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Practicing music for only few years in childhood helps improve adult brain: research - 0 views

  • A little music training in childhood goes a long way in improving how the brain function
  • researchers for the first time have directly examined what happens after children stop playing a musical instrument after only a few years
  • Compared to peers with no musical training, adults with one to five years of musical training as children had enhanced brain responses to complex sounds, making them more effective at pulling out the
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  • lowest frequency in sound
  • crucial for speech and music perception, allowing recognition of sounds in complex and noisy auditory environments.
  • musical training as children makes better listeners later in life
  • the study suggests that short-term music lessons may enhance lifelong listening and learning
  • For the study, young adults with varying amounts of past musical training were tested by measuring electrical signals from the auditory brainstem in response to eight complex sounds ranging in pitch
  • Forty-five adults were grouped into three
  • matched groups based on histories of musical instruction
  • One group had no musical instruction
  • another had 1 to 5 years
  • the other had to 6 to 11 years
  • Both musically trained groups began instrumental practice around age 9
  • musical training during childhood led to more robust neural processing of sounds later in life
  • Prior research on highly trained musicians and early bilinguals revealed that enhanced brainstem responses to sound are associated with heightened auditory perception, executive function and auditory communication skills.
  • we infer that a few years of music lessons also confer advantages in how one perceives and attends to sounds in everyday communication situations, such as noisy restaurants
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Music has big brain benefits compared to other leisure pursuits - 0 views

  • Musical instrumental training, when compared to other activities, may reduce the effects of memory decline and cognitive aging
  • second study
  • which confirms and refines findings from an original study
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  • that revealed that musicians with at least 10 years of instrumental musical training remained cognitively sharp in advanced age
  • range of cognitive benefits, including memory, was sustained for musicians between the ages of 60-80 if they played for at least 10 years throughout their life
  • While years of playing music were the best indication of enhanced cognition in advanced age, the results revealed different sensitive periods for cognitive development across the lifespan
  • before age nine, predicted verbal working memory functions
  • Sustained musical activity in advanced age predicted other non-verbal abilities involving visuospatial judgment, suggesting it is never too late to be musically active
  • Continued musical activity in advanced age also appeared to buffer lower educational levels
  • to obtain optimal results, individuals should start musical training before age nine, play at least 10 years or more and if possible, keep playing for as long as possible over the age of 60.
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Is Pop Music Evolving, or Is It Just Getting Louder? | Observations, Scientific America... - 0 views

  • quantitative analysis of nearly half a million songs
  • songs from nearly 45,000 artists
  • Of the million songs therein, 464,411 came out between 1955 and 2010
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  • examined three aspects of those songs: timbre (which “accounts for the sound color, texture, or tone quality,” according to Serrà and his colleagues); pitch (which “roughly corresponds to the harmonic content of the piece, including its chords, melody, and tonal arrangements”); and loudness
  • peaking in the 1960s, timbral variety has been in steady decline to the present day
  • implies a homogenization of the overall timbral palette, which could point to less diversity in instrumentation and recording techniques
  • Musicians today seem to be less adventurous in moving from one chord or note to another, instead following the paths well-trod
  • no surprise that music has gotten louder
  • the same notes and chords that were popular in decades past are popular today
  • found that the loudness of recorded music is increasing by about one decibel every eight years
  • The Million Song Dataset, huge as it is, may not provide a representative slice of pop music, especially for old songs
  • heavily weighted to modern music
  • only 2,650 songs released between 1955 and 1959
  • 177,808 songs—released between 2005 and 2009
  • draws on what’s popular now, as well as what has been digitized and made available for download
  • may not be the same ones that people enjoyed when those songs first came out.
  • the trend is consistent in short time spans
  • also consistent for longer time spans
Mars Base

Just a few years of early musical training benefits the brain later in life - 0 views

