ELECTRO-ENCEPHALOGRAPHIC MUSIC

In my book Microcosm and Medium I wrote rather extensively on the brainwave research of neurophysiologists from the 1960s and 1970s. One of the most intriguing of these areas was their research into what I called "electro-encephalographic dictionaries." Essentially, these researchers discovered, through careful trial and error and the accumulation of a wide and broad statistical database, that the brainwaves of English-speakers, for example, could be scrutinized for recognition of individual words, and that these patterns, in turn, could be used to "read" or "listen in" on the mental conversations of individuals. As I reported in the book, by the end of the 1970s, these researchers had compiled an "electro-encephalographic dictionary" comprising the brain wave patterns of about two thousand words.

That was the 1970s.

Imagine how many words exist in that dictionary now.

But there's more. As I also pointed out in that book, this technology was quickly wedded to yet another technology, that of microwave interferometry, a technology that not only allowed remote reading of an individual's brainwaves, i.e., the ability to read them without the need to physically couple electrodes to someone's skull, but the very same technology allowed the brainwave patterns themselves to be modulated into the microwave signal to the extent that one could literally beam those patterns, and hence a whole "conversation", into someone's head.

Indeed, the whole concept was made into a science fiction movie (a very good one in fact), called Brainwave, starring Oscar winning actress Louise Fletcher, Christopher Walken, and Cliff Robertson.

The whole thing sounds like science fiction, but it's entirely real, and has now taken yet another step, according to this article found and shared by J.T.:

Brain recordings capture musicality of speech — with help from Pink Floyd

But note the following limitations:

As the chords of Pink Floyd's “Another Brick in the Wall, Part 1,” filled the hospital suite, neuroscientists at Albany Medical Center diligently recorded the activity of electrodes placed on the brains of patients being prepared for epilepsy surgery.

The goal? To capture the electrical activity of brain regions tuned to attributes of the music — tone, rhythm, harmony and words — to see if they could reconstruct what the patient was hearing.

More than a decade later, after detailed analysis of data from 29 such patients by neuroscientists at the University of California, Berkeley, the answer is clearly yes.

The phrase "All in all it was just a brick in the wall" comes through recognizably in the reconstructed song, its rhythms intact, and the words muddy, but decipherable. This is the first time researchers have reconstructed a recognizable song from brain recordings.

...

The reconstruction shows the feasibility of recording and translating brain waves to capture the musical elements of speech, as well as the syllables. In humans, these musical elements, called prosody — rhythm, stress, accent and intonation — carry meaning that the words alone do not convey.

Because these intracranial electroencephalography (iEEG) recordings can be made only from the surface of the brain — as close as you can get to the auditory centers — no one will be eavesdropping on the songs in your head anytime soon.

But for people who have trouble communicating, whether because of stroke or paralysis, such recordings from electrodes on the brain surface could help reproduce the musicality of speech that's missing from today's robot-like reconstructions.

One wonders, however, if that's really the case. If they were doing experiments of a similar nature in the 1970s with brainwave patterns for words, I rather strongly suspect that brain mapping for music has gone considerably beyond Pink Floyd's The Wall. I rather suspect the real goal here is something else, and that the real mapping concerns neurophysiological effects not only of different styles of music, but of instruments, timbres, and even the subtle rhythms of different natural human languages.

The goal? One of them is rather obvious: greater precision in mind manipulation and entrainment technologies, and as I pointed out in Microcosm and Medium, music is front and center, especially in the Baroque doctrine of Affekt, i.e., the manipulation of specific types of musical-rhetorical gestures to conjure specific emotional-intellectual affects not only in the listeners, but the performers and even composers of music. It is a doctrine all but overlooked in modern attempts to perform music of that era, but it is  crucial to an understanding of the music of that culture. Even the keys in which compositions were composed were deliberately selected for this overall affect: want something pastoral? Try F major. Want something glorious and majestic yet joyous? D Major. And so on.

But beyond this, there's yet another possibility: recent research has pointed out the similarities between cosmic plasma filaments, and the neurons and synapses of brains, and in particular, of human brains. Which makes one wonder: is there indeed a music going on in those cosmic plasma filaments, and if so, what does it sound like? More importantly, might it conceivably be manipulated - the ultimate in Affektenlehre - by beaming music into it? (Cruciform churches, tesseracts or hyper-cubes, and pipe organs anyone?)

On a more mundane level, fond as I am of Pink Floyd's The Wall - really, it's not just a "music video" it's a rock opera - I shudder at the thought of "electro-encephalographic music". For us classical and baroque music lovers, life itself is a constant struggle against the one dimensional musical banality of the USSA and the West, beamed at us 24/7, in virtually every commercial, and the bumper music for virtually every radio show. One talk show host is so suffused with the banality he demands his guests "riff" on such and such a subject. It's all a guitar or drums solo...

