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Posts from the ‘Music’ Category

May 8

Focus@Will: Neuroscience Based Service Increasing Your Attention With Music

I first heard about Focus@Will at Futuremed this February and since then I’ve been following the developments. Today, they published an announcement about the Android application they just released. I worked now for hours listening to the music they provided and it was a great first experience.

It has a three week free full access trial period for new users. After that subscription will cost $3.99 per month.

The focus@will music stream engages your non-focal (background) attention, but not so much that it interferes with your conscious focal attention on the task at hand. This is music you hear but should not be actively listening to. If a track is too bland, your subconscious will start ignoring it, and if too interesting, novel, dynamic or exciting, you will start consciously noticing it, which will distract you. Every track in our exclusive library has been remixed/re-edited and remastered to deliver the precise set of required attributes to keep you in the focus zone.

focus@will

Sep 12

Call Me Maybe by Medical Students

One of the best medical music videos from the last years.

Sep 7

1 Comment

Give me my DaM data: Music Video

E-patient Dave became quite famous after his performance “Give me my damn data” last year. Now here is a music video covering the same issue but with The American College of Medical Informatimusicology featuring Todd Park, US Chief Technology Officer.

Apr 27

1 Comment

6 Cool Things People Have Done Inside MRI Scanners

There is a very interesting article in The Atlantic about things people have done in the MRI scanner. Here is the list, enjoy!

  • Playing jazz
  • Giving birth
  • Reading T.S. Eliot
  • Playing video games
  • Unleashing animals into the room
  • Having sex

Charles Limb, a Johns Hopkins otolaryngologist, tried to find out what it is like brain-wise to listen to music and used MRI scans in his research.

Apr 12

1 Comment

What can music cause in an old man’s mind?

One of the best videos these days. An old man in a nursing home gets excited when listening to the old music he used to listen to every day.

Mar 11

2 Comments

Björk and the DNA

Björk, the extraordinary singer, released a new music video with her son Hollow which features a DNA animation created by biomedical animator Drew Berry. Enjoy!

The video for the song could be a documentary of a strange alien world or the beginning of life on Earth. Every frame is bursting with hyperactive life. It’s an odd feeling, watching DNA strands twist and form as small bits of proteins scurry around in the background. This is the unceasing chaos that is going on inside every one of us. The video could be a piece of a museum explaining our biological process were it not for the strange molecular face that appears near the end. That little addition adds a touch of mysticism to the piece and puts a small bit of humanity in a universe of mindless chemical processes.

Aug 4

2 Comments

Genetic Music Project

Some months ago I wrote about Alexandra Pajak, a graduate student at the University of Georgia, who released an album of music based on the DNA of HIV. And now here is the Genetic Music Project, an open source genetic art project combining music and science where everyone is art and everyone can be an artist.

Since all genetic information can only come in the language of four nucleotides (A Adenosine C Cytosine G Guanine T Thymidine) it is fairly easily conveyed in musical form. Another way of thinking about it is that each and every one of us and all life on this planet is made of music.

Here you can listen to some samples.

Jul 30

1 Comment

E-patient Rap: Gimme My Damn Data

E-Patient Dave has recently given a presentation about the importance of online available data of e-patients and performed a short rap about this issue. And now he is remixed, watch it and enjoy!

 

Apr 29

Health 2.0 News: From Rap to Sequencing

I’d like to get a small group of volunteer experts together – healthcare professionals committed to science and common sense – and have them read and approve links before they are promoted on Twitter. I have created a new Twitter account called “HealthyRT” – the volunteer experts will have access to this account and can promote content that is medically sound.

When the science you learned in school and the science you read in the newspaper don’t quite match up, the Meet Science series is here to help, providing quick run-downs of oft-referenced concepts, controversies, and tools that aren’t always well-explained by the media.

As we work to get our fellow physicians to emerge from the shadows, the last thing we need is a social health horror story.  This week a Rhode Island physician was formally reprimanded for breaching patient confidentiality on Facebook.  You can get catch up with the core story on MSNBC or read KevinMD’s nice analysis.

Jan 17

7 Comments

Why Songs Can Get You High

According to a new study in Nature Neuroscience, there are songs that can arouse feelings of euphoria and craving by endogenous dopamine release in the striatum.

If music-induced emotional states can lead to dopamine release, as our findings indicate, it may begin to explain why musical experiences are so valued. These results further speak to why music can be effectively used in rituals, marketing or film to manipulate hedonic states. Our findings provide neurochemical evidence that intense emotional responses to music involve ancient reward circuitry and serve as a starting point for more detailed investigations of the biological substrates that underlie abstract forms of pleasure.

One of those songs according to Robert Zatorre, one of the authors:

(Hat tip: In and aound the lab)

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