The Week Junior - UK (2022-03-05)

15

Science and technology

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Part of the brain

tuned for singing

S

cientists have identified a group

of brain cells that respond to the

sound of singing and nothing else.

A team led by Sam Norman-

Haignere, at Massachusetts Institute

of Technology (MIT) in the US, tracked

the brain activity of 15 people

as they listened to 165

sounds, such as pieces

of music, people

talking and dogs

barking. All the people

had previously had

metal electrodes put

inside their skulls to

monitor brain activity.

This was during other

operations that had nothing

to do with the study. Electrodes

allow scientists to pin down areas of

electrical activity more precisely than

traditional brain scans from outside the

skull, so patients who have electrodes

put in for something else are often

asked if they’d be willing to help in

other research. In this case, the MIT

team were following up a study that

had tested the same sounds using

brain scans from outside the skull. That

study suggested a difference between

areas of the brain that respond

to music and to speaking.

The new test confirmed

those results and also

revealed a distinct

area that responds

only to singing.

Scientists aren’t

certain why this is, but

Sophie Scott, from

University College London

(who was not involved in the

study) told The Guardian newspaper

that the singing voice is the musical

instrument that almost everyone is

born with, so it’s perhaps not surprising

that we respond differently to human

song than to other kinds of music.

A

n international team of scientists,

archaeologists (experts who study

ancient remains to understand history)

and fashion designers have recreated

the world’s oldest pair of trousers. The

original leggings were discovered in

western China’s Tarim Basin desert in

2014 and are at least 3,000 years old.

Despite being this old, however, the

trousers had been made using modern

ways of working. This left experts

wondering exactly how they were put

together. After eight years of study,

the team decided to make their own

pair. This experiment showed that the

trousers were made using three types

of weaving. They included twill weave

• which produces a woven material
  that is stretchy, rather than stiff, and is
  still used in modern-day jeans.
  It’s thought that the trousers
  combined methods used by different
  communities living across Asia at the
  time. The director of the project, Mayke
  Wagner, explained that patterns and
  skills from different areas and traditions
  seem to have been brought together in
  these trousers to make something new.

The world’s oldest trousers

Humans seem to

be wired for song.

Making music

with voices alone.

Ancient trousers

reveal all.

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5 March 2022 • The Week Junior