-
Creative Commons
If you want to know about IP law - this is the place. CC is defining the cutting edge of music licensing. -
David Byrne Journal
Stop making sense David Byrne. Seriously, you make too much sense to us - it's scary. When are you coming by to hang out? -
Create Digital Music
Fairly relevant to Indaba :) -
Hypebot
If you want to know what's happening in the new music world... -
Wired Epicenter
Wired + Music + Eliot = amazing -
Underrated Magazine
Our favorite NYC music-scene blog from our favorite CMJer. -
StereoGum.com
Super-hip music blog. A must for anyone serious about the NYC scene. -
The Daily Swarm
ll the news that fit to print ... about music, that is. -
Idolator
Gawker Media's music blog. Perfect if you like a little snark with your music news. -
Lefsetz Letter
In his own words - "First in music analysis"
Wednesday June 18, 2008 at 09:00 AM |
What's inside your head? Well, a brain for one. And, as it turns out, your brain may be different than a non-musical mind. Oliver Sacks, an all-around academic, has a book on how music affects the human mind called "Musicophilia." Most surprisingly, he found that musicians' brains are different to the point of being able to identify one just from looking at it. Wired, along with just about every other publication, wrote the book up.
According to neurologist Oliver Sacks, author of Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain,
musicians' brains differ from those of the general population in a
number of ways, including having a stronger connection between the left
and right sides of the brain (from an NPR interview):
"Gottfried Schlaug - up at Harvard... used brain imagery to measure the sizes of different parts of the brain. He found first, for example, that the corpus callosum - the big band which unites the two hemispheres of the brain - tends to be larger in musicians. And then he found enlargements of the cortex, the grey matter, in the auditory parts of the brain, and in motor parts of the brain to a degree which may be almost visible to the naked eye. So that, say, if one looks at pictures of brains, you might not be able to say this man is a genius or this man is a fool, or this man is a visual artist, but you could probably say that man is a musician."
I like the idea that my brain is different - dare I say better - than the average brain thanks to years of playing and listening to music. Of course, I did go through a headbanging stage which probably ruined any chance I had at really standing out.
Musicophilia on Amazon
Digg this
del.icio.usLog in to comment on this blog post
