Music Improves Brain Function

For most people music is an enjoyable, although momentary, form of entertainment. But for those who seriously practiced a musical instrument when they were young, perhaps when they played in a school orchestra or even a rock band, the musical experience can be something more. Recent research shows that a strong correlation exists between musical training for children and certain other mental abilities.

The research was discussed at a session at a recent gathering of acoustics experts in Austin, Texas.

Laurel Trainor, director of the Institute for Music and the Mind at McMaster University in West Hamilton, Ontario, and colleagues compared preschool children who had taken music lessons with those who did not. Those with some training showed larger brain responses on a number of sound recognition tests given to the children. Her research indicated that musical training appears to modify the brain’s auditory cortex.

Can larger claims be made for the influence on the brain of musical training? Does training change thinking or cognition in general?

Trainor again says yes. Even a year or two of music training leads to enhanced levels of memory and attention when measured by the same type of tests that monitor electrical and magnetic impulses in the brain.

“We therefore hypothesize that musical training (but not necessarily passive listening to music) affects attention and memory, which provides a mechanism whereby musical training might lead to better learning across a number of domains,” Trainor said.

Trainor suggested that the reason for this is that the motor and listening skills needed to play an instrument in concert with other people appears to heavily involve attention, memory and the ability to inhibit actions. Merely listening passively to music to Mozart — or any other composer — does not produce the same changes in attention and memory.

via Music Improves Brain Function | LiveScience.

Review: The Men Who Stare at Goats

Movie Review: I recommend seeing this movie.  It was funny, unexpected and did have a few connections to some strange things that really happened.

Here is an interesting report from TDG on the topic:

With the new public attention on the story, a number of the individuals involved have thrown some doubts on the veracity of Ronson’s account.

John Alexander has long disputed a number of the claims in The Men Who Stare at Goats, and in a recent article (“They Stared at Goats Because…“) states that even the title is incorrect, as the goat in question actually died after being struck using a martial arts move. Meanwhile, Stargate remote viewer Paul Smith, in an Amazon review of the book, says that while Goats is an entertaining read, it is not an accurate summation of the actual history – and at times, uses plenty of ‘artistic license’ in presenting material. And Jim Channon, whose ‘First Earth Battalion’ idea is central to much of Goats (and who has been very sporting and good-humoured about his treatment in the book), has a press release on his website which says that “Ronson’s tongue-in-cheek account is classified as a work of ‘non-fiction,’ but it is so loaded with speculation and inaccuracy, it sets the stage for much of the confusion.”

Men leave: Separation and divorce far more common when the wife is the patient

A woman is six times more likely to be separated or divorced soon after a diagnosis of cancer or multiple sclerosis than if a man in the relationship is the patient, according to a study that examined the role gender played in so-called “partner abandonment.” The study also found that the longer the marriage the more likely it would remain intact.

The study confirmed earlier research that put the overall divorce or separation rate among cancer patients at 11.6 percent, similar to the population as a whole. However, researchers were surprised by the difference in separation and divorce rates by gender. The rate when the woman was the patient was 20.8 percent compared to 2.9 percent when the man was the patient.

“Female gender was the strongest predictor of separation or divorce in each of the patient groups we studied,” said Marc Chamberlain, M.D., a co-corresponding author and director of the neuro-oncology program at the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance (SCCA). Chamberlain is also a professor of neurology and neurosurgery at the University of Washington School of Medicine.

The study, “Gender Disparity in the Rate of Partner Abandonment in Patients with Serious Medical Illness,” was published in the Nov. 15 issue of the journal Cancer. The other corresponding author is Michael Glanz, M.D., of the Huntsman Cancer Institute at the University of Utah School of Medicine.

Why men leave a sick spouse can be partly explained by their lack of ability, compared to women, to make more rapid commitments to being caregivers to a sick partner and women’s better ability to assume the burdens of maintaining a home and family, the study authors said. …

via Men leave: Separation and divorce far more common when the wife is the patient.

Tough love ‘is good for children’

Children brought up according to “tough love” principles are more successful in life, according to a study.

