#musical-rhythm-perception

#musical-rhythm-perception

The sound of rain spurs rice seeds to sprout up to 40 percent faster than they would otherwise, according to a study published today in Scientific Reports.

"Nature appears to have built the apparatus of rationality not just on top of the apparatus of biological regulation, but also from it and with it."

The mosaic effect describes a situation where individual pieces of information are each permissible to access on their own, but when combined, reveal something more sensitive than any single piece would suggest.

Yuko Hattori described the findings as 'fascinating', noting how the chimpanzee used tools to produce various sounds while expressing a vocal display.

Our eyes—which we usually think of as purely visual organs—spontaneously dance to the rhythm of what we hear, says study co-author Du Yi, a cognitive neuroscientist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing. Using a high-speed eye-tracking system, Du and her team were stunned to discover nonmusicians instinctively blinking in sync with the beat structure of Bach chorales.

For the study, a team from the Italian Institute of Technology played J.S. Bach's piano compositions for an audience of 49 sleeping newborns. This included 10 original melodies and four shuffled songs with scrambled melodies and pitches. While the babies listened, the researchers used electroencephalography - electrodes placed on their heads - to measure their brainwaves. When the babies showed signs of surprise, it meant they expected the song to go one way, but it went another.

By the early 1900s, player pianos had evolved to more fully reproduce a human performance, including subtle dynamics like tempo changes and the introduction of a damper pedal. The human role went from deskilled to fully deprecated as electric motors replaced foot-powered bellows. With the Seeburg Lilliputian Model L, the only job left for humans who wanted to play the piano in the 1920s was to put in a coin.

Wooden spoons as microphones, siblings spinning in socks across the floor, a mother laughing as Whitney Houston's "I Wanna Dance With Somebody" fills the room for the third time in a row-this is love. Long before children understand romance, they learn connection this way, through synchronized movement, shared joy, and the safety of familiar songs. Research on rhythm and social bonding suggests that moving in time together can regulate the nervous system and strengthen feelings of connection.

Again. It was happening again. Not even three weeks ago, federal agents murdered a mother of three named Renee Good. A few days before that, another federal immigration officer shot and killed Keith Porter, Jr. in Los Angeles. Daily, our city network of concerned citizens is documenting the injustices happening against our neighbors. Pittsburgh - like America itself - would not exist without immigrants, yet we watch them be dehumanized and terrorized hourly in what has long been known as Mister Rogers' Neighborhood.

The way most people think about time is wrong. The notion that we share a 'common time' moving in a single direction is a useful illusion but, as physicists have understood since the discoveries of Albert Einstein, it doesn't comport with our understanding of the Universe. However, as the Italian theoretical physicist and writer Carlo Rovelli argues in this short documentary from Quanta Magazine, this doesn't mean we should abandon the concept of time altogether.

Like clockwork, every night around 10 PM, I reach for my phone and open my white noise app. The familiar whoosh of ocean waves or steady hum of a fan fills my bedroom, and only then can I finally drift off to sleep. For years, I thought this was just a quirky habit I'd developed during college. But recently, I discovered there's actually fascinating psychology behind why some of us literally cannot fall asleep in complete silence.

Real estate with ocean views, stunning mountain vistas, and wide-open green spaces sell at premium prices because humans find those settings pleasing [1-5]. Certain color combinations in fashion-such as brown and forest green-blend harmoniously, while others, such as hot pink and orange, clash. And our eyes like certain proportions in visual objects (like buildings and human faces) but not others.

You know that song from 1987? The one you haven't heard in years? Start playing it right now and I bet you'll nail every word, every pause, every dramatic key change. Meanwhile, you're standing in front of your open refrigerator wondering if you already ate lunch today. This isn't just you being forgetful or having selective memory. There's actually fascinating psychology behind why your brain holds onto those old Backstreet Boys lyrics like precious gems while treating yesterday's breakfast like trash to be deleted.

Babies in the womb begin to respond to music by about eight or nine months, as shown by changes in their heart rate and body movements, said Dr Roberta Bianco, the first author of the research who is based at the Italian Institute of Technology in Rome. Previous research has also shown that aspects of musical memory can carry over from the womb to birth, she added. However, it was unclear how deeply different aspects of music were processed by such young brains.

Spotify is rolling out a new feature that's meant to make transitions in between tracks even smoother. If you'll recall, the streaming service released the ability to create customized transitions within playlists in August last year. It gave people a way to create uninterrupted progressions and eliminate awkward silences between songs.

The sound stopped suddenly. I wanted to use my right foot to hit the drum twice, but I ended with the first try. At that instant, my brain really drew a blank. I thought, 'What's going on?' This was Yamaguchi's recollection of the first symptoms of musician's dystonia that appeared during a concert in 2009, marking the beginning of his five-year journey to diagnosis.