The Musical Brain: Novel Study of Jazz Players Shows Common Brain Circuitry Processes Both Music and Language

Researchers scanned brains while musicians “traded fours"

The brains of jazz musicians engrossed in spontaneous, improvisational musical conversation showed robust activation of brain areas traditionally associated with spoken language and syntax, which are used to interpret the structure of phrases and sentences. But this musical conversation shut down brain areas linked to semantics - those that process the meaning of spoken language, according to results of a study by Johns Hopkins researchers.

The study used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to track the brain activity of jazz musicians in the act of "trading fours," a process in which musicians participate in spontaneous back and forth instrumental exchanges, usually four bars in duration. The musicians introduce new melodies in response to each other's musical ideas, elaborating and modifying them over the course of a performance.

The results of the study suggest that the brain regions that process syntax aren't limited to spoken language, according to Charles Limb, M.D., an associate professor in the Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Rather, he says, the brain uses the syntactic areas to process communication in general, whether through language or through music.

Limb, who is himself a musician and holds a faculty appointment at the Peabody Conservatory, says the work sheds important new light on the complex relationship between music and language.

Choir singing improves health, happiness – and is the perfect icebreaker

A decade ago, any mention of a choir would probably have brought Sunday morning hymns to mind. But there’s been a revolution in attitudes towards joining the local choir. Adding well-known, mainstream music to the repertoire, the small screen appeal of television choirmaster Gareth Malone, and the increased visibility of choirs such as Rock Choir and Popchoir, have attracted a new crowd to the idea of the communal singalong. It is estimated that an incredible 2.8m Britons are now members of a choir.

Which is good news – for singing in a choir is beneficial in a number of different ways. We’ve just published some research that reveals that group singing not only helps forge social bonds, it also does so particularly quickly, acting as an excellent icebreaker. We’ve also shown that community singing is effective for bonding large groups, making it an ideal behaviour to improve our broader social networks. This is particularly valuable in today’s often alienating world, where many of our social interactions are conducted remotely via Facebook and Twitter.

But why are so many people flocking to choirs? There’s almost certainly an X Factor effect at play, with people, inspired by TV talent shows, becoming increasingly willing to stand up and perform. It also has long been believed that music-making can create a strong sense of well-being, but since it’s very hard to find a suitable “control” activity, this area is particularly hard to research scientifically.

Although this remains a problem, a number of recent developments have helped us to understand how group singing can improve physical and mental health, as well as promote social bonding.

Body and mind

The physiological benefits of singing, and music more generally, have long been explored. Music making exercises the brain as well as the body, but singing is particularly beneficial for improving breathing, posture and muscle tension. Listening to and participating in music has been shown to be effective in pain relief, too, probably due to the release of neurochemicals such as β-endorphin (a natural painkiller responsible for the “high” experienced after intense exercise).

Music Makes You a Better Reader, Says Neuroscience

It’s known as the “musician’s advantage.”

For decades, educators, scientists, and researchers have observed that students who pick up musical instruments tend to excel in academics—taking the lead in measures of vocabulary, reading, and non-verbal reasoning and attention skills, just to name a few. But why musical training conferred such an advantage remained a bit of a mystery.

Nina Kraus, director of the Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory at Northwestern University and research collaborator on the Harmony Project has spent her life surrounded by music. And, today, she is studying how musical training can harness the brain’s natural plasticity, or adaptiveness, to help students become better overall students and readers, even when they grow up in impoverished environments.

The “musician’s advantage,” traditionally, has been difficult to study. Often, musical training is obtained privately in one-on-one instruction—something available only to kids of higher socio-economic status. This meant that researchers couldn’t say for certain whether music was responsible for the better academic outcomes observed or whether some unrelated factor, linked to living in a home in a higher income bracket, was behind any observed difference. After all, more affluent parents are often better educated themselves—and have more time and resources to help children with their reading and school work. Perhaps music wasn’t the true differentiator.

Students play Led Zeppelin on Xylophones

Watch this amazing video of the 2014-2015 Louisville Leopard Percussionists rehearsing "Kashmir", "The Ocean" and "Immigrant Song" by Led Zeppelin.