The think tank Demos says a balance of warmth and discipline improved social skills more than a laissez-faire, authoritarian or disengaged upbringing.

It says children aged five with “tough love” parents were twice as likely to show good character capabilities.

Report author Jen Lexmond said: “It is confidence, warmth and consistent discipline that matter most.”

Life chances

According to the report, qualities such as application, self-regulation and empathy were more likely to be developed in children whose parents employed a “tough love” approach.

It found that these qualities made “a vital contribution to life chances, mobility and opportunity”.

The report said these characteristics were profoundly shaped in pre-school years.

via BBC NEWS | UK | Tough love ‘is good for children’.

I’m not sure about this study. I think the parenting style that is successful depends on the personality of the individual child.

I had what I would describe as a fourth option: an empowering style of parenting. I was asked questions about my decisions and was given observations about the best decisions. This trust brought out my natural responsible nature and helped my later success.

How were you raised? Was your parents parenting style authoritarian, “do whatever you want”, loving but firm (tough love), or empowering? Something else such as “chaotic” or “unpredictable”? How did that work out for you?

How your brain sees virtual you

Disentangling how the brain regards avatars versus real individuals may help explain why some people spend large chunks of their life playing immersive online games, says Kristina Caudle, a social neuroscientist at Dartmouth University in Hanover, New Hampshire, who led the study along with her adviser William Kelley.

“It’s hard to imagine from an outsider’s perspective what might drive someone to spend 30 hours a week immersed in a completely imaginary world,” she says. More than 11 million people play World of Warcraft each month.

Innocent or intelligent

Previously, researchers have observed that people easily adopt the persona of their virtual selves, for instance, by acting more aggressively when their avatars are tall than when they are short, irrespective of an individual’s height in the real world.

To probe what brain activity might underlie people’s virtual behaviour, Caudle’s team convinced 15 World of Warcraft players in their twenties – 14 men and 1 woman – who play the game an average of 23 hours a week, to drag themselves away from their computers and spend some time having their brains scanned using functional MRI.

While in the scanner, Caudle asked them to rate how well various adjectives such as innocent, competent, jealous and intelligent described themselves, their avatars, their best friend in the real world and their World of Warcraft guild leader.

Self-reflection

When Caudle’s looked for brain areas that were more active when volunteers thought about themselves and their avatars compared with real and virtual others, two regions stood out: the medial prefrontal cortex and the posterior cingulate cortex. That makes sense as prior research has linked the medial prefrontal cortex to self-reflection and judgement.

Interestingly, however, there was “next to no difference” in the activity in these regions when people thought of themselves and of their avatar, says Caudle, who presented the results at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience.

via How your brain sees virtual you – life – 06 November 2009 – New Scientist.

Beatle Ringo Starr’s face seen in water droplet on lotus leaf

A team researching water-repellent leaf behaviour at Duke University in North Carolina took the high-speed images, showing water drops bouncing on the surface of a leaf.

James Dacey, a reporter for Physics World, wrote the story up for the magazine’s website – and noticed the Octopus’s-Garden-composing, Thomas-The-Tank-Engine-narrating 1960s icon staring back at him.

Under the picture, captioned “The Starkey Effect: Ringo keeps psychedelia alive”, Mr Dacey says: “Bizarrely, everybody’s favourite mop-topped Liverpudlian seems to reveal himself in the high-speed photo images of water-droplets being ejected from the leaf surface.”

Starr’s features and mop-top haircut can indeed be seen in the images, even though they distort as the droplet bounces.

Mr Dacey told the Telegraph that this is the first time he has seen the image of a Beatle in a physics experiment.

There is some argument over whether the image is actually of George Harrison, rather than Ringo. Harrison is quoted as saying “Life is like a raindrop on a lotus leaf”, when talking about his battle with throat cancer.

via Beatle Ringo Starr’s face seen in water droplet on lotus leaf – Telegraph.

