Neuroscientists Re-create Pink Floyd Song from Listeners’ Brain Activity

Scientists can eavesdrop on the music people are listening to by analysing their brain waves. Artificial intelligence helped to reconstruct audio from brain activity patterns that were recorded in 29 people who already had electrode implants because they had epilepsy. The reconstructed version of the song that the participants were listening to — Pink Floyd’s 1979 song ‘Another Brick in the Wall, Part 1’ — sounds distorted and the lyrics are garbled, but it’s discernible if you know what to listen for. The results could help to create better ‘speech prosthetics’, which translate brain waves into speech.