Lifeboat Foundation

Summary: Researchers unlocked how the brain processes melodies, creating a detailed map of auditory cortex activity. Their study reveals that the brain engages in dual tasks when hearing music: tracking pitch with neurons used for speech and predicting future notes with music-specific neurons.

This breakthrough clarifies the longstanding mystery of melody perception, demonstrating that some neural processes for music and speech are shared, while others are uniquely musical. The discovery enhances our understanding of the brain’s complex response to music and opens avenues for exploring music’s emotional and therapeutic impacts.

A new study by researchers at UC San Francisco provides new insight into how the brain processes musical melodies. Through precise mapping of the cerebral cortex, the study uncovered that our brains process music by not only discerning pitch and the direction of pitch changes but also by predicting the sequence of upcoming notes, each task managed by distinct sets of neurons. The findings have been published in Science Advances.

Previous research had established that our brains possess specialized mechanisms for processing speech sounds, particularly in recognizing pitch changes that convey meaning and emotion. The researchers hypothesized that a similar, perhaps specialized, set of neurons might exist for music, dedicated to predicting the sequence of notes in a melody, akin to how certain neurons predict speech sounds.

“Music is both uniquely human and universally human. Studying the neuroscience of music can therefore reveal something fundamental about what it means to be human,” said lead author Narayan Sankaran, a postdoctoral fellow in the Kavli Center for Ethics, Science, and the Public at UC Berkeley, who conducted the study while a researcher in the lab of UCSF’s Edward Chang.

Listening to electronic music makes neurons in our brain fire in time with the beat, which appears to alter our reaction time and sense of unity.

By Conor Feehly

What is happening in the cerebral cortex when someone hears a melody?

Music has been central to human cultures for tens of thousands of years, but how our brains perceive it has long been shrouded in mystery.

Continue reading “To appreciate music, the human brain listens and learns to predict” »

METROPOLIS a film by Fritz Lang — Version “Cobra — 2022” — 4K Remastered — 60fps — Also available on UHD 4K download!

Re-edited \& Reframed — New Time Mapping (some technical considerations below):
New Intertitles \& English Adaptation — Screenplay by Maximianno Cobra.

Continue reading “METROPOLIS — Fritz Lang — New Version 2022 — 3 Hours — New English Intertitles & Music Soundtrack 4K” »

Physicists found that the music of Johann Sebastian Bach contains mathematical patterns that help convey information.

By Elise Cutts

A halloween eve exploration of two of the spookiest solutions to the Fermi Paradox. The Dark Forest Hypothesis and the Berserker Hypothesis.

My Patreon Page:

Continue reading “The Berserker Hypothesis and the Dark Forest” »

Engaging in music throughout your life is associated with better brain health in older age, according to a new study published by experts at the University of Exeter.

Scientists working on PROTECT, an online study open to people aged 40 and over, reviewed data from more than a thousand adults over the age of 40 to see the effect of playing a musical instrument—or singing in a choir—on brain health. Over 25,000 people have signed up for the PROTECT study, which has been running for 10 years.

The team reviewed participants’ musical experience and lifetime exposure to music, alongside results of cognitive testing, to determine whether musicality helps to keep the brain sharp in later life.

How Columbia conservators, Nano Initiative scientists, and a music scholar used state-of-the-art technology to examine a score.