Definitely one of the more interesting cases of pareidolia.  The point to take home here is that priming causes people to see things. This is used to great effect in criminal trials by lawyers who understand how the mind works. I see a white helicopter image trapped in the water droplets.  Water, just add meaning.

How to play chess anywhere

My girlfriend met someone recently who had met two IT guys from India who could play chess against each other in chess boards in their minds.

They would be answering IT calls, helping people, and then suddenly one would turn and say “Nf3“.  Her friend said that while this seems amazing to most of us, we can do anything with enough practice.

In case you want to try to learn how to do this, so you can play chess anywhere, here are a few tips. First, you need to know the rules of chess. Next you need to know the numbering system used for the board (see below).  Then you need to know how how to describe a move using the letter names for the pieces along with the board position names.  This is known as Chess Notation and there are several different versions.

Even knowing these things, how do they remember what piece is on which of the sixty-four 1 by 1  squares?   Practice.

This trick seems as amazing as having perfect pitch recall, something I’m attempting to acquire as an adult… with very slow results.

I think, by focused effort that these two individuals were able to create a virtual chess board in their minds.  Certainly no one has evolved yet who is born with a virtual internal chess board. It must therefore be learned. I find this hopeful information in my quest to create a virtual piano in my mind upon which I can then play any notes. (Actually I’m not going for a piano, more an abstraction of musical note structure that can be applied to any instrument.)

Here is an entire game in shorthand notation (PGN):

[Event "F/S Return Match"]
[Site "Belgrade, Serbia Yugoslavia|JUG"]
[Date "1992.11.04"]
[Round "29"]
[White "Fischer, Robert J."]
[Black "Spassky, Boris V."]
[Result "1/2-1/2"]

1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bb5 {This opening is called the Ruy Lopez.} 3... a6
4. Ba4 Nf6 5. O-O Be7 6. Re1 b5 7. Bb3 d6 8. c3 O-O 9. h3 Nb8  10. d4 Nbd7
11. c4 c6 12. cxb5 axb5 13. Nc3 Bb7 14. Bg5 b4 15. Nb1 h6 16. Bh4 c5 17. dxe5
Nxe4 18. Bxe7 Qxe7 19. exd6 Qf6 20. Nbd2 Nxd6 21. Nc4 Nxc4 22. Bxc4 Nb6
23. Ne5 Rae8 24. Bxf7+ Rxf7 25. Nxf7 Rxe1+ 26. Qxe1 Kxf7 27. Qe3 Qg5 28. Qxg5
hxg5 29. b3 Ke6 30. a3 Kd6 31. axb4 cxb4 32. Ra5 Nd5 33. f3 Bc8 34. Kf2 Bf5
35. Ra7 g6 36. Ra6+ Kc5 37. Ke1 Nf4 38. g3 Nxh3 39. Kd2 Kb5 40. Rd6 Kc5 41. Ra6
Nf2 42. g4 Bd3 43. Re6 1/2-1/2

How would you decode the game above?

The movetext describes the actual moves of the game. This includes move number indicators (numbers followed by either one or three periods; one if preceding a move by White, three if preceding a move by Black) and movetext Standard Algebraic Notation (SAN).

For most moves the SAN consists of the letter abbreviation for the piece, an “x” if there is a capture, and the two-character algebraic name of the final square the piece moved to. The letter abbreviations are K (King), Q (Queen), R (Rook), B (Bishop), and N (Knight). The pawn is given an empty abbreviation in SAN movetext, but in other contexts the abbreviation “P” is used. The algebraic name of any square is as per usual Algebraic chess notation; from white’s perspective, the leftmost square closest to white is a1, the rightmost square closest to white is h1, and the rightmost square closest to black is h8.

In a few cases a more detailed representation is needed to resolve ambiguity; if so, the piece’s file letter, numerical rank, or the exact square is inserted after the moving piece’s name (in that order of preference). Thus, “Nge2″ specifies that the knight originally on the g-file moves to e2.

