Category: Art
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Monkeys, music, ecology...
Research published today by the American Psychological Association has shown that chimpanzees prefer listening to West African akan and North Indian raga over listening to silence. What does this say about the evolutionary purpose of music? Previous work by McDermott and Hauser showed that when tamarins and marmosets were given a choice between a lullaby…
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fMRI, brain, creativity, scientific stupidity.
For the first time, neuroscientists have used fMRI scanners to track the brain activity of both experienced and novice writers as they sat down — or, in this case, lay down — to turn out a piece of fiction. The researchers, led by Martin Lotze of the University of Greifswald in Germany, observed a broad…
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Handwriting. Creativity. Children. The lost wisdom...
Does handwriting matter? Not very much, according to many educators. The Common Core standards, which have been adopted in most states, call for teaching legible writing, but only in kindergarten and first grade. After that, the emphasis quickly shifts to proficiency on the keyboard. But psychologists and neuroscientists say it is far too soon to…
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Quartets, music, One...
String quartet players continuously adjust the timing of their notes to stay in sync. But exactly how players do it has been unclear. New data tracking millisecond-scale corrections suggests that some ensembles are more autocratic — following one leader —while other musical groups are more democratic, making corrections equally. Researchers had two well-established quartets play…
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Human vs. Robot journalists, writing, soul...
What is The Future of Journalism? Data reporting? Drones? Computer-generated news, like the algorithms are already breaking news on today's California earthquake? Case for the latter: Compare the first few paragraphs from two news stories about a sports game, re-published in a recent study. Even with an unexceptional outing for Philip Rivers, the Chargers handled…
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