Art and science are polar opposites, right? A recent collaboration between researchers in the University of Saskatchewan’s department of psychology and the Saskatoon Symphony Orchestra is trying to show otherwise.

Researchers Janeen Loehr and Jennifer Nichol, along with a group of four performing musicians donning electroencephalogram skullcaps, have produced a live artistic visualization of the cerebral organ in musical synchrony that will be showcased at the SSO season opening night on Sept. 22.

Expressly meant to bring together the science side and the art side, Loehr suggests that the performance shows that the boundaries between the two fields aren’t quite as obvious as they may have been in the past.

Loehr, assistant professor in the department of psychology, hopes that this kind of work can push these seemingly disparate disciplines ahead in their pursuits by informing one another.

“Sometimes, it’s easy, as a scientist, to get a bit isolated, even from the phenomenon that you’re studying,” Loehr said. “Being able to show the brain activity during the live performance really gets right there. It really brings those two things together, which is really exciting. This sort of bringing the science together with the art is all new to me. I have never done anything like this before — this kind of public showcase.”

As for this bigger picture, Loehr says, “this is the first project looking at how musicians synchronize with each other and how their brain activity — while they synchronize — might lead to beneficial impacts on performing music as a group. We’re actually planning on some future studies where we do this kind of work with amateur musicians.”

Sophie McBean, a second-year medical student and violinist with the SSO who participated in the project, believes that there is more than one obvious application for techniques and devices developed through this kind of collaboration.

“I think it could lead to the use of music in more situations where it might be beneficial to people — like in the field of health care as a potential therapy,” McBean said. “It helps with learning in both people with and without disabilities, and it can be used as an all-around method to help people learn.”

Researchers record brainwave data from a Saskatoon Symphony violinist.

McBean is intimately involved in both art and science, and she relishes the opportunity to showcase the strong link between the two fields that often goes overlooked.

“People love playing and listening to music. They generally like participating in art, but I don’t think they understand why,” McBean said. “People like to understand things and know exactly what it is that’s going on, and why we like it, and so I think that science is a good way to bring knowledge and facts to something that’s so creative and artistic.”

For her part, when she thinks about the relationship between art and science in the future, Loehr imagines “brain-computer interfaces where you can actually control devices in the world using brain activity” and she trusts that the horizon for interdisciplinary research of this kind is endless.

“The more we talk to each other across these fields, the more we are going to see potential for positive outcomes,” Loehr said. “Specifically, in a musical context, there’s a lot of room for really interesting developments to happen there.”

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James Morin

Photo: Supplies / Saskatoon Symphony Orchestra