Attention is important in a busy life. Neurofeedback training can enhance the
attention. However, there is only visual feedback and simple sound feedback for clinical
and research purpose. Using musical feedback, because lots of people listen to music while
driving or studying, it can be used in real life. However, music is a time-variant stimulus.
This makes it an important feature how the music changes over time in musical
neurofeedback.
11 male subjects participated in this study. The arrow flanker task was used to
measure participants’ attention. With classical music, Vivaldi’s “Four Seosons”: “Spring”,
playing with varying speed while working showed a significant effect. In case of pop
music, Psy’s “Gangnam style” significantly influenced the attention when its volume was
changed. Volume variation in classical music was hard to be recognized, and slow pop
music was too annoying to enhance attention. Neurofeedback done simultaneously with the
tasks simultaneously had less effect on the attention than neurofeedback done prior to
performing tasks.
Depending on the music characteristics, efficient variation method is different. In
further studies, other music genre and variation method would be used in the task. In
addition, customizing effect would be examined as well. Musical feedback is less intuitive
than visual neurofeedback, and a long adapting time is needed. Applying fitting process
using the bar feedback would be advantageous to attention enhancement.