Brainmusic with fMRI

Functional brain scan data converted to a visualization with accompanying sonification -- musical sounds whose pitch corresponds to magnitude of activation in regions of the brain, as detected by functional MRI. In this video, the tempo has been slowed to that of the scanner, one image/chord per second. The visualization is a "brain cube" with three views of the same brain projected on three sides of a box. In each dimension the 3-d action of the brain has been shrunk to two dimensions. By comparing views you can get a rough idea of the location of areas of activity. At the same time, each area of the brain is assigned to a different musical instrument. Pitches are restricted to a "blues" scale, a pentatonic scale with a blue note added. Pitch for each area rises in proportion to the signal intensity.

These data come from the same source as in the video "Resonant Vision." The subject watched a flickering checkerboard pattern that occupied one side of the visual field, right and left checkerboards alternating. There are three repetitions of the Right/Left alternation in the video, which can be heard in the melodic sweep of the synthesized string sections. As in all the videos on this channel, one message is that many areas of the brain are active at all times and at various time scales. In this one, the scientific moral is at best impressionistic; the main goal is to make something beautiful.