“The way we interact with music is very much in line with developing empathy, and how we put ourselves in the shoes of the musician. Our brains mirror what we’re seeing. So when we’re in sync, many of the rhythms of our brains and bodies entrain—heart and respiration rates, certain brain wave patterns. When you’re … Continue reading “Neuroscience: Making Music Together Puts Us In Sync With One Another”
“When people are told which way to turn, it relieves them of the need to create their own routes and remember them. They pay less attention to their surroundings. And neuroscientists can now see that brain behavior changes when people rely on turn-by-turn directions.” – Washington Post
“We’re starting to comprehend how melodies affect our feelings, why certain music makes us want to get up and dance and why some harmonies trigger fear. Some studies have already had direct applications in the field of music therapy, which uses music to treat neurological, emotional and physical disorders.” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
The tendency to supplement communication with motion is universal, though the nuances of delivery vary slightly. In Papua New Guinea, for instance, people point with their noses and heads, while in Laos they sometimes use their lips. In Ghana, left-handed pointing can be taboo, while in Greece or Turkey forming a ring with your index … Continue reading “Neuroscience Explores How Our Brains Link Movement And Motion”
Neuroscience, it turns out, can help change how companies think about new opportunities, and specifically, within the emerging field of applied neuroscience. Applied neuroscience is best described as the use of neuroscience tools and insights to measure and understand human behavior. Using applied neuroscience, leaders are able to generate data about critical moments of decision making, and … Continue reading “How Neuroscience Is Going to Change The Business Of Finding An Audience”
Today, biology is a powerful explanatory force for much human behaviour, though it alone cannot account for horror. Much as the neurosciences are an exciting new tool for human self-understanding, they will not explain away our brutishness. Causal accounts of the destruction that humans inflict on each other are best provided by political history – … Continue reading “The Neuroscience Of Cruelty And Evil (Not Much To Go On)”
“Lost in the public’s romance with the brain is the most fundamental lesson neuroscience has to teach us: that the organ of our minds is a purely physical entity, conceptually and causally embedded in the natural world. Although the brain is required for almost everything we do, it never works alone. Instead, its function is … Continue reading “Neuroscience Is Giving Us Fresh Appreciation Of The Fact Our Brains Are Physical”
“The question is not ‘Where is happiness in the brain?’ That’s like asking ‘Where is the perception of the sound of a dog barking in the brain?’ The better question is ‘How does the brain support happiness? What networks and processes are used to give rise to it?’ ”
New research suggests the roots of friendship extend even deeper than previously suspected. Scientists have found that the brains of close friends respond in remarkably similar ways as they view a series of short videos: the same ebbs and swells of attention and distraction, the same peaking of reward processing here, boredom alerts there.
“Another lesson from our brain imaging work is that illnesses, such as Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia, begin in the brain years—even decades—before people have any symptoms. But you can do something about it, and prevention seems to be key.”
