| "Thought Control" Technique Boosts Music Students | 0 comments |
 24 Jul 2003 @ 06:48, by Raymond Powers"Thought Control" Technique Boosts Music Students Ananova July 23, 2003 Scientists have improved the performance of musicians by up to 17% by teaching them to control their thoughts. The scale of improvement among Royal College of Music students taking part in the study was equivalent to one grade. Researchers from Imperial College London used a technique called neurofeedback to help the students change their brain activity. Sensors were attached to their heads that filtered out specific brainwaves. These influenced a video game displayed on a screen, which the students learned to control by altering particular thought patterns. The training led to improvement in a number of areas, including musical understanding, imagination, and communication with the audience. Two experiments were conducted, involving a total of 97 students. In both, students were assessed on two pieces of music before and after the neurofeedback sessions by a panel of expert judges. Different types of neurofeedback focusing on enhanced attention and deep relaxation were used. A number of students were also put through more orthodox physical exercise and mental skills programmes. Neurofeedback was in all cases found to improve performances to a greater degree than other forms of training. But students given the "deep relaxation" neurofeedback protocol improved the most. Their improvement ranged between 13.5% and 17%. Researcher Dr Tobias Egner, from Imperial College London at Charing Cross Hospital, said: "This is a unique use of neurofeedback. It has been used for helping with a number of conditions such as attention deficit disorder and epilepsy, but this is the first time it has been used to improve a complex set of skills such as musical performance in healthy students." The findings have been published in the journal Neuroreport.  |