza?

    </rant>

    this is probably why i'm not a social scientist ;-)

    • I'm sure that it has occured to many of you that a pizza could be rated x% more cheesy than another, but this joke couldn't possibly be rated the same way...

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