No thank you for the music
Show,don’t tell
Some people enjoy music so
deeply they can be cheered up
or moved to tears simply by
listening to it. But for others it
seems even the most beautiful
melody is no more likely to illicit
an emotional response than the
sound of a pneumatic drill.
These people have ‘specific
musical anhedonia’, an inability
to experience pleasure from
music. It’s a condition that’s just
been discovered by a team at the
University of Barcelona.
The researchers identified
the condition by comparing
the changes in the electrical
conductance of the skin and heartrate, both indicators of emotion.
They compared volunteers
listening to music to those who
played a game that involved
winning or losing money.
“The identification of
these individuals could help us
understand the neural basis of
music – that is, to understand
how a set of notes is translated
into emotions,” says lead
researcher Josep Marco-Pallarés.
The findings could also lead
to a new understanding of the
brain’s reward system, which
may help in the treatment of
addiction and other disorders, the
researchers say.Ever struggle to remember
the name of a song you’ve
heard on the radio? Or forget
something your partner asked
you to pick up on the way
home? Don’t worry, you’re
not alone. Scientists at the
University of Iowa asked more
than 100 students to listen
to audio recordings of dogs
barking, watch silent videos of
a basketball game, and touch
objects like coffee mugs that
they couldn’t see. After just
an hour, the accuracy of their
memories had begun to decline.
However, their memory of
visual scenes and tactile objects
was better than their memory of
sounds. This also held true after
one day and one week.
“We tend to think that the
parts of our brain wired for
memory are integrated. But ourfindings indicate that the brain
may use separate pathways to
process information. What’s
more, our study suggests the
brain may process auditory
information differently than
visual and tactile information,”
says researcher Amy Poremba.PHOTO: THINKSTOCK, GETTY, KEVIN KRAJICK/EARTH INSTITUTE COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
Music may as well be the sound of a drill for those suffering from specific musical
anhedoniaIf things go in one
ear and out of the
other, then grab a
pen and paperPsychology
neuroscienceMemory after one dayAccuracy (%)AuditoryTactileVisualWhen it comes to spatial
reasoning, chimpanzees can
outperform humans. A study at the
University of Michigan-Dearborn
asked four chimps, 12 3- to 6-year-
old children, and four adults to
navigate complex virtual mazes and
measured the distance they covered
before they reached the end. One
chimp significantly outperformed the
adults and children. Others were on
a par with the children, but adults
beat them.Amazing apes
Fancy a trip to space but can’t
afford the sky-high prices? A group
at the University of Surrey may
have just the thing. In a crowd-
funded project, the team is offering
wannabe astronauts a virtual trip
to the stars for £40. The ‘Virtual
Ride To Space’ will be created by
capturing footage of space via 24
HD cameras attached to a weather
balloon. You’ll then view the 20km
ascent with an Oculus Rift virtual
reality headset.Genghis Khan’s climate Ticket to space: £40
If you want to take over the
world, wait for the right weather!
Tree rings in Mongolia reveal the
usually arid central Asian steppes
had their wettest weather in more
than 1,000 years in the early
1200s. The climate would have
led to more grass, and therefore
healthy horses and livestock,
and enabled Genghis Khan to
grow his empire, say scientists
from Columbia and West Virginia
universities.1009080706050NEWS IN BRIEF
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