BSoniq: A 3-D EEG Sound Installation

This paper presents “BSoniq”, a 3-D EEG sound installation, in which, the user can perceive spatial characteristics of EEG signals in a multi-channel environment. With this installation, the users (listeners) wear a wireless EEG headset and listen to sounds generated in real-time from their brain waves to perceive brain activities which they may not be aware of in their daily life. To accomplish a brain electrical activity sonification, brainwave source localization features of multichannel EEG are converted into sound images. These allow for simple interpretation, because of their spatial temporal differences. Signals recorded from the scalp are “decoded” from the multi-channel EEG, by applying filters and modulation to the EEG signal with an audio file. The main goal is to use sound to render the original data in a suitably transformed way so that we can invoke our natural pattern recognition capabilities to search for regularities and structures. Brainwave sonification is also very practical in brain-computer interface (BCI) user feedback design. Deciding how the control of parameters, processing and filtering of inaudible data are used is important in this process. Using listening as a tool serves both as an aesthetic and/or scientific purpose. The human hearing system is able to decode and interpret complex auditory scenes. The more structured the representation of the sonified data, the better the accessibility and intelligibility of the chosen process [9].