  • Older adults who took music lessons as children but haven't actively played an instrument in decades have a faster brain response to a speech sound than individuals who never played an instrument,
  • As people grow older, they often experience changes in the brain that compromise hearing
  • the brains of older adults show a slower response to fast-changing sounds, which is important for interpreting speec
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  • recent studies of musicians suggest lifelong musical training may offset these and other cognitive declines
  • previous studies show such age-related declines are not inevitable
  • the current study,
  • explored whether limited musical training early in life is associated with changes in the way the brain responds to sound decades later
  • t the more years study participants spent playing instruments as youth, the faster their brains responded to a speech sound.
  • For the study, 44 healthy adults, ages 55-76, listened to a synthesized speech syllable ("da") while researchers measured electrical activity in the auditory brainstem
  • This region of the brain processes sound and is a hub for cognitive, sensory, and reward information
  • researchers discovered that, despite none of the study participants having played an instrument in nearly 40 years
  • participants who completed 4-14 years of music training early in life had the fastest response to the speech sound (on the order of a millisecond faster than those without music training).
  • a millisecond faster may not seem like much, but the brain is very sensitive to timing and a millisecond compounded over millions of neurons can make a real difference
Mars Base

Dental surgeon adds music to drill to appease patients - 0 views

  • a dental surgeon in the Indonesian city of Purworejo has
  • connected an MP3 player to a dental drill that plays music loud enough to drown out the distinctive whine of the instrument
  • he discovered that many patients, especially children were not afraid of the dentist; instead, they were afraid of the drill
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  • connecting the drill with the music player
  • , patients are able to control its volume by opening and closing their mouths
  • e wider they open, the louder the music grows which means the dentist doesn't have to continually urge patients to open wider for better access to back teeth
  • he invested 6 million rupiah (approximately $595)
  • mainly for the benefit of frightened children
  • using it in his practice since 2006 and has noted that many adults also prefer the musical drill to the standard model.
  • Patients can make requests he says, though he does try to limit the choices to songs that calm the nerves
  • t it took a year of research and effort to configure the drill
  • Doctor Gustiana presented his modified drill to attendees at the International Dental Congress held in Greece earlier this year.
Mars Base

Pop music has become louder, less original: study finds - 0 views

  • conclusion of a computer analysis of nearly half-a-million songs recorded between 1955 and 2010
  • global loudness level of music recordings has consistently increased over the years
  • the diversity of chords and melodies has "consistently diminished in the last 50 years
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  • spanned a variety of genres, including rock, pop, hip hop, metal and electronic
Mars Base

A Gamma-Ray Burst as Music - 0 views

  • members of the team that work with the Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT) have translated gamma-ray measurements into musical notes
  • musical notes we assigned the photons to be “played” by different instruments (harp, cello, or piano) based on the probabilities that they came from the burst
Mars Base

Do Dolphins Speak Whale in Their Sleep? - ScienceNOW - 2 views

  • Researchers discovered the dolphins' midnight melodies by accident
  • Every day, as music and sounds of the sea play in the background, they show off their swimming, jumping, and ball-catching skills for an adoring audience and squawk and whistle just like dolphins should
  • But at night, they make strange noises that researchers believe are imitations of humpback whale songs included in the performance soundtrack
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  • Ethologist
  • and her colleagues had hung underwater microphones in the tank because little is known about what dolphins sound like at night
  • One night, they suddenly heard 25 new sounds (see below) that the dolphins had never made before
  • dolphins are known for mimicry
  • researchers examined their complex daytime environment to determine
  • zeroed in on the new soundtrack that Planète Sauvage was playing during performances
  • included music, sea gulls' calls, the dolphins' own whistles, and humpback whale calls
  • researchers used a computer program to compare auditory recordings of the whale
  • showed that the two sounds were very similar
  • the dolphins had been captive their entire lives, they couldn't have picked them up from real whales
  • the team asked 20 human volunteers to listen to humpback whale sounds and wild dolphin sounds
  • researchers played the nighttime vocalizations and asked the volunteers whether the sounds came from a whale or a dolphin
  • About 76% of the time, the volunteers classified the imitations as sounds from real whales
  • Because the dolphins didn't make these noises during the show, the finding suggests that they waited to practice the sounds hours later.
  • the shows prime the animals to learn and remember information
  • find out whether the dolphins are asleep and dreaming when they mimic
  • dreams help dolphins etch new information into their memories, just like in humans
  • capture electroencephalogram recordings of the dolphins' brains at night
  • a biologist at the University of St. Andrews in the United Kingdom who studies animal vocalization, says that the idea that dolphins might delay their rehearsals for hours is intriguin
  • isn't convinced from the small number of recordings that the researchers obtained that the dolphins were imitating whales
  • dolphins make so many different sounds that it's difficult to pin down one as an imitation of a particular source
  • songbirds rehearse their imitations of other noises at night, so he thinks it's not unlikely that dolphins might do the same.
Mars Base

