RHYTHM CENTRAL: Mickey Hart and Dr. Adam Gazzaley Make History Through Visualizing and Sonifying Brain Activity in Real Time for Live Audience
www.heraldonline.com/2012/10/03/4310690/...mickey-hart-and.html
Dr. Gazzaley has extensively studied how the brain handles memory, attention and aging. Gazzaley awed the crowd midway through the session by strapping an EEG on Hart as he paced, clutching a drum, while images of the rhythms coursing through his brain were displayed on the giant screens throughout the hall. As the audience looked on, Gazzaley explained what was happening, adjusting to show more or fewer rhythms coursing through Mickey's brain. "This is scary," Mickey joked.
"It all comes down to vibration and the rhythm of things," Hart says of his collaboration with Dr. Gazzaley. "Can you imagine being able to entrain with these rhythms and focus on a certain part of the brain? To be able to see what part of the brain lights up while you play a certain instrument, a certain rhythm at a certain amplitude. What does the brain look like before, during, and after an auditory driving experience?" Hart continues, "This is about breaking the rhythm code, our genome project. Once we know what rhythm truly does, then we'll be able to control it, and use it medicinally for diagnostics, for health reasons. To be able to reconnect the synapses, the connections that are broken in Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, that's where we are heading." It's just the beginning, as far as Hart is concerned. "I've been working in my field for many years and so has Adam, it's a handshake between science and art. Life is all about rhythm, and the brain is Rhythm Central."
