The Encephalophone and Gut Feelings: Sonification of EEG for biofeedback and the vagus nerve

So an old music school friend of mine trained to be a psychotherapist and he was into biofeedback. So when I discovered this sonification of EEG training to heal epilepsy I thought of sending it to him. But we had some seriously intense music exchanges and now I discover he is in Zambia in the Peace Corps with his wife! Wow - very cool! Treating people with malaria mainly.

So then he was helped by the Zambians in constructing a fence from straw - that looks like a very good design that I will use on my teepee-hut to better insulate it from the cold. haha. I was trying to figure out how to hold the straw better together and what they do in Zambia is take two sticks and tie them together with the straw in between - 2 sets of sticks for the upper and lower part of the straw, thereby creating a straw fence! Great idea! Thanks!!

I was researching my mention of time-frequency uncertainty, and frisson chills via the vagus nerve activation and phase stereophonic listening - and I did not find much but I did discover the Encephalophone!

The Encephalophone: A Novel Musical Biofeedback Device using Conscious Control of Electroencephalogram (EEG)

 Subjects could then generate different notes of the scale by activation (event-related synchronization) or de-activation (event-related desynchronization) of the PDR or mu rhythms in visual or motor cortex, respectively.

 a novel musical instrument without requiring movement, as well as a potential therapeutic biofeedback device for patients suffering from motor deficits (e.g., amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), brainstem stroke, traumatic amputation).

 And so now what about the connection back to Frissons (music chills)?

They had more nerve fibers connecting auditory cortex, the part of the brain that processes sound, to their anterior insular cortex, a region involved in processing feelings. The auditory cortex also had strong links to parts of the brain that may monitor emotions.

people engaged in the music more intellectually, like trying to predict the melody or putting mental imagery to the music, were more likely to get a shiver when the music deviated from their expectations in a positive way.

And so is there a strong vagus nerve connection? (to the anterior insular cortex)? Yes!

Anterior Insular Cortex and Emotional Awareness - NCBI - NIH

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov › NCBI › Literature › PubMed Central (PMC)

by X Gu - ‎2013 - ‎Cited by 211 - ‎Related articles

INDEXING TERMS: anterior insular cortex, emotional awareness, empathy, fMRI, ... Insular neurons respond to stimulation of the cervical vagus nerve in squirrel ...

 The second (top-down) process corresponds to the provision of descending predictions to visceral systems (i.e., via smooth muscles) that provide a point of reference for autonomic reflexes and sympathetic/parasympathetic outflow and for generating future awareness states. In other words, the AIC both responds to and controls the internal milieu or literally “gut feelings.

vagus nerve implant treats epilepsy

 In epilepsy patients, Kirchner et al. (2000) reported a decrease in temporal summation of pain (wind-up) and tonic pressure pain independent of the iVNS on/off cycle after 8–14 weeks of iVNS compared to before implantation. One patient in this study suffering from chronic tension-type headache for more than 10 years experienced an 80% reduction of headache after the surgery.

 So the anterior cingulate cortex works closely with the anterior insular cortex that works closely with the vagus nerve for conscious emotional self-awareness and self-feedback. People who experience frisson have more nerve fibers connecting the auditory cortex and anterior insular cortex....

Ear Vagus Nerve Stimulation:

Auricular tVNS has also shown promising analgesic effects. Examination of the effects of auricular tVNS on various somatosensory modalities in healthy participants shows that, compared to sham, tVNS significantly decreased pain intensity ratings in response to tonic heat pain, decreased mechanical pain sensitivity, and increased mechanical and pressure pain thresholds (Busch et al., 2013). Warm, cold, and mechanical detection thresholds were unaffected, indicating that tVNS specifically modulates pain processes of somatosensation. Frøkjær et al. (2016) observed a significant increase in bone pain (tibia pressure) thresholds in healthy participants, but no effects were observed in muscle pain thresholds and conditioned pain modulation.

And the O at a D secret revealed:

The vagus nerve would provide the necessary afferent pathway, as it bypasses the spinal cord and projects directly to the brain (Komisaruk et al., 1997). A subsequent brain imaging study in spinal cord injured women provided evidence in support of this pathway, as vaginal stimulation activated the NTS (Komisaruk et al., 2004).

Where the vagus nerve originates in the brain! Traditional Chinese Music elicits as much chills even for people previously unaware of it

This study addressed the question of whether listeners could experience chills for traditional Chinese music – with which they were either familiar or unfamiliar – as well as for Western classical music – with which all participants were familiar. Chills were measured through self-report and skin conductance while participants listened to pieces selected from each style. In accordance with the hypothesis, there was no significant difference in the number of chills felt in response to both styles of music, regardless of whether participants were familiar or unfamiliar with traditional Chinese music.

 And music reward feedback - chills and dopamine - is right brain dominant!

  Together these results suggest that auditory access to the mesolimbic pathway is hemispherically asymmetric, with normal variations in reward sensitivity occurring on the right but abnormal lack of reward on the left.