Romantic Music: Not just for Beethoven!

Noustuff has a fascinating article on the impact of romantic lyrics on human behavior. Women who listened to music with romantic lyrics were almost 200% more likely to give their phone number to a male who asked for it than women who listened to music with non-romantic lyrics.

Gentlmen: Start your iPods!

Heady Music

Science Daily reports on custom music made from your brainwaves, a project sponsored by Dept of Homeland Security's Science & Technology Directorate to help emergency response workers achieve "relaxed" states and "alert" states by listening to music composed by algorithmically processing their brain states.

To put it simply:
Your brain makes noise. The project then translates that noise into what we call "music." The researchers are betting that by feeding that music back to you, it will reenact the mental state your brain was in when it first made the noise.

You can listen to a clip of the "Alert" music here.

That's not music!

An intriguing article has just been published in Science Blogs discussing the first time isolated non-western cultures have heard western music. Natives of the Mafa culture were able to correctly distinguish the emotion portrayed by an unfamiliar culture's music. This was consistently done at percentages signifigantly higher than random chance. Of the most interest is the audio clips of the Mafa's traditional music, as compared to the audio clips of the Western music which was played for them.

Take two measures and call me in the morning...

The New York Times reports on Vera Brandes, the director of the research program in music and medicine at the Paracelsus Private Medical University in Salzburg. Vera is taking a very interesting approach to the health benefits of music involving specific playlist prescriptions for her patients. While the article "Musical Pharmacology" doesn't go into too many specifics, (I'd love to see a research paper!) it does cover Vera's general approach.

Worth a quick read on a sunday afternoon.

Music Therapy & Autistic Children

NJ.Com reports about John Foley's music therapy sessions with Autistic children at the Peter Cooper school in NJ. Mr. Foley's work has encouraged children to be communicative (normally nonverbal children making verbal requests for songs) engaged (actively involved in class) and attentive (asking questions about musical instruments that they pass by and recognize in a store.)

The article covers not only some of the specific techniques John uses, but also the parents responses to the noticeably positive changes in the children's behavior. Embeddd also is a video about the students learning to communicate using musical sounds.

Guitar Heroes!

New Scientist discusses research about EEGs of guitarists who played the same tune together at the same time. Several areas of brain activity were found to be perfectly synchronized between the two guitarists during their performances (watch this video for more.)

Brain areas which became synchronized between the two performers involved included those which control and coordinate motor activity, those which allow us to mimic others and, more surprisingly, the areas that recognize other human beings as individuals separate from ourselves.

A Strike against Strokes!

Eckart Altenmuller presents some very wonderful findings on the efficacy of Piano Lessons in helping stroke victims recover fine motor skills!

Note: Link opens a web-based powerpoint presentation (with audio.) Powerpoint not required to view presentation.


Altenmuller's incredibly well designed study showed a drastically positive result for movement ability in stroke victims who were given piano lessons, as compared to both control groups and groups receiving other methods of motor-skill retraining.


This presentation was given at an event sponsored by the Mariani foundation, which included several more enlightening findings, including the benefits of rhythmic auditory training on gait in stroke patients as well as the benefits of singing on language skills in stroke patients (WARNING: Previous link is a PDF.)

More links to follow...