Magnetic field in the head when listening to music
Biomagnetic investigations for neurology

The PTB has succeeded in observing uniform magnetic fields over a period of 30 seconds. So it has been possible to describe a particular electrophysiological phenomenon: When music is listened to, a magnetic field builds up in the head of the listener, persists over the whole duration of the listening effort and decays again when the last tone has died away. How does the brain work? Finding an answer to this question will likely still remain an ambitious objective of neurological and psychological research. Since the twenties man has been able to read the cortex of the cerebrum like a map of the human body and since then it has also been known where motion and sensation are produced. But how do the individual cerebral regions interact? Research work into biomagnetism deals with the conduction of nervous impulses, i.e. motor, tactile and pain stimuli, and includes the comparison of the two hemispheres of the head. Processing of the stimuli in the brain still poses many questions such as how a certain movement is coordinated and what links in the brain are activated. The PTB assists neurological research in answering these complex questions by developing and trying suitable measuring facilities and lends its support for the physical interpretation of the measurements.