A system that measures brain activity in real time and learns new skills such as language and instruments in a short time "BACh"

ByA Health Blog

Long time and effort are necessary to acquire new skills such as musical instrument playing and sports, learning foreign languages. Therefore, by measuring the movement of the brain during practice, we can proceed with the learning step at the optimum timing, and a system that can acquire new skills without taking more time than before "BACh"Has been developed.

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Massachusetts State Tufts University that developed BAChBeste YukselMr. said, "It can be said that BACh is the prototype of a near future interface like to be embedded in the brain." Mr. Yuksel had a degree in computer science and neuroscience, he was interested in a combination of two fields and developed BACh. BACh is a system that integrates a device that reads the movement of the brain and a tool for learning, and the acronym for "Brain Automated Chorales"Johann Sebastian BachIt was named "BACh" over the past.

You can actually see how you are practicing the piano using BACh in the movie below.

Learn Piano with BACh: An Adaptive Learning Interface That Adjusts Task Difficulty based on Brain State on Vimeo


The sensor of BACh is as compact and light as possible on the keyboard of a piano.


By attaching the sensor to the forehead as follows, it will play the cognitive function of the brainFrontal cortexMeasure blood flow. When humans are considering things, as blood is sent from the heart to the frontal cortex, BACh analyzes how intensely the brain moves based on the amount of blood flow. Then, calculate the numerical value "cognitive load" which is how much mental power is needed to do a certain work.


Traditional piano practice method was to first practice the movements of the right hand and the left hand separately and then to adjust the movements of both hands later. However, this method has a very high recognition load depending on the person, learning may be difficult to proceed.


According to Mr. Yuksel, when a human learns new things, it is the same as a feeling of struggling in the dark, knowing the process of how the brain actually absorbs information There is none. Therefore, he says that he has overworked his brain without noticing it. Yuksel says, "It is difficult to measure progress of learning by ourselves." A skilled teacher can infer the timing for students to go to the next step. However, by measuring the movement of the brain, BACh analyzes the timing of low recognition load, advances learning to the next step on behalf of the teacher, everyone can learn the method of performance efficiently .


Experiment of actually practicing the piano for 15 minutes for beginners of music showed that the group using BACh can play the song more accurately than the group not using it Is out. It is also clear that those who practiced using BACh have less mistakes during performance and faster performance speed.


In addition, as a result of conducting a questionnaire to the subjects, the satisfaction level of using BACh was higher when practicing, "I got a way to play" "I was able to play correctly" "Easy to practice" "Pleasant to practice" In all four items, satisfaction with BACh is exceeded.


Yuksel believes that BACh can handle songs of various degrees of difficulty depending on the progress of learning, so if it can be put into practical use, it will be a learning system that can be used widely from small children to adults. Also, research is under way to study not only learning of musical instruments but also learning languages ​​such as BACh, Yuksel, along with Professor of Computer Science Robert Jacob, uses BACh to measure emotion I am studying how to do it. "For example, if the indices of anxiety and irritation are high when the recognition load is high, you can see that it is overwork, so you can use BACh to reduce unnecessary information and make learning progressible," Yuksel says I will. Mr. Yuksel's dream seems to be "the brain-embedding interface is used by people on a daily basis, and the quality of life of people is improved".

ByDean Wissing