

MRIs of teenage brain waves can predict pop hits. - cwan
http://www.bizjournals.com/atlanta/news/2011/06/13/emory-teen-brain-data-could-predict.html

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malvosenior
Full article: [http://esciencecommons.blogspot.com/2011/06/teen-brain-
data-...](http://esciencecommons.blogspot.com/2011/06/teen-brain-data-
predicts-pop-song.html)

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harrybr
They tested 120 songs found on myspace. One of them later turned out to be a
hit, so the researcher went back to his data to see if there was a
correlation.

Correlation does not imply causation.

As it happens, there was a correlation. But we don't know what the songs were
actually like. (Perhaps the poor songs were incredibly bad, so much so that
any musician would have been able to flag them up as likely failures). We
don't know much about the 27 participants. We don't know much about the
experimental method.

This is not well reported science.

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stcredzero
"Thanks for coming to our focus group. Now if you can relinquish all metal
objects and stand below these really large hats..."

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JonnieCache
Not so much these days.

<http://www.emotiv.com/store/hardware/299/>

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stcredzero
I doubt it has the same capabilities as an MRI.

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pygy_
Definitely not. Especially since the involved structures are either between
the hemispheres or at the base of the brain.

You can reconstruct the source of neural activity using EEG (it is an example
of the inverse problem, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverse_problem>), but
you need at least 64 channels if you want any semblance of precision. 128 or
better, 256 channels give better results (although, at least a few years ago,
the 256 channels machines often were an overkill (diminishing returns)).

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cing
I can't wait for high accuracy brain measurements in the mainstream. hoping to
do some brainsourced computation in the future!

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nkassis
This sure is one expensive way to figure this stuff out. For those wanting to
understand better brains and music check out this book: "This is you brain on
music" by Daniel J. Levitin ([http://www.amazon.com/This-Your-Brain-Music-
Obsession/dp/045...](http://www.amazon.com/This-Your-Brain-Music-
Obsession/dp/0452288525/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1308335103&sr=8-1))

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rrival
HitPredictor.com has been doing this successfully for years without the
brainwaves.

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powrtoch
Have they? The website doesn't seem to show any actual evidence of efficacy,
or indeed any data whatsoever.

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rrival
Yes. They're not targeting you.

Every major label has a deal with them, nearly every hit on the top 50 for the
last 5+ years was pre-screened by management. The last numbers I heard were
$1m/year for the service with a $20k/song screening charge.

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wccrawford
Wait, so songs people like might be hits?

Color me amazed.

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abeppu
_Another interesting twist: When the research subjects were asked to rate the
songs on a scale of one to five, their answers did not correlate with future
sales of the songs._

I think the fact that the fMRI data predicted success, but that the explicit
ratings given did not predict success is the interesting part of this. It
would be totally uninteresting if you could predict the song's success just
from asking people what they like, or how good they think something is. That
an fMRI can tell you more about the goodness of the song than the people in
the fMRI listening to the music, is pretty cool.

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wccrawford
You're assuming that their rating on that scale actually matches what they
like. Many factors will cause them to change their answers, not the least of
which is peer pressure.

