I know I said that the next post about electronics will be the construction of LCD displays, but I think this is a very interesting news and I could not let it pass.
The name is Encephalonphone, allow to create and play music only with thought.
Source: Inovação tecnológica (In Portuguese)
They expected that this new neuroinstrument helps to rehabilitate pacients with motor deficiency, strokes, spinal cord injury, amputation or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.
The Encephalonphone collect brain signals through a helmet with electrodes and transform specific signals in musical notes. The device is coupled to a synthesizer, allowing the user to create music using a great variety of instrumentals songs.
The Encephalonphone can be controlled by two independents types of brain signals: those associated to visual cortex (by that opening and closing the eyes) or those associated with thinking about the movement.
The control by thinking in a movement – try to lift the arm, per example, although the member don’t move due to neurological problem – can be more useful to patients with deficiency. However in the initial experiments, with a group of 15 patients, the control by closing the eyes showed be more precise.
It was provided the device’s diagram.
The interesting is was used already existing technologies like electroencephalogram, MATLAB and multimodal signal processing. With this device can anyone compose great musics? Imagine an orchestra without musical instruments, only with encephalonphones.
