Tag Archives: Beat

Ronan of Sea Lion Likely Outshines You at Keeping the Beat

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Meet Ronan, a California sea lion who probably has better rhythm than you do.

Researchers have demonstrated that Ronan, a resident at the Long Marine Lab at the University of California, Santa Cruz, was the first non-human mammal trained to keep the beat through movement to music. This took place back when Ronan was young, in 2013. Recently, scientists decided to reassess the skills of this now 15-year-old sea lion, revealing not only an enhancement in her ability to bob her head in sync with the music but also that she outperformed most humans in doing so.

“This ultimately shows that humans aren’t the only mammals that can sustain a beat,” said Tecumse Fitch, a cognitive biologist studying biomimetics at the University of Vienna, who was not involved in the new research. The findings were published on Thursday in Scientific Reports.

Parrots are known to keep the beat through their movements, and recent studies have highlighted similar rhythmic abilities in monkeys and other mammals such as rats. However, over a decade later, “the rhythmic abilities of sea lions are distinctly recognized among non-human vertebrates,” Dr. Fitch stated.

Researchers worked with Ronan for several months, focusing on enhancing her accuracy with the original tempos she had learned. They then compared her ability to maintain the beat now to when she was three years old.

The team evaluated Ronan’s ability to move her head to a tempo of 112, 120, and 128 beats per minute, contrasting her head movements with those of 10 individuals aged 18-23 moving their arms. “The hands function similarly to a sea lion’s head, and their arms resemble the necks of a sea lion in size, making it a valid comparison for measuring movement capabilities.”

Across all assessment parameters analyzed by Dr. Cook and his team, Ronan topped the class.

“Ronan outperformed everyone on every measure of accuracy and consistency,” stated Dr. Cook. “In all respects, she excelled beyond most people, truly setting herself apart.”

Ronan’s headbanging abilities sparked debate in 2013 regarding whether her skills could truly be compared to those of humans, as well as whether such behavior is common in the animal kingdom or restricted to species capable of learning complex vocalizations, like humans and parrots, which allow spontaneous rhythmic movement.

“What Ronan does appears indistinguishable from what humans are adept at,” Dr. Cook remarked. He believes that the new findings about Ronan’s capabilities further challenge the assumption that rhythmic timing is inherent only to vocal learners.

Some scientists challenge this conclusion.

Aniruddh D. Patel, a cognitive neuroscientist at Tufts University, maintains that the ability to naturally synchronize with music is exclusive to certain species that can inherently learn complex vocal patterns.

He suggests further research into the vocal learning abilities of sea lions would corroborate this hypothesis. Nonetheless, he emphasizes that the “crucial distinction” lies in the fact that Ronan has been trained to keep the beat.

Moving forward, Dr. Cook and his colleagues aim to investigate whether Ronan can maintain rhythm with less predictable beats.

“Can she adjust her tempo by speeding up or slowing down? Can she handle variations that aren’t steady?” Dr. Cook questioned. “These are things that humans excel at. Can non-humans do them?”

Source: www.nytimes.com

The Mechanisms of Anticipating the Beat Drop in Your Brain

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We are able to enjoy music because of our ability to recognize musical boundaries.

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We may finally understand how the brain processes beat drops: People use two distinct brain networks to predict and identify the transitions between musical segments.

Musical boundaries – the moments when one part of a composition ends and another begins – are important to enjoying music, especially in the Western musical tradition. Without them, he says, your favorite hits can sound like a monotonous, random stream of notes, “like reading a text without punctuation.” Ibarra Burnat Perez At the University of Jyväskylä, Finland.

To understand how the brain processes musical boundaries, she and her colleagues analyzed brain activity while listening to 36 adults listen to instrumental pieces from three different genres: Adios Nonino Astor Piazzolla, an American progressive metal band Stream of consciousness Dream Theater and Russian Ballet Classics of Spring Festival Works by Igor Stravinsky. All of the listeners had attended school in Finland, and half of them considered themselves semi-professional or professional musicians.

The researchers found that just before musical boundaries, a brain network they call the early auditory network activates in anticipation of the end of a musical phrase. This network primarily involves auditory regions located in the posterior, or back, outer region of the brain called the cortex.

Another network becomes active during and after musical transitions. This network, called the border-transition network, is characterized by increased activity in auditory areas toward the middle and anterior, or front, parts of the cortex. Perez says that this change in brain activity between the two regions is similar to how the brain understands the difference between sentences in a language.

During and after the musical boundary, several brain regions, including the right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, which is involved in complex cognitive tasks and decision-making, deactivate, suggesting that the brain redirects attention and resources to integrating new musical information as a new segment begins, Perez says.

Musicians and non-musicians also used these two brain networks differently. For example, musicians relied on brain regions important for higher-order auditory processing and integration, which may reflect a more specialized approach to understanding musical boundaries, Perez says. Non-musicians, on the other hand, showed greater connectivity across broader brain regions, indicating a more general approach.

In addition to shedding light on how the brain processes music, Perez says, these findings could also help develop music therapy for people who have difficulty comprehending language. For example, incorporating elements of musical boundaries into speech transitions (such as matching syllables to a melody) might make sentences easier to understand, she says.

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Source: www.newscientist.com

Cool Payment: LA’s Reflective Material to Beat the Heat and Stay Cool

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In the Pacoima neighborhood of Los Angeles, Jose Damian, a street vendor for the past five years, braves temperatures of up to 105 degrees while selling Mexican snacks and shaved ice under the scorching midday sun. He recently experienced heat-related health issues when he felt dizzy and sweaty on his way to Sarah Coughlin Elementary School, prompting him to seek medical attention after losing all the salt in his body.

Residents in Pacoima have long endured extreme heat, with some taking multiple showers a day and struggling to stay cool due to the lack of trees and expensive air conditioning. The neighborhood holds the unfortunate title of being the hottest in Los Angeles and is disproportionately affected by heat-related illnesses, particularly in low-income communities of color like Pacoima.

A recent study shows that areas with a large Latino population, such as Pacoima, are significantly warmer than others in Los Angeles County. This disparity in temperature is exacerbated by the lack of tree canopies and green spaces in the neighborhood, further contributing to the heat island effect.

To combat the extreme heat, community organizations and local officials have joined forces to implement a cooling plan for Pacoima. Initiatives like the “Cool Pavement” project, in partnership with roofing manufacturer GAF, aim to reduce heat absorption in the neighborhood by repaving city blocks with solar reflective coating. This multi-year project not only helps cool the area but also adds vibrant murals and colored pavers to brighten up the community.

Source: www.nbcnews.com