UK Inventor creates Brain Box to help paralyzed make music

Technology and music both will never cease to amaze us. We recently learned how one Brazilian born musician/inventor now living in the UK is helping people who are paralyzed create music using their brains. Eduardo Miranda has been on a mission for the last 11 years, ever since his eyes met someone who had "locked-in syndrome". This is a condition in which a patient is aware but cannot move or communicate verbally due to complete paralysis of nearly all voluntary muscles in the body except for the eyes. Mr. Miranda's latest invention is dubbed the "Brain Box", and with it he has found a way for these patients to create music just using their eyes.

This amazing device monitors brain activity through electrodes attached to the back of the head, and can determine where the persons eyes are looking. The person is then able to select which piece of music he wishes to hear by which icon on the screen he or she is looking at.

Miranda, who is head of the Interdisciplinary Centre for Computer Music Research at Plymouth University says:

"I wanted to create something to enable people with severe disabilities to make music. I was struck by an encounter I had once with a man who had had a stroke and was paralyzed completely from the neck down"

To me this technology is quite fascinating. and I can see so many uses for it even beyond playing music. I'm very interested to see just how far this can go someday. In the future, could we all have the computer record and play back music that we hear only in our heads?

To learn more about Eduardo Miranda and his work you can visit him at http://neuromusic.soc.plymouth.ac.uk/. To see where we first learned about this you can visit the KSPR news article here: KSPR.com - Brain-Box-Allows-Paralyzed-to-Make-Music

Mr. Miranda and his associates are also very involved in researching and developing software that can help create music. This video clip above explains a little about it and shows an orchestra playing a piece called "Mind Pieces" which was partially computer-inspired by birds and other natural occurring sounds that the "music creating"program

Well we made it past Christmas and I hope you had a wonderful time with your friends and family. New Years is right around the corner, stay tuned for another post for we hit the big 2015

Peace, Love & Happiness,

Vincent James @ LoveSongs.com

This is your BRAIN on GUITAR!

In a 2012 study in Berlin, Germany, researchers hooked up 12 guitar players to brain scanners and learned some pretty amazing things. They had the guitarists all play the same piece together (ie. like a big guitar band), and what they saw was that their brain waves synchronized together while playing the piece. Even more interesting was the fact that their brain waves actually synchronized slightly before they started to play (like they were all coming to starting gates of a race at the same time).

Being more of a keyboard/piano player myself, I wonder what the brain scans would look like for musicians playing other instruments playing the same piece of music. What if you had a full band with different instruments, say piano, guitar, bass, drums and maybe a horn section? If they were all playing the same piece with the same notes written out would their brains synchronize as well? Or is there something different about guitar player brains as a recent article in The Open Mind suggests.

I do agree with the article when it claims that that guitarists often tend to be the more creative musicians. Maybe its the years of trying to emulate and outdo guitar solos from the all the guitar virtuosos from the last 40-50 years starting with Jimmy Page, Eric Clapton, BB King, Jimmy Hendrix, Eddie Van Halen, Slash and a host of others. When you are trying to play what you hope is an exceptional guitar solo (or any instrument for that matter), at some point you let go of your conscious mind to see where you're creative brain waves will take you on their own. I know myself I have written some of my very best pieces of music when I forced myself to not think about what I was doing, but instead just let my hands and fingers go where they wanted. Sometimes our best path to discovery of any kind is to let go and see what floats back into our being from the universe (I'm getting a bit spiritual here I know, no apologies :)).

To learn more about the Berlin research please check out this article on The Open Mind website: The Open Mind: This is Your Brain On Guitar

Stop back this weekend for an update on how our visit to the John Lennon Education Bus went this week - in short it was pretty amazing but we'll have more details and pictures to share. For now have a great Fridayyyy (almost) and will be back this weekend with our next post.

Love, Music & Laughter,

~Vincent James @ LoveSongs.com www.facebook.com/KeepMusicAliveMission

Music helps teacher speak again after brain surgery

Allison Woyiwada is a music teacher from Ottawa, Canada, and had literally taught thousands of elementary school students in her 28 year career. In 2012, she was diagnosed with an brain aneurysm which required a very delicate and risky surgery. When she emerged from the surgery, her family quickly realized that she had lost most of her motor and speech skills. Two months after the surgery she basically had the skills of toddler, unable to even put two words together.

Then a miracle happened. Her daughter was pushing Allison in a wheelchair through a hospital waiting area and saw a piano. She wheeled her mom up to the piano and then something amazing happened. Allison started to play the piano, and not just any song. She began to play the Beethoven Sonata sheet music that was sitting on the piano at the time. Her daughter and everyone around was absolutely astonished. Allison soon began working with a music therapist who used a method called "melodic intonation therapy" to help bring back her speech. Today, just two years after the surgery, Allison is almost fully recovered and is once again teaching music and even sings in French, German and English.

Stories like Allison's never cease to amaze me. Once again, musical therapy has proven to be a sometimes miraculously tool when someone is up against something seemingly insurmountable. For the full account of Allison's amazing journey and recovery thanks to music, I invite you to check out the newly published book entitled "Allison's Brain" by author Robert McMechan found on Amazon.com right here: Allison's Brain - Amazon.com

I first learned of this story through CBCNews and CBC Radio in Ottawa. Here's a link to the CBC Radio story in Ottawa by Anna Maria Tremonte Allisons Brain Documentary

That's our inspirational story of the week, and I hope you liked it as much as we did. We'll be back tomorrow night with a new post, and if you've got an inspirational story to share please let us know about it. Thanks and goooood nite all!

Music, Love & Laughter,

Vincent James @ LoveSongs.com