PlanetZ forums - scopeusers.com

I find this very interesting!

I'd like to see an MRI of an idiot coming up with a bad idea. Since that happens more often, it might be more beneficial to get that figured out too.

kensuguro wrote:I'd like to see an MRI of an idiot coming up with a bad idea. Since that happens more often, it might be more beneficial to get that figured out too.

Good one !

say it Ken


the link says:
How we play and hear music provides a window into most everyday cognitive functions — from attention to emotion to memory — that in turn may help find treatments for brain disorders.

kensuguro wrote:I'd like to see an MRI of an idiot coming up with a bad idea. Since that happens more often, it might be more beneficial to get that figured out too.

yes

I thought music comes from the heart

An artificial heart would be good for making techno music.

True, definitely not acid. That must come from the stomac.

I want to see an MRI of people who get lots of money from us (the government by tax) to buy lots and lots of expensive equipment and then make some stupid inane report about it, and hide what they are really doing with it (having fun)

After that i will use the results of another study to temporarily change my brain to that pattern so i can persuade the government it is extremely important that i get get 10 XITE-1 boxes and a perfectly designed studio room to put them in.

"honest guv, they are to scientifically prove that #1d4754 and #003344 is the best colo(u)rs ever made for an interweb forum!"

Scientists like to point out that all knowledge is good and often has unforeseen uses.

like doing what we do every day pinky! rule the world!

yep, they spend millions of dollars just so that maybe someday, this useless information could be valuable! that's NOT how money and efficiency works. the re-search is done because there is a specific problem being worked on and out. in this case, it's the mapping of our thoughts and emotions on a biological level. it is a potentially full duplex operation. the uses are obvious, good and bad. for one thing, you can drive a car with your mind. for another, your thoughts could literally be used as crimes against you. currently this kind of technology is being used to find people in an "agitated state", so that they can be dealt with "proactively", because such people might have something naughty in mind. these techs are being tested in some airports. certainly, this technology has some bad implications for the future as it developes.

being as the system is potentially "full duplex"(it's understood how to affect neural activity with electrical stimultaion, magnetic fields and microwave technology), understanding where these different parts of our psyche exist within the machine, allows for the control or modification of the site's response. work like this was done on chickens and monkeys in the 50's. for the truly mentally ill individual, there is much promise in such technology. for the healthy individual, there is much danger...

I must say, that having a BA in music therapy and studying for my MA now, people's display of lack of understanding and vision about what good this study can bring over time is just ... well a display of their lack of understanding and vision about the usefulness of research like this.

My main field of interest is mentally disabled kids and adults. We are talking mental ages from spanding from a few months to about 5 years. Most of the really low functioning people are brain-blind. Their eyes are normal, but their brains can not process what they see. They are often physically disables - either as a part of a more global issue with "poor construction work", or as a consequence of their brains not being evolved enough to facilitate learning skills like walking and other motor skills. Often their bodies are severely misshaped. Verbal skills are non-existing in the lower functioning part of the segment, and they likely don't even understand the sound of their own names.

People like these have historically been put away, hidden from society and feed till they die ... because what else to do to/for such non-responsive people?

Things started to change some decades ago. There where likely several reasons for this, but one of them was, that pioneering music therapists offered to work with these people. I had a lecture about this yesterday. Our professor (who is from England) told us about how in the mid seventies, the budgets for these severely low functioning people where not being used, because i.e. physio-therapists saw no meaning in working with them. Well, some music therapists offered their labour to work on these people and they actually started to show evidence of interaction and revealed skills in these severely low functioning people - skills which previously had not been recognised.

I have worked a bit with giving receptive music therapy to a 13ish years old boy with an estimated mental age at about 3 months. This kid can turn his head and make inarticulate sounds. When he is scared, he bends his arms at the elbows - as people would do, if they are falling over. His facial expression, as I have seen them range from scared to kind of confused to "something is happening inside" to smiling. He has very low visual skills (but follows sound with his eyes), and he is hypesensitive to "loud" (it really doesn't take much to be loud to him) sounds - which scares him a lot. But when I play guitar for him, he starts to show his "something is happening inside" expression. He calmes down, and he maybe even starts to smile. I had the feeling, that it also raised his "fear-threshold" for unexpected sounds a bit - in the way, that the music would put him into a state of being, where he was somewhat more safe and focused less on his small "sound chocks", when they occurred. I tried my best to interact with him by interacting with his state of being. If I get to work more with him, I would like to create some mechanism for himself to be able to create sound.

I would love to know more about how people like him process sound. What happens inside of them? How come people who operate at such a poor cognitive level can be animated in such ways by music and sound?

The researched, which has been linked to here, is just a first important step towards getting more understanding of these questions - an understanding, which will eventually help us to make more useful interventions.

The part of the research showing that these six musicians (jazz pianists) powered down this particular area of their brain and activated that particular part is also very helpful for music therapy as a profession. Some people might say, that this is obvious. Now, how many of these people would have come up with this statement before they heard about the research, if they where asked to describe, what happens inside of them, when they improvise? Maybe a select few - and likely in much less precisely defined and specific words.

If you laugh about this study, to me it only shows that you are judging something which you have no idea - what so ever - about how important this can become over time for treating disabled, ill, brain damaged and "normal" people, who just want to gain more insight into themselves and their issues in life. It is a HUGE first step - HUGE!

Immanuel

You're doing great work Immanuel. I admire what you are doing.
Do you know about this program:
http://www.bwgen.com/
and about
Binaural Beats?

Thankyou Immanuel for your post

It just capped off a lovely musical day - (which included sitting in a tent while Maceo Parker warmed up his alto in the tent next door)

all respect.

Hi Bingo

I have only read very little about binaural beats. I have seen it included in a highly holistic and speculative theories, which I do not fancy that much, because it became too much of an attempt to make all people equal and making a "one pill cures all" theory.

The program you link to is within the realm of music medicine - not music therapy. It takes participation of a therapist to do therapy. I do not know the program, and I have no idea, if it works. Have you tried it yourself?

I am actually not that much into the deeper details of brain waves, but I believe they have a natural tendency to fluctuate - also within shorter measurements of time. I did a search on Brain wave fluctuations and one of the hits was this one: http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/92/25/11568

Read this link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binaural_beats

This is valid science. And yes I did tried myself once, with no results
But I was not serious about it.