May 15 - Today in Science History - Scientists born on May 15th, died, and events - 0 views

  • Kepler's Law
  • In 1618, Johannes Kepler discovered his harmonics law published in his five-volume work Harmonices Mundi (Harmony of the Worlds, 1619). He attempted to explain proportions and geometry in planetary motions by relating them to musical scales and intervals (an extension of what Pythagoras had described as the “harmony of the spheres”.) Kepler said each planet produces musical tones during its revolution about the sun, and the pitch of the tones varies with the angular velocities of those planets as measured from the sun. The Earth sings Mi, Fa, Mi. At very rare intervals all planets would sing in perfect concord. Kepler proposed that this may have happened only once in history, perhaps at the time of creation.«
Mars Base

Study of friction reveals clues about arthritis - 0 views

  • A new, noninvasive, and low-cost method for the early detection and monitoring of osteoarthritis (arthritis caused by wear and tear) may be on its way
  • By studying patterns of friction between cartilage pads, the researchers discovered a different type of friction that is more likely to cause wear and damage
  • work suggests ways to detect this friction, and points to new research directions for getting to the root cause of arthritis
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  • Imagine going to the doctor for your aching knees
  • what if your doctor could actually listen to your body, monitoring the way your knees sound as they bend and flex
  • an instrument called a Surface Forces Apparatus (SFA), a device that measures the adhesion and friction forces between surfaces—in this case cartilage, the pad of tissue that covers the ends of bones at a joint.
  • degeneration of cartilage is the most common cause of osteoarthritis: The pads wear away, leaving bone grinding against bone
  • researchers found is that it isn't just any kind of friction that leads to the irreversible wear and tear on the material
  • currently believed that a high-friction force, or 'coefficient of friction,' is the primary factor in surface wear and damage
  • found is that this is not the case
  • The critical feature is not a high-friction force, but what is known as "stick-slip" friction, or, sometimes, "stiction."
  • Both are characterized by surfaces that initially stick together, and then accelerate away quickly once the static friction force is overcome
  • With stick-slip friction, the surfaces eventually pull slightly apart and slide across each other, stick again, and pull apart, causing jerky movements.
  • That's when things get damaged microscopically
  • Stick-slip is a common phenomenon. It is responsible for everything from computer hard drive crashes and automobile failures, to squeaking doors and music
  • same thing happens with a violin string
  • Even if you're pulling the bow steadily, it's moving in hundreds or thousands of little jerks per second, which determine the sound you hear
  • Each little jerk, no matter how submicroscopic, is an impact, and over time the accumulation of these impacts can deform surfaces, causing irreparable damage—first microscopically, then growing to macroscopic
  • it's not easy to tell the difference between types of friction at the microscopic level
  • Smooth-sliding joints might feel the same as those undergoing stiction, or the even more harmful stick-slip, especially in the early stages of arthritis
  • when measured with an ultra-sensitive and high-resolution instrument like the SFA, each type of friction revealed its own characteristic profile
  • Smooth-sliding joints yielded an almost smooth constant line (friction force or friction trace
  • with stiction showed up as a peak, as the "sticking" was being overcome, followed by a relatively smooth line
  • stick-slip shows the jagged saw-tooth profile of two surfaces repeatedly pulling apart, sticking, and pulling apart again
  • these measurements could be recorded by placing an acoustic or electric sensing device around joints, giving a signal similar to an EKG.
  • this could be a good way to measure and diagnose damage to the cartilage
  • to measure the progression, or even the early detection of symptoms related to arthritis
  • Early detection of conditions like arthritis has been a priority for many years
  • the functioning of joints is more complicated
  • scientists will continue their work by studying synovial fluid—the lubricating fluid between two cartilage surfaces in joints
  • plays a major role in whether or not the surfaces wear and tear, and the synergistic roles of the different molecules (proteins, lipids, and polymers
  • all involved in lubricating and preventing damage to our joints.
  • a number of directions to take, both fundamental and practical
  • it looks as if we need to focus our research on finding ways to prevent stick-slip motion, rather than lowering the friction force
Mars Base

