Hearing brainwaves

A method for converting the brainwaves of people living with epilepsy into sound has been developed by researchers at the University of Sydney.

The method, called sonification, is an auditory display technique that represents a sequence of data values as sound - the data derived from measuring and recording the electrical activity of the brain activity via EEG.

“The key brainwave signals associated with epilepsy repeat about five times per second,” explained Dr Alistair McEwan, a biomedical engineer who coordinated the work. “But this frequency is too low for the human ear to hear so, using sonification, we speed up the signal by 60 times.”

“At that speed, normal brain activity becomes audible and sounds like normal background noise, for example, a ‘murmur of voices’ and a squeaky computer or air-conditioning fan.”

“Seizures are easily identified as they are associated with a rapid increase in the pitch and they sound like a whoopee cushion,” said Dr McEwan.

Monitoring brain waves with EEG is the best diagnostic tool and most commonly used test to diagnose epilepsy.

However, learning how to diagnose epilepsy is difficult, labour intensive and it can take years to develop these skills.

The sonification team tested their method on a group of non-experts and found they learned how to audibly distinguish between seizures and some common sounds after a few hours of training.

It is estimated that nearly 800,000 Australians will be diagnosed with epilepsy at some stage in life and over 225,000 Australians currently live with epilepsy.

This method provides the potential for a person living with epilepsy or their carer to collect information about their condition.

Working in conjunction with medical specialists, this information would be valuable for assessment and determination of medication regimes. It would also empower patients who are faced with the unpredictability of epileptic seizures by knowing that they are, in some sense, taking charge of their condition.

The researchers hope to take their research to the next phase of clinical trials and develop a portable EEG system.

More information is available on YouTube by searching ‘Hearing brainwaves - epilepsy EEG sonified’.