brain waves, sound waves
How do neurons communicate? Perhaps we can begin to understand the brain’s language by listening.
Neural oscillations, or “brainwaves,” are rhythmic fluctuations in the brain’s electrical activity. Just as music emerges from the relationships among different rhythms and pitches, our mental experience emerges from interacting rhythms and frequencies in the brain.
Can music be more than just a metaphor for brain activity? Can it be a tool to understand it?
About Kaia
I’m a PhD student in Behavioral Neuroscience at University of California, Los Angeles. I’m interested in how neural oscillations give rise to conscious thought and perception, and how we can regulate or modulate our own brainwaves to support mental health.
Music is deeply embedded in the way I think about the brain as a system of dynamically interacting rhythms and frequencies. I’m a classically trained cellist, singer, and pianist with an emerging interest in music production and sound synthesis. I have developed several data- and algorithmically-generated musical compositions that have been incorporated in art installations, conference presentations, and web applications to creatively represent physiological data.