These student musicians, who come from several different schools in Kentucky, are between the ages of 7-12 and each learns several different instruments such as xylophones, marimbas, drums, timbales, vibraphones, congas, bongos and piano.

http://www.booooooom.com/2015/02/25/video-day-kids-play-led-zeppelin-xylophones/

Music and math: The genius of Beethoven

How is it that Beethoven, who is celebrated as one of the most significant composers of all time, wrote many of his most beloved songs while going deaf? The answer lies in the math behind his music. Natalya St. Clair employs the "Moonlight Sonata" to illustrate the way Beethoven was able to convey emotion and creativity using the certainty of mathematics. 

How Repetition Enchants the Brain and the Psychology of Why We Love It in Music

“Music takes place in time, but repetition beguilingly makes it knowable in the way of something outside of time.”

“The repetition itself becomes the important thing; it’s a form of mesmerism,” Haruki Murakami reflected on the power of a daily routine. “Rhythm is one of the most powerful of pleasures, and when we feel a pleasurable rhythm we hope it will continue,” Mary Oliver wrote about the secret of great poetry, adding: “When it does, it grows sweeter.” But nowhere does rhythmic repetition mesmerize us more powerfully than in music, with its singular way of enchanting the brain.

How and why this happens is precisely what cognitive scientist Elizabeth Hellmuth Margulis, director of the Music Cognition Lab at the University of Arkansas, explores in On Repeat: How Music Plays the Mind (public library). This illuminating short animation from TED Ed, based on Margulis’s work, explains the psychology of the “mere exposure effect,” which makes things grow sweeter simply as they become familiar — a parallel manifestation of the same psychological phenomenon that causes us to rate familiar statements as more likely to be true than unfamiliar ones.

Children’s brains shaped by music training

Two years of enrichment program better than one.

 

 


Musical training tunes the developing brain, scientists report in the Sept. 3 Journal of Neuroscience. After two years in a music enrichment program, children in Los Angeles had more sophisticated brain responses to spoken syllables than kids who had only a year of training.
Researchers led by neuroscientist Nina Kraus of Northwestern University studied 44 children enrolled with the Harmony Project, an organization that brings music training to kids in low-income communities. The children began music lessons when they were on average 8 years old. After two years of lessons, but not one, kids’ brains showed distinct responses to the rapidly spoken sounds “ba” and “ga.”

Electrodes placed on the kids’ scalps revealed millisecond-scale differences in brain activity in response to the syllables, suggesting that the more musically trained brains were better at distinguishing between the sounds. This neural distinction has been linked to real-life skills such as reading and the ability to pick out speech from a noisy din, says Kraus.

She and her colleagues hope to expand their research and bring musical training to more children. “We’ve opened the window a crack, but I’m hoping it can be thrown wide open,” she says. 

 

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/children%E2%80%99s-brains-shaped-music-training 

How playing an instrument benefits your brain

When you listen to music, multiple areas of your brain become engaged and active. But when you actually play an instrument, that activity becomes more like a full-body brain workout. What's going on? Anita Collins explains the fireworks that go off in musicians' brains when they play, and examines some of the long-term positive effects of this mental workout.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0JKCYZ8hng&feature=em-subs_digest

Study of jazz players shows common brain circuitry processes music and language

Researchers scanned brains while musicians 'traded fours'

 

  

The brains of jazz musicians engrossed in spontaneous, improvisational musical conversation showed robust activation of brain areas traditionally associated with spoken language and syntax, which are used to interpret the structure of phrases and sentences. But this musical conversation shut down brain areas linked to semantics — those that process the meaning of spoken language, according to results of a study by Johns Hopkins researchers.

The study used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to track the brain activity of jazz musicians in the act of "trading fours," a process in which musicians participate in spontaneous back and forth instrumental exchanges, usually four bars in duration. The musicians introduce new melodies in response to each other's musical ideas, elaborating and modifying them over the course of a performance.

Making music videos 'helps young cancer patients cope'

Youngsters made their own music video to show family and friends

Music therapy can help teenagers and young people cope better when faced with treatment for cancer, a study in Cancer journal suggests.
American researchers followed the experiences of a group of patients aged 11-24 as they produced a music video over three weeks.
They found the patients gained resilience and improved relationships with family and friends.
All the patients were undergoing high-risk stem-cell transplant treatments.
To produce their music videos, the young patients were asked to write song lyrics, record sounds and collect video images to create their story.
They were guided by a qualified music therapist who helped the patients identify what was important to them and how to communicate their ideas.
When completed, the videos were shared with family and friends through "premieres". 

