May 20, 2024

June Peers

11th Grade

Granada Hills Charter High School

The band Pink Floyd took the world by storm from the late 1960s to the 70s, revolutionizing the psychedelic rock genre. The band even revolutionized the music listening experience, performing the first surround-sound concert in 1967.

With Pink Floyd’s innovation and astonishing popularity, neuroscientists conducted a study using their music. Published in PLoS Biology in 2023, the study explores the psychological effects of Pink Floyd’s hit song “Another Brick in the Wall, Part 1”. They believed the song’s diverse instrumentals and rhythms invoke unique emotions and images in the participants’ brains, and produce significant scientific results.

Neuroscience researcher Ludovic Bellier and psychology professor Robert Knight from the University of California, Berkeley performed the study. They placed 347 electrodes on the brain surfaces of 29 patients as they went under awake epilepsy surgery. The technology recorded certain auditory regions that lit up while listening to the song. Then, with the help of 128 artificial intelligence models, the scientists were able to collect distinct sounds that their brain waves detected. They found that participants’ brains recognized certain keywords, including “all,” “was,” and “just a brick”. However, the audio recording was muffled, meaning that speech decoding is only in its early stages.

Though a seemingly minor study, the advancement of musical perception technology could have major implications for the future of science. Given that music is heavily influenced by emotion and tone, scientists theorize that the mechanisms used in the Pink Floyd study could be implemented in the near future. This would entail electrodes being able to accurately verbalize people’s thoughts.

The speech decoding technology would be especially useful to individuals who lost the ability to speak (due to stroke or other injury), finally granting them the gift of being able to express their emotions to others. Not only that, but the technology could eventually seep into our everyday activity, allowing our thoughts to appear in front of us in the matter of seconds. “You could think, ‘Order my Uber’, and you don’t have to finish what you’re doing—your Uber arrives”, Bellier said.

Some may find this potential future -- advanced technology permeating every facet of our lives -- alarming. However, both Pink Floyd researchers Bellier and Knight assure the public that the technology is not anywhere close to that stage. What matters most is that we are nearing a point where technology can facilitate communication for those who need it most. Overall, the Pink Floyd study gives us hope that with future scientific developments, people with impairments can navigate social interactions more easily.