A concert by pianist Nicolas Namoradze in San Francisco has showcased a breakthrough in studying how the brain works during live musical performance. During a recital at the University of California, San Francisco, audiences watched real-time visualizations of the pianist’s brain activity projected above the stage, revealing shifting patterns as he performed works by Debussy, Bach, Beethoven and Scriabin.
The images were created using wearable EEG sensors and “Glass Brain” technology developed by researchers at UCSF’s Neuroscape. According to neuroscientist Theodore Zanto, the result is one of the clearest real-time views yet of brain activity during a piano performance — an area that has long been difficult to study because traditional brain scans require