SAN kingside castling is indicated by the sequence “O-O”; queenside castling is indicated by the sequence “O-O-O” (note that these are capital letter “O”s, not numeral “0″s). Pawn promotions are notated by appending an “=” to the destination square, followed by the piece the pawn is promoted to. For example: “e8=Q”. If the move is a checking move, the plus sign “+” is also appended; if the move is a checkmating move, the number sign “#” is appended instead. For example: “e8=Q#”. – wiki

As you can see, there is no “#”, so the game above had no winner.

A MUCH easier way would be to past the PGN text (be sure to include the headers) into the form here.  Many classic games are re-playable here: http://www.pgnmentor.com/files.html

Why a high IQ doesn’t mean you’re smart (With sample questions)

IS GEORGE W. BUSH stupid? It’s a question that occupied a good many minds of all political persuasions during his turbulent eight-year presidency. The strict answer is no. Bush’s IQ score is estimated to be above 120, which suggests an intelligence in the top 10 per cent of the population. But this, surely, does not tell the whole story. Even those sympathetic to the former president have acknowledged that as a thinker and decision-maker he is not all there. Even his loyal speechwriter David Frum called him glib, incurious and “as a result ill-informed”. The political pundit and former Republican congressman Joe Scarborough accused him of lacking intellectual depth, claiming that compared with other US presidents whose intellect had been questioned, Bush junior was “in a league by himself”. Bush himself has described his thinking style as “not very analytical”.

How can someone with a high IQ have these kinds of intellectual deficiencies? Put another way, how can a “smart” person act foolishly? Keith Stanovich, professor of human development and applied psychology at the University of Toronto, Canada, has grappled with this apparent incongruity for 15 years. He says it applies to more people than you might think. To Stanovich, however, there is nothing incongruous about it. IQ tests are very good at measuring certain mental faculties, he says, including logic, abstract reasoning, learning ability and working-memory capacity – how much information you can hold in mind.

But the tests fall down when it comes to measuring those abilities crucial to making good judgements in real-life situations. That’s because they are unable to assess things such as a person’s ability to critically weigh up information, or whether an individual can override the intuitive cognitive biases that can lead us astray.

This is the kind of rational thinking we are compelled to do every day, whether deciding which foods to eat, where to invest money, or how to deal with a difficult client at work. We need to be good at rational thinking to navigate our way around an increasingly complex world. And yet, says Stanovich, IQ tests – still the predominant measure of people’s cognitive abilities – do not effectively tap into it. …

As an illustration of how rational-thinking ability differs from intelligence, consider this puzzle: if it takes five machines 5 minutes to make five widgets, how long would it take 100 machines to make 100 widgets? Most people instinctively jump to the wrong answer that “feels” right – 100 – even if they later amend it. When Shane Frederick at the Yale School of Management in New Haven, Connecticut, put this and two similarly counter-intuitive questions to about 3400 students at various colleges and universities in the US – Harvard and Princeton among them – only 17 per cent got all three right (see “Test your thinking”). A third of the students failed to give any correct answers (Journal of Economic Perspectives, vol 19, p 25). …

For example, consider the following problem. Jack is looking at Anne, and Anne is looking at George; Jack is married, George is not. Is a married person looking at an unmarried person? If asked to choose between yes, no, or cannot be determined, the vast majority of people go for the third option – incorrectly. If told to reason through all the options, though, those of high IQ are more likely to arrive at the right answer (which is “yes”: we don’t know Anne’s marital status, but either way a married person would be looking at an unmarried one). What this means, says Stanovich, is that “intelligent people perform better only when you tell them what to do”.

…

Test your thinking

When researchers put the following three problems to 3400 students in the US, only 17 per cent got all three right. Can you do any better?

1) A bat and a ball cost $1.10 in total. The bat costs $1 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?

2) If it takes five machines 5 minutes to make five widgets, how long would it take 100 machines to make 100 widgets?

3) In a lake, there is a patch of lily pads. Every day, the patch doubles in size. If it takes 48 days for the patch to cover the entire lake, how long would it take for the patch to cover half of it?

