tonotopia

Mediastinal Emphysema After Head-Banging in a Rock Artist: Pseudo Shaken-Baby Syndrome in Adulthood There are many health hazards involved in heavy metal, including sexually transmitted disease, pyrotechnic burns, rabid bat ingestion and decapitation. But the genre’s most popular stage move also carries with it a considerable amount of medical risk. Studies stretching back to 1983 have reported some very scary side effects of head-banging, including deaths from carotid dissection and […]

While traveling down a reference wormhole from this paper, I landed on a 1927 book chapter called “An Experimental Study of Musical Enjoyment,” by a psychologist at Clark University named Harry Porter Weld. Basically, Weld played records to individual college students, measure their heart rate and breathing, and asked them to describe their listening experience. Despite some steampunkish technology (a plethysmograph, two Sumner pneumographs, a Zimmermann kymograph, a Victor Talking […]

“Beat Connection” Music Video by LCD Soundsystem from brad saville on Vimeo. Rhesus Monkeys (Macaca mulatta) Detect Rhythmic Groups in Music, but Not the Beat Generally speaking, with a few notable exceptions, all humans are capable of recognizing the beat within music. Studies have shown that the brains of adults, children and even newborns respond to the downbeat of a simple 4/4 rhythm, even if the test subjects were unreliable interpreters of that knowledge on a wedding […]

Assessing Musical Abilities Objectively: Construction and Validation of the Profile of Music Perception Skills Among the most frequent zingers any music critic receives is some variation of “if your so smart, why don’t u do better?!?” or “sorry you’re a failed musician, dude.” The underlying logic of these attacks is that a listener must have some musical ability in order to write about and judge music. But many music critics don’t have a formal […]

Subjective response to lysine in the therapy of herpes simplex. To test the effect of lysine supplementation on herpes infection, 1543 subjects were surveyed by questionnaire after a six-month trial period. The study included subjects with cold sores, canker sores, and genital herpes. Of these, 54% had been diagnosed and treated by a physician. The results showed that the average dosage used was 936 mg of lysine daily. Eighty-four per cent of those surveyed said […]