Sigh... I like tuna salad and hamburger helper just as much as the next guy. But not as a steady diet...

See you on the flip side...

Posted in

Joseph P. Farrell

Joseph P. Farrell has a doctorate in patristics from the University of Oxford, and pursues research in physics, alternative history and science, and "strange stuff". His book The Giza DeathStar, for which the Giza Community is named, was published in the spring of 2002, and was his first venture into "alternative history and science".

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  1. Zorost on September 3, 2023 at 2:47 am

    I wonder if/how this relates to the massive amount of repetition of songs on the radio. e.g., the Rolling Stones having 60+ years of albums yet you only hear 5 or so songs of theirs, over and over and over. 100+ years of recorded music, and yet its not unusual for me to hear the same song on 2 different radio stations as I flip through the channels.



  2. anakephalaiosis on August 27, 2023 at 9:10 pm

    1. Centre of man is solar plexus, whereas the brain is a mere reflective capacity, like the moon is a reflection of the sun. Man builds his ego, towards a focal point in the brain, and then he breaks down his ego, to express soul, in solar plexus.

    2. In biblical terms, man’s journey is about breaking seals. First three seals build the ego. Fourth seal manifests the ego. Last three seals break down the ego. The runes depict the same template, in a more detailed description.

    3. It is accurate, to say, that the biblical narrative is the science of “how to define the nature of man”, which can’t be done by the brain alone, because the brain – by default – can’t understand itself, and that is the unsolvable paradox.

    Kiwi shoe polish, as a takeover brand, is to be exclusively produced in America, and then planned to be sold, at extortion prices in Europe, which is an example of mapping brain patterns of enslaved consumers, by plotting their way to the waterhole.

    The political argument is, that an alleged change in culture has caused Europeans to live in straw huts, while running around barefoot, and therefore shoe polish is in lesser demand in Europe, and subsequently American export of shoe polish becomes civilising the European primitives.

    Likewise, Europeans can’t have Russian gas, because Americans want to dominate the market, by squeezing out competition, so that American corporations can pickpocket profits in Europe, by extortion, which is bolstered, by the great hegemon of the spangly banner, the imperial ruler.

    Mapping brain patterns of consumers, is what the lunatic witch in Narnia needs, to maintain a perpetual winter, and prevent solar plexus from returning, in the shape of a spring lion.



  3. Richard on August 26, 2023 at 6:54 pm

    There was a time when some folks put a credible emphasis on understanding underwater acoustic utterances of those larger brained mammals of the seas – Cetaceans – the friendly “Flipper” and Orca types and thought that they’d make good (undersea) cartographers. Still do, actually. Suffice it to say, Cetaceans, are probably happy enough in their aquatic environment so long as they’re not getting snagged into trawler nets or [pinged] to deafness by those metal man-made tubes (submarines) encroaching into their habitat. Only they know how they feel as this upright simian type might interpret that they do.

    The neuro-linguistic-phonetic-acoustic variables humankind must grasp (those with full Aristotelian sensory accoutrements (five traditional senses)), remains an ongoing and complex work-in-progress in over six thousand languages no-less. Freedom of Expression, that sometimes elusive 1st Amendment Right and Constitution privilege taken for granted, allows for even more variables in the field of communication than is presumed. Imagine what one’s own plug-in device might come down to. To have a 500,000-word (at least) Dictionary/Thesaurus, of multiple disciplines, complete with instructions of phonetic use, grammatical awareness, and, of course, correct spelling, and meanings incorporated into the ole noggin. . . . Take on any debater in the debates with the greatest of ease without using a single cuss-word or pejorative phrase that instigates adverse hormonal responses wishing one had been prepared with a word compendium of slang and derogatory spit-in-your-eye type phraseology already plugged in to counter the fool that talked too much.

    Word wrestling will continue so long any are inclined to use this language conundrum they find themselves using while trying to explain the use of it in words. Such efforts (the fox guarding the hen-house type) seem bewildering to the new learner, but they often get over it once they start retaining their own useful lexicon of neuro-linguistic-phonetic-acoustic word play.

    The Cetaceans seem to have a head start in this encephalographic-music stuff as well as a brain capacity to map the ocean basin (one hypothesizes) as they are honing their skills as hunter-gatherers of the seas.

    At least those primitive electrodes, implanted into Rhesus Monkeys and one-ton Bovines are less likely to be used these days as they once were in the fifties/sixties/seventies. The other experiments on upright simian types before and during the War years are another gruesome topic for nights during lightning and thunderstorms that zap the ephemeral sensory apparatus into fright mode that otherwise eludes satisfactory explanation. Lightning, it seems, does not just go to ground as a simpleton diagram construction might suggest.