For answers, highlight the area below:

Answers: 1) 5 cents, 2) 5 minutes, 3) 47 days

Highlight the area above for the answers.

via Clever fools: Why a high IQ doesn’t mean you’re smart – life – 02 November 2009 – New Scientist.

I found many scam sites which seem to be IQ tests, but ask for personal information which will probably be used for identity theft.  Don’t get phished.

Thinking negatively can boost your memory, study finds

Bad moods can actually be good for you, with an Australian study finding that being sad makes people less gullible, improves their ability to judge others and also boosts memory.

The study, authored by psychology professor Joseph Forgas at the University of New South Wales, showed that people in a negative mood were more critical of, and paid more attention to, their surroundings than happier people, who were more likely to believe anything they were told.

“Whereas positive mood seems to promote creativity, flexibility, cooperation, and reliance on mental shortcuts, negative moods trigger more attentive, careful thinking paying greater attention to the external world,” Forgas wrote.

“Our research suggests that sadness … promotes information processing strategies best suited to dealing with more demanding situations.”

For the study, Forgas and his team conducted several experiments that started with inducing happy or sad moods in their subjects through watching films and recalling positive or negative events.

In one of the experiments, happy and sad participants were asked to judge the truth of urban myths and rumors and found that people in a negative mood were less likely to believe these statements.

People in a bad mood were also less likely to make snap decisions based on racial or religious prejudices, and they were less likely to make mistakes when asked to recall an event that they witnessed.

The study also found that sad people were better at stating their case through written arguments, which Forgas said showed that a “mildly negative mood may actually promote a more concrete, accommodative and ultimately more successful communication style.”

“Positive mood is not universally desirable: people in negative mood are less prone to judgmental errors, are more resistant to eyewitness distortions and are better at producing high-quality, effective persuasive messages,” Forgas wrote.

The study was published in the November/December edition of the Australian Science journal.

via Thinking negatively can boost your memory, study finds – Yahoo! News.

Study shows that sleep deprivation can negatively affect information processing

A study in the Nov.1 issue of the journal Sleep shows that sleep deprivation causes some people to shift from a more automatic, implicit process of information categorization (information-integration) to a more controlled, explicit process (rule-based). This use of rule-based strategies in a task in which information-integration strategies are optimal can lead to potentially devastating errors when quick and accurate categorization is fundamental to survival.

Results show that sleep deprivation led to an overall performance deficit on an information-integration category learning task that was held over the course of two days. Performance improved in the control group by 4.3 percent from the end of day one to the beginning of day two (accuracy increased from 74 percent to 78.3 percent); performance in the sleep-deprived group declined by 2.4 percent (accuracy decreased from 73.1 percent to 70.7 percent) from the end of day one to the beginning of day two.

According to co-principal investigators W. Todd Maddox, PhD, professor of psychology, and David M. Schnyer, PhD, associate professor of psychology at the Institute for Neuroscience at the University of Texas in Austin, fast and accurate categorization is critical in situations that could become a matter of life or death. However, categorization may become compromised in people who often experience sleep deprivation in fast-paced, high pressure roles such as doctors, firefighters, soldiers and even parents. Many tasks performed on a daily basis require information-integration processing rather than rule-based categorization. Examples include driving, making a medical diagnosis and performing air-traffic control.

Maddox and Schnyer were surprised to find that the source of the information-integration deficit was a subgroup of sleep-deprived individuals who shifted from information-integration strategies when rested to rule-based strategies when sleep deprived. Sleep-deprived participants who used information-integration strategies in both sessions showed no drop in performance in the second session, mirroring the behavior of control participants.

“Some categorization problems involve conscious, explicit processing that relies heavily on frontal brain systems. Processing in these systems is known to be adversely affected by sleep deprivation. Other categorization problems involve non-conscious, implicit processing that relies heavily on procedural learning and the striatum,” Maddox and Schnyer stated in an e-mail message. “The current study suggests that processing in these systems is minimally affected by sleep deprivation, but that performance can suffer because sleep deprivation leads many individuals to rely on explicit processes when implicit processes are necessary.” …

via Study shows that sleep deprivation can negatively affect information processing.