Frequent multitaskers are bad at it: Motorists overrate ability to talk on cell phones ... - 0 views

  • Most people believe they can multitask effectively, but a
  • study indicates that people who multitask the most – including talking on a cell phone while driving – are least capable of doing so.
  • data suggest the people talking on cell phones while driving are people who probably shouldn't. We showed that people who multitask the most are those who appear to be the least capable of multitasking effectively
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  • The people who are most likely to multitask harbor the illusion they are better than average at it, when in fact they are no better than average and often worse
  • The study ran 310 undergraduate psychology students through a battery of tests and questionnaires to measure actual multitasking ability, perceived multitasking ability, cell phone use while driving, use of a wide array of electronic media, and personality traits such as impulsivity and sensation-seeking.
  • people who score high on a test of actual multitasking ability tend not to multitask because they are better able to focus attention on the task at hand
  • 70 percent of participants thought they were above average at multitasking, which is statistically impossible
  • The more people multitask by talking on cell phones while driving or by using multiple media at once, the more they lack the actual ability to multitask, and their perceived multitasking ability "was found to be significantly inflated
  • People with high levels of impulsivity and sensation-seeking reported more multitasking
  • there was an exception: People who talk on cell phones while driving tend not to be impulsive, indicating that cell phone use is a deliberate choice
  • research suggests that people who engage in multitasking often do so not because they have the ability, but "because they are less able to block out distractions and focus on a singular task
  • The study participants were 310 University of Utah psychology undergraduates – 176 female and 134 male with a median age of 21 – who volunteered for their department's subject pool in exchange for extra course credit.
  • To measure actual multitasking ability, participants performed a test named Operation Span, or OSPAN.
  • The test involves two tasks: memorization and math computation
  • Participants must remember two to seven letters, each separated by a math equation that they must identify as true or false
  • A simple example of a question: "is 2+4=6?, g, is 3-2=2?, a, is 4x3=12." Answer: true, g, false, a, true.
  • Participants also ranked their perceptions of their own multitasking ability by giving themselves a score ranging from zero to 100, with 50 percent meaning average.
  • Study subjects reported how often they used a cell phone while driving, and what percentage of the time they are on the phone while driving
  • also completed a survey of how often and for how many hours they use which media, including printed material, television and video, computer video, music, nonmusic audio, video games, phone, instant and text messaging, e-mail, the Web and other computer software such as word processing
  • researchers looked for significant correlations among results of the various tests and questionnaires
  • people who multitask the most tend to be impulsive, sensation-seeking, overconfident of their multitasking abilities, and they tend to be less capable of multitasking
  • 25 percent of the people who performed best on the OSPAN test of multitasking ability "are the people who are least likely to multitask and are most likely to do one thing at a time
  • 70 percent of participants said they were above-average at multitasking, and they were more likely to multitask
  • Media multitasking – except cell phone use while driving – correlated significantly with impulsivity, particularly the inability to concentrate and acting without thinking.
  • Multitasking, including cell phone use while driving, correlated significantly with sensation-seeking, indicating some people multitask because it is more stimulating, interesting and challenging, and less boring – even if it may hurt their overall performance
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Sony Patent Reveals Biometric Controllers - PS3 News at IGN - 0 views