    Can remember “Brainstorm,” too, along with “Scanners” (I,II,III) for that macabre of Big Pharma in this context, along with a few others.



    • anakephalaiosis on August 27, 2023 at 12:50 am

      There is neither a political, nor a judicial, solution, only a hard-hitting Scythian solution, which is based on a diametrical opposition, derived from Elohim-Yahweh, as Logic & Reason.

      A diametrical opposition has automatically a balancing point, in the centre of the circle, which produces a druidic triad, and that, in return, produces dynamical growth in languages.

      The word “humankind” is a cul-de-sac of Roman enslavement, sold as civilisation, according to Tacitus, whereas the word “mankind” is the seed of a growing tree, in the forest of Britain.

      I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing. John 15:5



  4. Joseph P. Farrell on August 26, 2023 at 1:38 am

    You’re right von Bearsnout



  5. 1pookadahooka on August 25, 2023 at 7:45 pm

    I have no doubt that music impacts demeanor. Coming from a musical family and having spent my teen years studying classical guitar and music theory, I’ve experienced it first hand. I guess we will all have to keep an awesome playlist running in our heads as a firewall against whatever the Riddlers intend to beam at us through the airwaves. I did have a funny feeling watching the last season of West World, that there was some underlying admission toward such an agenda.There could be a great market on the horizon for head-wear incorporating copper mesh woven into the fabric.



  6. Peter on August 25, 2023 at 10:21 am

    Is the banal talk show host Adam Carolla?



  7. marcos toledo on August 24, 2023 at 7:56 pm

    Bratty kids playing God when will they ever learn?



  8. Kevin Ryan on August 24, 2023 at 3:02 pm

    In the Sixties we had subliminal messages in visual media manipulating “consumers.” Now they want to be unseen Pied Pipers whispering directly into our brains – the covert means suggesting they are not doing this for our benefit but to serve their interests. And online we have covert algorithms manipulating what we see and hear. Like the weather, we are part of the environment to be manipulated, part of the battlefield to be prepared.



  9. Sandygirl on August 24, 2023 at 12:33 pm

    Omnimatter just posted this in the forum yesterday. Nice synchronicity and it helped me to understand the affekt music of the spheres. It’s all so magical.
    https://forum.gizadeathstar.com/t/electricity-j-s-bach/16425



  10. ug on August 24, 2023 at 12:23 pm

    Star Trek Strange New Worlds Season 2, episode 9 entitled “Subspace Rhapsody” may be of interest.



    • anakephalaiosis on August 25, 2023 at 5:53 am

      Yes, it is quite brilliantly done, by Roddenberry jr., to invoke the bardic room, which makes Star Trek thought expanding. An interesting aspect would be further weaponisation of the bardic chant, as it was done, in the sci-fi movie “Dune”. At the Last Supper, we do exorcise those, who can’t handle the brew, presented in a Scythian war trophy.

      The Klingon brutality was outmatched by the “ten tribes”, when Captain Kirk taught them to string a bow. The proto-Scythians went through the Darial Gorge, regrouped, and returned as hell on hooves, and then, named by the mountain pass, they became Caucasians.

      Northern Scythians are Russians, and southern Scythians are Saxons, entering Europe, led by Odin, who settled in Scandinavia. Today, Odin is the template, to invoke Scythian resolve, that once brought a Scythian foal to Jerusalem, for watering, in a Roman aqueduct.

      By hanging, in fruit fall, wounded by spear of gravity, Odin rests during winter death, to sprout again in the spring, and that is Christianity by another name.



  11. anakephalaiosis on August 24, 2023 at 10:59 am

    As a professional bard, when I enter into oratorical escapades, and do shaman speak, in a continuous rant, between six or twelve hours a day, depending on being fuelled by the brew or not, and then, in a couple of weeks, I’m transformed into a ball of fire.

    There is strange magic of synchronicity involved, when harmonious flow of tuned energies manifest, in a theatrical kaleidoscope of an ever changing scenery. At peak performance, I find myself being a curious spectator, to what wonders I speak.

    My alchemical symbiosis, with the music of planetary spheres, is like a cockcrow, that calls to action, in manifestation of willpower, and when doing the Abel thing, then one has to be one step ahead of Cain, who doesn’t know soaring wings, and nevertheless desires, what he can’t ever manifest.

    Bach sees Affektenlehre, as refreshment of soul, which is not in the brain, but in the exploding heart, as Elijah goes to heaven.



  12. Ludwig Von Bearsnout on August 24, 2023 at 7:12 am

    I think the movie was called Brainstorm, not brainwave and it was indeed a good movie.



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