Researchers have turned human mental activity into music, and it sounds uncannily like free-form jazz piano.

The new brain-to-sound method translates a brain’s electrical fluctuations to pitch and blood flows to intensity. With more sophisticated scores and trained ears, a mind might be heard as a cognitive symphony.

“We hope the on-going progresses of the brain signals-based music will properly unravel part of the truth in the brain,” wrote neuroscientists led by Jing Lu and Dezhong Yao of China’s University of Electronic Science and Technology in a study Nov. 14 in the online journal PLoS One.

Music made from EEG and fMRI readings of a 14-year-old girl (above) and 31-year-old woman (below). Audio: Lu et al./PLoS One

In the new study, they added blood flow measurements from an fMRI machine to the mix. Combining EEG and fMRI allowed pitch and intensity to operate independently, a baseline distinction separating noise from music. To demonstrate, Lu and Yao recorded the brains of a 14-year-old girl and 31-year-old woman at rest (hear samples at left.)

For now, the mind music is more rehearsal than meaningful performance. Both EEG and fMRI provide fairly general measurements. But it’s possible to envision refinements of the approach in which mental states have distinctive sounds, and listening to them aids in diagnosis or treatment.

“Music therapy would be a good application of brain music,” said Lu. “I think this will be a wonderful application if we do more research.”

Citation: “Scale-Free Brain-Wave Music from Simultaneously EEG and fMRI Recordings.” By Jing Lu, Dan Wu, Hua Yang, Cheng Luo, Chaoyi Li, Dezhong Yao. PLoS One, November 14, 2012.