Daily pleasures such as listening to music and drinking coffee can influence a person's brain activity, thereby improving cognitive performance, including during tasks that require concentration and memory. That's the finding of a new study from NYU Tandon School of Engineering involving a breakthrough brain monitoring technology called MINDWATCH.
Developed over six years by Rose Faghih, an associate professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at NYU Tandon, MINDWATCH is an algorithm that can analyze human brain activity through data collected by any wearable device that monitors electrodermal activity (EDA). This activity reflects changes in electrical conduction triggered by emotional stress and is associated with the sweating response.
In the MINDWATCH study, published recently in the journal Scientific Reports, subjects wearing skin-monitoring wristbands and brain-monitoring headbands completed cognitive tests while listening to music, drinking coffee and smelling perfume that reflected their personal preferences. They also completed these tests without using any stimuli.
The MINDWATCH algorithm showed that music and coffee significantly altered the subjects' brain arousal, essentially putting them in a physiological "mental state" that modulated their performance when performing working memory tasks.
Specifically, MINDWATCH determined that stimulants trigger an increase in "beta-band" brain wave activity, a state associated with peak cognitive abilities. Perfume also has some positive effects, suggesting further research is warranted.
"The pandemic has impacted the mental health of many people around the world, making seamless monitoring of the negative impact of daily stress on cognitive function more important now than ever," said Fajh. "Currently, MINDWATCH is still in development, but our ultimate goal is that it will contribute to technology that allows anyone to monitor their brain's cognitive arousal in real time, for example, to detect moments of acute stress or cognitive disengagement. At these moments, MINDWATCH can 'prompt' a person to take a simple and safe intervention - perhaps listening to music - so that they can put themselves into a brain state where they can feel better and complete work or study tasks more successfully."
The specific cognitive test used in this study—a working memory task known as the "n-back test"—involves presenting a sequence of stimuli (in this case, images or sounds) one-by-one, and asking subjects to indicate whether the current stimulus matches a stimulus presented "n" items earlier in the sequence. The study used a 1-back test, in which subjects responded "yes" when the current stimulus was the same as a subsequent stimulus, and a more challenging 3-back test, in which subjects were asked to respond the same to the next three stimuli.
The researchers tested three types of music - energetic and relaxing music that was familiar to the subjects, as well as new AI-generated music that reflected the subjects' tastes. Consistent with previous MINDWATCH findings, familiar energetic music led to greater performance improvements (measured by reaction times and correct answers) than relaxing music. While AI-generated music showed the greatest improvement among the three types of music, further research is needed to confirm these results.
Compared to music, drinking coffee significantly improved performance, but not as much. Across all stimuli, performance improvements on the 3-back test tended to be greater, suggesting that interventions may have their most profound effects when "cognitive load" is greater.
The MINDWATCH team's ongoing experiments will confirm the effectiveness of the technology's ability to continuously monitor brain activity, as well as the general success of various interventions in modulating brain activity. Identifying a generally successful class of intervention does not mean that everyone will find it effective for them.