It already exists, lukeprog!:
Neurons in the temporal cortex directly map to pitch, so plugging wires into a few neurons at each pitch mapped onto the cortex results in a precise output of musical thought by pitch. There's a lovely experiment demonstrating this. It's well-demonstrated that the brain fills in missing "overlay" tones resulting in a firing of the of the pitch neurons at what is approximated by the brain to be the true pitch. So, they took a well-known classical piece, and played it to owls with the primary tone removed (so that only the overlay tones that correspond to that primary tone remain). It is well-known that the brain simply hears the piece itself, and the music that plays in one's head is known to be the actual piece (not just the overlays) under that condition. When they hooked wires into a sample of neurons in each area of pitch neurons with already demonstrated pitch, and connected the output to an audio receiver, the result was that the actual classical piece, with the primary tone restored, was outputted. In other words, they knew what music was going through the owl's head (which was not exactly what was being played to it), and in connecting wires up to the right areas of the audio cortex, they managed to actually output what the owl was hearing.
Of course, it only outputs pitch, and not timbre etc., and sadly, you have to be an owl in a neuroscience lab if you want to use it...
Timbre etc. might be a bit farther off, since the only reason pitch is so easy is simply that the brain actually fires pitch neurons at the exact frequency that the sound is received in (in other words, a 100 Hz tone causes a corresponding area of neurons to fire at 100 Hz - although was also interesting about the above experiment was that when the 200, 400, 800 Hz overlays were produced without the 100 Hz primary tone that would correspond to those overlays, the 100 Hz area fired too, but that's a whole other can of [amazing] worms...).
Point is, that idea isn't as absurd or far off as you probably think it is. :D
One day they will make a gadget that will take the music playing in my head and play it directly from some speakers. :_)
It already exists, lukeprog!:
Neurons in the temporal cortex directly map to pitch, so plugging wires into a few neurons at each pitch mapped onto the cortex results in a precise output of musical thought by pitch. There's a lovely experiment demonstrating this. It's well-demonstrated that the brain fills in missing "overlay" tones resulting in a firing of the of the pitch neurons at what is approximated by the brain to be the true pitch. So, they took a well-known classical piece, and played it to owls with the primary tone removed (so that only the overlay tones that correspond to that primary tone remain). It is well-known that the brain simply hears the piece itself, and the music that plays in one's head is known to be the actual piece (not just the overlays) under that condition. When they hooked wires into a sample of neurons in each area of pitch neurons with already demonstrated pitch, and connected the output to an audio receiver, the result was that the actual classical piece, with the primary tone restored, was outputted. In other words, they knew what music was going through the owl's head (which was not exactly what was being played to it), and in connecting wires up to the right areas of the audio cortex, they managed to actually output what the owl was hearing.
Of course, it only outputs pitch, and not timbre etc., and sadly, you have to be an owl in a neuroscience lab if you want to use it...
Timbre etc. might be a bit farther off, since the only reason pitch is so easy is simply that the brain actually fires pitch neurons at the exact frequency that the sound is received in (in other words, a 100 Hz tone causes a corresponding area of neurons to fire at 100 Hz - although was also interesting about the above experiment was that when the 200, 400, 800 Hz overlays were produced without the 100 Hz primary tone that would correspond to those overlays, the 100 Hz area fired too, but that's a whole other can of [amazing] worms...).
Point is, that idea isn't as absurd or far off as you probably think it is. :D
I'm happy to hear of it! Can you link to any information on this study, or anyone involved in the study?
You give me hope.
Maybe when I am 80 they will have this technology and I will finally record the music in my head. And I will be the only one to listen to it.
The last time I used an owl for a preamp it blew out my tweeters. Blood and feathers everywhere.
I don't know, man. That tenori-on thing is pretty darn close.