Music heals the brain

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Just read an article in 'Scientific American Mind, March/April 2015' about the benefits of Music to the healing of certain brain disorders. Though the study did 'not' specify musical genre, it pointed out the benefits of rhythm, timing, intonation and melody as stimuli for brain.

"Music is perhaps unrivaled by any other form of human experience in the range of its defining characteristics, from its melody and rhythm to its emotional and social nature." By William Forde Thompson and Gottfried Schlaug

The article continues to point out how autistic, Parkinson, dementia and stroke patients were more aware, cognitive and in some cases surprisingly responsive!
We all know what music does for diyAudio members, but I wonder just how many of our children have been spared the hardships of one or more of the disorders as a result of our enjoyment and dedication to better our musical experience?
 
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I think there's something in it. Music lights up parts of the brain. It puts a smile on your face. It relaxes you. And the brain can grow new neurons under the right conditions. Lean diet being one of them.

I like jazz these days. I also found this interview with Melody Gardot interesting. I first heard her sing "Our love is easy" and it just hypnotised me. :)

She has mostly recovered from a significant brain injury after being knocked off her bicycle. I think she said her doctor felt that music reconnects the two halves of the brain, where her injury was: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52yxuJKS4JY
 
Musicophilia - Tales of Music and the Brain. Oliver Sacks. He also wrote the book: Awakening starring Robert De Niro and Robin Williams. Mr. Sacks is a neurologist who studies
people with brain injuries. If anyone has any interest with music and how it affects the brain must read this book.
I was deeply moved by some of the stories in this book.

PeterC
 
One could view music as the only true form of art.

All the other ones like sculpture and painting grew out of millennia of trying to copy reality in a more permanent medium but for music there was no pre-existing reality, it is pure art(ificial).
As such I am not surprised that it may influence us in ways other art forms cannot.
 
A CPU in a computer heats itself by processing the inputs.

The CPU is a hardware copy (fake) of what our brain does.
It heats itself by processing the inputs.
It cools itself by allowing the blood flow to pass through. Just like the CPU uses a cooling fluid.

Take the analogy of the human body and the PC to it's limits.
Just about everything inside a PC has a humanoid analogy. So many, that I suspect it's not a coincidence. It appears to me that the original PC designers used our bodies as the model for the modules that a PC would need to interface with the human operators.
 
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I go along with the brain / computer analogy, but the brain is analogue not digital. Neural Networks designed to try and create artificial intelligence are networks of opamp summing nodes and comparators. Usually the inputs are from a digital computer and the outputs also interfaced to a digital computer, but the actual thinking part is analogue.

EDIT: It would seem now that this circuitry is now simulated in software, my info was a bit dated!

Gordon.
 
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