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MUMBAI, INDIA, JULY 27, 2003: Once upon a time, to become a superb musician, it required never ending practice or face-to-face training with a guru to acquire masterful skills. With the high technology of the 21st Century, has come the development of gizmos that rely on a process called neurofeedback that trains budding musicians to clear their minds and produce more creative brain waves without striking a single cord.



According to a report to be published in a forthcoming issue of Neuroreport, researchers at Imperial College, London, and Charring Cross Hospital say the technique has helped musicians to improve by an average of 17 per cent, the equivalent of one grade or class of honors. Some “wannabe” musicians improved as much as 50 per cent when they were assessed on two pieces of music before and after neurofeedback sessions.



Known as neurotherapy, or more popularly as “no-hands Nintendo,” the brain activity of music students was monitored through sensors attached to the scalp, which filtered out relevant brain waves and fed them back to the subjects in the form of a video game displayed on a computer screen. The participants learned to control the game by their mind power alone, consciously controlling the form of their brain waves, which in turn influenced their musical performance, musical understanding, imagination and communication with the audience A derivative of biofeedback techniques that originated in the 1960’s, an in-depth report on this stimulating procedure can be found at the “source” above.

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