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Interactive Sonification of Neural Activity

Gil Weinberg, and Travis Thatcher

Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression

Abstract

We discuss our ongoing research in sonification of neural activity as demonstrated in the “Fish and Chips” and “BrainWaves” projects. We argue that sonification can serve as an effective technique for the representation of complex spatial information such as neural activity due to the auditory system’s ability to perceive stimuli at a wide spatial cover and its inclination to perceive spatial patterns in sonic input. The paper discusses aesthetic and functional aspects of sonification in this context and describes the evolution of our technique, artistic approach, and interaction design – from the low-resolution graphical user interface in “Fish and Chips” to the highresolution tangible interaction with newly developed controllers in “BrainWaves”. We conclude with an evaluative discussion and a number of suggestions for future work.

Citation

Gil Weinberg, and Travis Thatcher. 2006. Interactive Sonification of Neural Activity. Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.1177019 [PDF]

BibTeX Entry


@inproceedings{nime2006_Weinberg,
author = {Weinberg, Gil and Thatcher, Travis},
title = {Interactive Sonification of Neural Activity},
pages = {246--249},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression},
year = {2006},
address = {Paris, France},
issn = {2220-4806},
doi = {10.5281/zenodo.1177019},
url = {https://nime.org/proceedings/2006/nime2006_246.pdf},
keywords = {1,background and motivations,biological research,interactive auditory display,neural patterns,scholars are,sonification,with new developments in},
abstract = {We discuss our ongoing research in sonification of neural activity as demonstrated in the “Fish and Chips” and “BrainWaves” projects. We argue that sonification can serve as an effective technique for the representation of complex spatial information such as neural activity due to the auditory system’s ability to perceive stimuli at a wide spatial cover and its inclination to perceive spatial patterns in sonic input. The paper discusses aesthetic and functional aspects of sonification in this context and describes the evolution of our technique, artistic approach, and interaction design – from the low-resolution graphical user interface in “Fish and Chips” to the highresolution tangible interaction with newly developed controllers in “BrainWaves”. We conclude with an evaluative discussion and a number of suggestions for future work.}
}