Scale-Free Brain Quartet: Artistic Filtering of Multi-Channel Brainwave Music

To listen to the brain activities as a piece of music, we proposed the scale-free brainwave music (SFBM) technology, which translated scalp EEGs into music notes according to the power law of both EEG and music. In the present study, the methodology was extended for deriving a quartet from multi-channel EEGs with artistic beat and tonality filtering. EEG data from multiple electrodes were first translated into MIDI sequences by SFBM, respectively. Then, these sequences were processed by a beat filter which adjusted the duration of notes in terms of the characteristic frequency. And the sequences were further filtered from atonal to tonal according to a key defined by the analysis of the original music pieces. Resting EEGs with eyes closed and open of 40 subjects were utilized for music generation. The results revealed that the scale-free exponents of the music before and after filtering were different: the filtered music showed larger variety between the eyes-closed (EC) and eyes-open (EO) conditions, and the pitch scale exponents of the filtered music were closer to 1 and thus it was more approximate to the classical music. Furthermore, the tempo of the filtered music with eyes closed was significantly slower than that with eyes open. With the original materials obtained from multi-channel EEGs, and a little creative filtering following the composition process of a potential artist, the resulted brainwave quartet opened a new window to look into the brain in an audible musical way. In fact, as the artistic beat and tonal filters were derived from the brainwaves, the filtered music maintained the essential properties of the brain activities in a more musical style. It might harmonically distinguish the different states of the brain activities, and therefore it provided a method to analyze EEGs from a relaxed audio perspective.