Shawn De Fre­itas

I don't re­mem­ber the first time I felt it, but the feel­ing has fol­lowed me all my life: the al­most hyp­not­ic pull of watch­ing peo­ple play in a steel­band. Stand in any pa­n­yard and you will see it. The wild fa­cial ex­pres­sions, the bod­ies mov­ing with the rhythm, the in­tense con­cen­tra­tion that sud­den­ly breaks in­to a smile. The play­ers are not just mak­ing mu­sic; they are com­plete­ly im­mersed in it. There is some­thing in­her­ent­ly joy­ful about play­ing the steel­pan.

If play­ing pan can light up a face and spark a smile like that, what is it light­ing up in our brains? And what could the way some­one plays re­veal about their brain health over time?

Those ques­tions led me to cre­ate Pan­jam+.

Pan­jam+ is a vir­tu­al re­al­i­ty plat­form that brings to­geth­er mu­sic, im­mer­sive tech­nol­o­gy and brain sci­ence, de­signed with old­er adults in mind. We recre­at­ed the steel­pan in a vir­tu­al world, en­gi­neer­ing its form and me­chan­ics so that a play­er can put on a head­set, pick up the con­trollers and play much as they would a re­al pan.

The steel­pan is the prod­uct of many break­throughs, but for me, one of its great­est in­no­va­tions is its lay­out. On a pi­ano, the notes run in a straight line. On a tenor pan, they sit around a curved bowl, arranged in the cir­cle of fourths and fifths pi­o­neered by An­tho­ny Williams and re­fined through gen­er­a­tions of pan de­vel­op­ment.

To play even a sim­ple melody, the hands must cross the body, reach from one side of the bowl to the oth­er and leap be­tween oc­taves, all while re­mem­ber­ing what comes next and keep­ing time. Play­ing pan is a con­tin­u­ous con­ver­sa­tion be­tween sound, mem­o­ry, move­ment, tim­ing and space.

Vir­tu­al re­al­i­ty lets us do some­thing a phys­i­cal pan can­not: mea­sure that con­ver­sa­tion.

As peo­ple play, and with their per­mis­sion, Pan­jam+ records their re­ac­tion times, the ac­cu­ra­cy of each strike and the paths their hands take through space.

Tra­di­tion­al­ly, a cog­ni­tive as­sess­ment is a snap­shot: a sin­gle ses­sion with a trained pro­fes­sion­al, usu­al­ly in a clin­i­cal set­ting. Pan­jam+ is de­signed to sit along­side that snap­shot and add some­thing a sin­gle ses­sion can­not: a pic­ture of how per­for­mance changes over time. Peo­ple sim­ply make mu­sic, as of­ten as they like, and each ses­sion con­tributes an­oth­er point in their in­di­vid­ual record. Lon­gi­tu­di­nal re­search shows that re­peat­ed mea­sure­ment can re­veal changes and pat­terns that may not be ap­par­ent from a sin­gle as­sess­ment — al­though in­ter­pret­ing those changes re­quires ac­count­ing for learn­ing and prac­tice ef­fects.

We are ask­ing whether the same prin­ci­ple can be ap­plied to play­ing pan: whether the way some­one in­ter­acts with a mu­si­cal ex­pe­ri­ence over time can pro­vide mean­ing­ful in­for­ma­tion about their cog­ni­tive health. The joy be­comes part of the ob­ser­va­tion.

Thomas Edi­son is of­ten cred­it­ed with say­ing that to in­vent, you need a good imag­i­na­tion and a pile of junk. Our pi­o­neers had both.

In the 1940s, they be­gan ex­per­i­ment­ing with some­thing nev­er in­tend­ed to make mu­sic: dis­card­ed oil drums. They sank them, ham­mered them, grooved them and tuned them un­til they sang. Win­ston "Spree" Si­mon, El­lie Man­nette, Bertie Mar­shall, An­tho­ny Williams and count­less oth­ers trans­formed in­dus­tri­al waste in­to an en­tire­ly new in­stru­ment — one that would be­come a defin­ing sym­bol of Trinidad and To­ba­go. Pan­jam+ con­tin­ues that tra­di­tion.

