Neuroscientists Recreate Pink Floyd’s ‘Another Brick in the Wall, Part 1’ from Brain Signals

Neuroscientists have recently achieved a groundbreaking feat: they have been able to reproduce Pink Floyd’s classic track ‘Another Brick in the Wall, Part 1’ by decoding brain signals of a person listening to it. This remarkable discovery was made by a team of researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, who placed electrodes on the brains of patients undergoing epilepsy surgery and played the music for them.

By analyzing their brain activity, the scientists were able to pick up recognizable lines like “All in all it’s just another brick in the wall” and were able to reconstruct the song’s rhythm. This marks the first time a recognizable song has been reconstructed from brain recordings, a feat that was previously thought impossible.

Robert Knight, a neurologist and professor of psychology at the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, expressed his excitement for this result. He believes that this breakthrough could potentially lead to new abilities for those with neurological and developmental disorders, as it gives us the ability to decode not just the linguistic content, but also the emotional and prosodic content of speech.

The research has been published in a study titled ‘Music can be reconstructed from human auditory cortex activity using nonlinear decoding models’, and has opened the door to further advances in brain-computer interface technology. It is also hoped that in the future, these non-invasive techniques could provide detailed recordings using ultra-sensitive electrodes attached to the scalp.

Elon Musk predicted in 2020 that people will one day be able to stream music directly into their brains through a chip. This technology is being developed by Neuralink, a tech startup co-founded by Musk, and could be used to treat neurological disorders or even depression and addiction.

In yet more music news, Roger Waters is set to debut re-recordings of Pink Floyd’s ‘The Dark Side Of The Moon’ in a show at the London Palladium this autumn. This is an exciting development for fans of the classic rock band, and a great way to experience the iconic album in a live setting.