Music and the Brain

February 15, 2010 11:43 AM

Music and the Brain The Library of Congress' Music and the Brain podcasts offer lectures and conversations about new research at the intersection of cognitive neuroscience and music. Sufi rituals, Wednesday is Indigo Blue (synaesthesia), Your Brain on Jazz, The Music of Language and the Language of Music, and more.
posted by carter (13 comments total)

Wednesday is teal, dammit.
posted by Zalzidrax at 11:49 AM on February 15, 2010

If you like this sort of thing (as I do!), you may also like this book. I recommend it.
posted by archivist at 11:59 AM on February 15, 2010 [1 favorite]

Thank you for the link, archivist! It works well with this post.
posted by carter at 12:01 PM on February 15, 2010

Wednesday is orange, and anyone who says otherwise is just messed up. Thursday is indigo.
posted by jokeefe at 12:11 PM on February 15, 2010

....like the number 8. Though not the exact same shade.
posted by jokeefe at 12:12 PM on February 15, 2010

And you haven't heard this episode of Radiolab on language and music, you really should.

Cool post. Thanks. Looking forward to listening.
posted by Lutoslawski at 12:32 PM on February 15, 2010 [2 favorites]

They're Music and the Brain, Music and the Brain, one is a genius, the other's insane... DAMN YOU WARNER BROTHERS! (>.<)/

Once I finally got that song out of my head, this was quite interesting, thank you.
posted by xedrik at 1:30 PM on February 15, 2010 [2 favorites]

Love this stuff and it is so exciting to know that we are only at the beginning of this subject.
posted by psycho-alchemy at 1:44 PM on February 15, 2010

"Modulation," by Richard Powers.
posted by emhutchinson at 6:02 PM on February 15, 2010

According to Dr. Peter Grossenbacher of Naropa University in Boulder, synaesthesia (as a psychological phenomenon, not a literary device) was once a very popular subject in the field, and was abandoned for approximately a century - for a variety of unexciting reasons - and is once again becoming a popular topic. And in these interesting days, in the realm where academia meets the NYT non-fiction bestseller list, there have certainly been a lot of (well, several) recent books about synesthesia.

(I got this info about its past popularity from a documentary on the subject done by my high school daughter.)

I think it's bizarre that psychological phenomena come in and out of style. Like cupcakes. Why cupcakes, now, for fuck's sake?

(The king of literary synaesthesia, in my experience, has to be Bruno Schulz. He takes the cake. I love the guy.)
posted by kozad at 8:53 PM on February 15, 2010

Hey thanks for the link Lutoslawski!
posted by carter at 9:48 PM on February 15, 2010

Dr. Charles Limb on howto improvise: "turn up your medial prefrontal cortex: your autobiographical, introspective self---while turning down your flanking lateral prefrontal cortex circuits where your censoring, self-monitoring occurs."
posted by dongolier at 12:49 AM on February 16, 2010 [1 favorite]

Aniruddh D. Patel: young people who have begun musical training show "experience dependent plasticity" changes on their fMRI's of their brains.

seemingly musical ability is not an inherited trait, but there is a substantial benefit to starting early.
posted by dongolier at 2:06 AM on February 16, 2010