Where our pi­o­neers looked at an oil drum and heard mu­sic, we looked at what they cre­at­ed and saw an in­ter­face for the mind — and a new pos­si­bil­i­ty for help­ing peo­ple age well. The world's pop­u­la­tion is grow­ing old­er at an un­prece­dent­ed pace, mak­ing cog­ni­tive health an in­creas­ing­ly im­por­tant part of age­ing well. Here at home, the chal­lenge is hard­er to ig­nore: our pop­u­la­tion is age­ing, while ac­cess to spe­cialised cog­ni­tive-health ser­vices re­mains lim­it­ed. Pan­jam+ is now in its pi­lot phase, work­ing with se­nior com­mu­ni­ties and with their con­sent, col­lect­ing re­al-world game­play and move­ment da­ta.

We are in­ves­ti­gat­ing whether the or­di­nary ac­tions of play­ing pan — mov­ing to a note, re­act­ing to a cue, re­mem­ber­ing a se­quence and co­or­di­nat­ing both hands — can pro­duce mea­sur­able sig­nals that help us un­der­stand cog­ni­tive health over time.

The work brings to­geth­er re­searchers in Eu­rope, North Amer­i­ca and Africa, with sup­port in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean through the IDB's Sil­ver Re­gion Fund. Our longer-term goal is to build a dataset that fol­lows the same peo­ple over years, al­low­ing us to see how these pat­terns change over time. We are not try­ing to turn the steel­pan in­to a med­ical test. We are ex­plor­ing what hap­pens when an ac­tiv­i­ty peo­ple al­ready en­joy be­comes a source of mea­sur­able in­ter­ac­tion and over time, a source of in­sight.

What be­gan as a ques­tion about what hap­pens in the brain when we play pan has be­come a big­ger ques­tion: what else can we dis­cov­er when we look dif­fer­ent­ly at what we al­ready have? Too of­ten, in­no­va­tion is imag­ined as some­thing that hap­pens else­where and is even­tu­al­ly im­port­ed here. We look out­ward for the next tech­nol­o­gy, the next plat­form, the next so­lu­tion. But what hap­pens when we look in­ward first?

The steel­pan emerged from our par­tic­u­lar his­to­ry, ma­te­ri­als and cir­cum­stances. Its cre­ators had none of the re­sources of a glob­al tech­nol­o­gy in­dus­try; they ex­per­i­ment­ed with what they had. That is one of the lessons I take from the steel­pan. Our cul­ture, our de­mo­graph­ics, our en­vi­ron­ment and even our con­straints can be­come raw ma­te­r­i­al for de­sign. We don't have to take some­one else's so­lu­tion and give it a Caribbean coat of paint. We can start with some­thing dis­tinct­ly ours and ask what pos­si­bil­i­ties are hid­den in­side it. We didn't choose the steel­pan for Pan­jam+ sim­ply be­cause it is our na­tion­al in­stru­ment. We chose it for the over­looked in­tel­li­gence in its de­sign. The play­er must con­stant­ly trans­late sound in­to move­ment, move­ment in­to spa­tial de­ci­sions, and those de­ci­sions back in­to mu­sic. The pi­o­neers were solv­ing mu­si­cal prob­lems. They could not have imag­ined that, decades lat­er, vir­tu­al re­al­i­ty would let us ob­serve those in­ter­ac­tions in such de­tail.

Pan­jam+ re­cent­ly re­ceived the Trinidad and To­ba­go Coali­tion of Ser­vices In­dus­tries' award for Best Use of In­no­va­tion in Ser­vices, an ac­knowl­edge­ment our whole team was proud to re­ceive. As we con­tin­ue our work, we are look­ing for part­ners: se­nior cen­tres, care homes, health pro­fes­sion­als, re­searchers and oth­ers who want to ex­plore how our na­tion­al in­stru­ment might help peo­ple age well. If the steel­pan could be born from dis­card­ed oil drums, imag­ine what else our cul­ture is wait­ing to teach us. To learn more about the Pan­jam+ pi­lot or get in­volved, con­tact in­fo@din­gole.com.

The smil­ing faces were where the ques­tion be­gan. The re­al fron­tier is dis­cov­er­ing what those mo­ments of joy can teach us about the mind.

Shawn De Fre­itas is the founder of Din­gole E-Com­merce Ser­vice