  • Measuring skin moisture, heart rhythm and muscle movement
  • Measuring skin moisture, heart rhythm and muscle movement
  • the following ideas are mentioned in the application
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  • Character changes based on biometric feedback, such as a character sweating when you're nervous.
  • Tensing up your muscles to absorb an attack or power up shields.
  • Weapons that become more accurate or less steady depending on your level of stress.
  • A boost to run faster, jump higher and punch harder while stressed.
  • Rapid decreases in health if your stress increases.
  • Different attacks based on stress levels.
  • Background music that matches your stress level, or becomes more relaxing if you're stressed.
  • Scaling difficulty based on stress level.
  • The last time biometric feedback was introduced to mainstream games was Nintendo's vitality sensor, which was announced at E3 2009 but never released.
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March 12 - Today in Science History - Scientists born on March 12th, died, and events - 0 views

  • Sound on film
  • In 1923, the Phonofilm, the first motion picture with a sound-on-film track was demonstrated at a press conference. It was developed (1920) by Dr. Lee De Forest, inventor of the radio tube (1907). Dancers and musicians were shown on the film with music, but without voice dialogue. The sound was imaged in a narrow margin alongside the picture frames on the film. (De Forest's process came several years before the 1928 film, the "Jazz Singer," but that film used the Warner Vitaphone system. The Vitaphone system attempted to synchronize its sound from a record player turntable connected to the film projector.) The de Forest process read a series of light and dark areas on the film itself, using a photocell to convert to audio.
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Hearing quality restored with bionic ear technology used for gene therapy - 0 views

  • Researchers
  • have for the first time used electrical pulses delivered from a cochlear implant to deliver gene therapy, thereby successfully regrowing auditory nerves
  • The research also heralds a possible new way of treating a range of neurological disorders, including Parkinson's disease, and psychiatric conditions such as depression through this novel way of delivering gene therapy.
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  • "People with cochlear implants do well with understanding speech, but their perception of pitch can be poor, so they often miss out on the joy of music," says UNSW Professor Gary Housley
  • The work centres on regenerating surviving nerves after age-related or environmental hearing loss, using existing cochlear technology
  • The cochlear implants are "surprisingly efficient" at localised gene therapy in the animal model, when a few electric pulses are administered during the implant procedure.
  • It has long been established that the auditory nerve endings regenerate if neurotrophins – a naturally occurring family of proteins crucial for the development, function and survival of neurons – are delivered to the auditory portion of the inner ear, the cochlea.
  • until now, research has stalled because safe, localised delivery of the neurotrophins can't be achieved using drug delivery, nor by viral-based gene therapy
  • developed a way of using electrical pulses delivered from the cochlear implant to deliver the DNA to the cells close to the array of implanted electrodes. These cells then produce neurotrophins.
  • the neurotrophin production dropped away after a couple of months
  • ultimately the changes in the hearing nerve may be maintained by the ongoing neural activity generated by the cochlear implant.
  • "We think it's possible that in the future this gene delivery would only add a few minutes to the implant procedure,"
  • Jeremy Pinyon, whose PhD is based on this work
  • "The surgeon who installs the device would inject the DNA solution into the cochlea and then fire electrical impulses to trigger the DNA transfer once the implant is inserted."
  • Integration of this technology into other 'bionic' devices such as electrode arrays used in deep brain stimulation
  • the treatment of Parkinson's disease and depression, for example) could also afford opportunities for safe, directed gene therapy of complex neurological disorders
  • implications far beyond hearing disorders
  • Professor Matthias Klugmann
  • "Gene therapy has been suggested as a treatment concept even for devastating neurological conditions and our technology provides a novel platform for safe and efficient gene transfer into tissues as delicate as the brain."
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