Brain scans accidentally predict the next big pop music hits

Back in 2006 , stripling listed to cartridge clip from 120 strange artist as part of a scientific study . One of those artists happened to be next American Idol achiever Kris Allen . Could this work have predict his succeeding winner ?

That ’s what Emory University researcher Gregory Berns wanted to find out . He had originally taken the song from random MySpace pages ( this was 2006 , after all ) and played snippet for the adolescent to see how their mastermind react to pop music . Three years later , when he heard Kris Allen perform on American Idol , Berns realized he had stumbled onto a unequaled opportunity .

Berns explains :

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“ It occurred to me that we had this unique data set of the brain response of nipper who listened to songs before they arrest popular . I start up to inquire if we could have predicted that hit . ”

To do that , he go back to the original datum and search for any correlations between the responses in the teens ’ mind and how the various song perform in the chart between 2007 and 2010 . There was some relationship – the brain CAT scan overwhelmingly express more activity when listening to succeeding hits than to songs that achieved no succeeder , which Berns say speaks to how euphony “ taps into a naked as a jaybird response ” in the brainpower .

That say , these brain CAT scan were n’t a perfect oracle . Only three of the song used in the study go on to trade 500,000 copies , which is by and large held up as the manufacture standard for a strike song . None of those Sung were among the top ten in term of trip the wages centers of the teenagers ’ brains . Still , of the ten top neural - activate song , five of them did go on to sell 50,000 copies , which is n’t too moth-eaten .

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What ’s even more interesting is that the brain scan were a much good predictor of future winner than were the teenagers ’ actual reply . Berns explains why these were believably undependable :

“ You have to stop and think , and your thoughts may be colored by whatever biases you have , and how you feel about reveal your preferences to a researcher . ”

This study only looked at the response of 27 adolescent , so it ca n’t precisely be considered a robust bailiwick . But Berns thinks he ’s onto something with this , and a future study that boast a larger , more divers group of participants could show to have far more predictive baron .

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