ANY proficient musician will tell you that the key to a good performance is
staying in control. But for those who find it hard to keep their heads,
researchers can now train them to master their brainwaves and play better. The
team told the BA that this is a rare instance of using 鈥渘eurofeedback鈥� to
improve the faculties of healthy people.
When people are excited or nervous, their brainwaves tend to oscillate
faster, which can hamper their ability to concentrate on the task in hand. In
neurofeedback, electrodes are attached to the subjects鈥� scalps so they can learn
how to use their brainwaves to move a cursor on a screen. The technique has been
used to communicate with paralysed patients and to help people with epilepsy
stave off a seizure.
But over the past year, John Gruzelier and Tobias Egner at Imperial College,
London, have trained 22 music students in neurofeedback as part of a project
sponsored by the Leverhulme Trust. Once they had been wired up, the students
were set non-musical tasks, such as playing a computer game. If they relaxed
their brain rhythms, they scored highly, but if they got overexcited, they were
penalised.
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Several times during the training period each student performed a piece of
music in front of two music experts to assess whether their playing had
improved. As controls, untrained students performed the same piece. The experts
were unaware who had been trained. Their scoring of each student鈥檚 playing
clearly indicated that those in the neurofeedback group had greater 鈥渞hythmic
accuracy鈥�, meaning they made fewer impulsive mistakes. What鈥檚 more, 鈥渢he
aesthetic sense of the pianists, their refinement and elegance was most
improved,鈥� says Yonty Solomon, professor of piano at the Royal College of
Music.
During the year the researchers saw a permanent change in the brainwaves of
neurofeedback students while they were performing tasks. 鈥淭heir brain function
was slightly slower, but had more power when it came,鈥� explains Gruzelier. At
the moment Gruzelier and Egner can鈥檛 be sure whether it was the ability to
regulate their brainwaves at will, or the extra practice at getting into a calm
state, which caused the improvement.