Turning weapons into instruments

Pedro Reyes frequently travels through dangerous territories. Not just creatively: pushing the boundaries of how we appropriate materials for use in artistic works, but also literally. Frequently working in places like the notoriously dangerous Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, the site of numerous gang murders and the "disappearing women" unsolved mysteries, Reyes has set out to make his homeland a better place through art. In an area of the world where journalists routinely vanish and civilians are gunned down in broad daylight, Reyes hopes to reclaim the tools of violence and turn them into a force for good. 

Inspired by a trip he took to the recycling plants where government officials turn seized weapons into raw materials, taken as part of his project "Shovels for Guns," Reyes decided to turn these instruments of hate into literal instruments. Only these ones could help provide life and music, rather than take it away. As part of his most recent project "Disarm," with the help of his team Reyes was able to utilize programs like Ableton Live, MIDI, and Max MSP to transform guns into self-playing musical instruments

Faust/Marsalis: The art of learning

Wynton Marsalis and Harvard President Drew Faust in 2009.(Photo: Darren McCollester, Getty Images file photo)

Arts education gives students skills to create, adapt and take risks in the future.

 

Anxiety abounds concerning the demands of our rapidly changing and ever more complicated world and about the ability of our educational system to respond. Yet the education we are fashioning for our children and their children seems ill-suited for the lives they will lead.

We hear widespread calls for "outcomes" we can measure and for education geared to specific employment needs, but many of today's students will hold jobs that have not yet been invented, deploying skills not yet defined. We not only need to equip them with the ability to answer the questions relevant to the world we now inhabit; we must also enable them to ask the right questions to shape the world to come.

We need education that nurtures judgment as well as mastery, ethics and values as well as analysis. We need learning that will enable students to interpret complexity, to adapt, and to make sense of lives they never anticipated. We need a way of teaching that encourages them to develop understanding of those different from themselves, enabling constructive collaborations across national and cultural origins and identities.

Music training in childhood boosts the brain in adulthood

If you have to endure hours of squeaky tunes while your child practices their music, take heart. A new study has shown that even a little musical training in early childhood has a lasting, positive effect on how the brain processes sound.

 You can read the rest here: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/268597.php

How to teach… music

Whether you are a non-specialist focussing on music for the festive season or an experienced music teacher, we have teaching resources and ideas to inspire.

From now until the end of term the singing isn't going to stop, these resources will help you make the best of music in school. Photograph: Adrian Sherratt/Alamy

Like it or not, Christmas spirit comes early to schools – so this is the time of year when even non-specialist teachers find themselves devoting inordinate amount of times to music and festive singing.

We have some inspiring music teaching resources to share which will uplift non-specialists and experienced music teachers alike.

We start off with some excellent resources shared by Jackie Schneider, a teacher on a mission to help fellow primary teachers teach music. Find Jackie's useful presentation on teaching primary music as a non-specialist dealing with such desperate questions as: "But I'm not musical, how can I teach music?" There are lots of generous music teachers who like nothing better than to share if you know where to look: I need some help to teach music is a handy guide to online inspiration.

The Landfill Harmonic Orchestra - The Recycled Orchestra

 

 

 

Cateura, Paraguay is a town essentially built on top of a landfill. Garbage collectors browse the trash for sellable goods, and children are often at risk of getting involved with drugs and gangs. When music teacher Fabio set up a music program for the kids of Cateura, they soon have more students than they have instruments.

That changed when Szaran and Fabio were brought something they had never seen before: a violin made out of garbage. Today, there’s an entire orchestra of assembled instruments, now called The Recycled Orchestra.

Our film shows how trash and recycled materials can be transformed into beautiful sounding musical instruments, but more importantly, it brings witness to the transformation of precious human beings.

More information: https://www.facebook.com/landfillharmonicmovie?fref=ts
Kickstarter project: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/405192963/landfill-harmonic-inspiring-dreams-one-note-at-a-t

 

http://www.richarddawkins.net/news_articles/2013/6/4/the-landfill-harmonic-orchestra-youtube#