http://http://www.the-open-mind.com/this-is-your-brain-on-guitar/
Whether it’s playing “Stairway to Heaven” until your fingers bleed or always finding yourself in the center of a group of people intent on singing “Wagon Wheel,” some things are common to all guitarists.
Including, as it turns out, their brain chemistry.
For starters, guitarists literally have the ability to synchronize their brains while playing. In a 2012 study in Berlin, researchers had 12 pairs of guitarists play the same piece of music while having their brains scanned. They discovered that the guitarists’ neural networks would synchronize not only during the piece, but even slightly before playing. So, basically, guitarists can read each others’ minds better than they can read music.
Read more at http://www.the-open-mind.com/this-is-your-brain-on-guitar/#GoQTD4y6m1YqpKcO.99
Replies
That's AWESOME!!! What's totally TOTALLY awesome is what that short clip of the jazz musicians brain proves! It's the same thing that's professional musicians have said for generations. In order to be successful you have to lose yourself in your playing. It was shown right there on the scan. The guy's self awareness or ego i think it's called, was shut off.
Thanks for the link Doug!
and thanks a lot dude.... now I have hours more of stuff to find and read..... : )
I now cant play guitar without tapping both feet...its like auto pilot...I have conditioned myself...but one day my brain may explode..
and now for something different.....http://www.ted.com/talks/charles_limb_your_brain_on_improv
Don't sweat it Doug. There's sites like this all over the web. Most are set up to prove things by eliminating or not showing all the facts. Others, like my absolute FAVORITE! http://www.dhmo.org/ are designed purely for entertainment. When they got to the part about trying to remove Dihydrogen Monoxide out of suede I was laughing so hard I couldn't breath. Ya, my geek is showing.: ) Di means 2. Mono means 1. Hydrogen is hydrogen. Oxide is oxygen So you have two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen. Water.
OK I read threw most of the 'study' link you provided. In a nutshell They monitored the brains a group of musicians playing a Rondo. Noting the phase locking between all brains based on the tempo of the music. Showing the leader or person playing the part that is played first in the musical score, and the flower had slightly different phase lock patterns.
The actual musical score played was an adaptation of a short Rondo sequence from the Sonata in D Major by Christian Gottlieb Scheidler.
In short the study proved that it's easier to predict what someone is going to do if your cooperating with them. A quote from the study site,
"Coherence was only found during cooperation, not competition, and occurred in the superior frontal cortex, which is implicated with modeling and predicting the actions of others."
Science is funny that way. They have to go threw all kinds of things to explain what everyone already knows. If your playing defense on a football team. It's easier for you to predict what the guy standing next to you on your teem will do. It's hard to predict what the guy standing in front of you playing offense will do.
The original research is about social behavior and not psychic ability.
So it's totally cool Doug. Like so many people before you've been dooped. It's no refection on you what so ever. They lied. As far as psychic abilities go. There's more and more learned about the brain and human abilities all the time. Just because science can't explain the rings of Saturn doesn't mean those rings arnt there.
I've read and watch research on studies of the brain and music. One study was done on professional classical musicians. It talked about how both sides of the brain were activated because music takes both emotional and physical reactions to perform. This one touched a bit on psychic phenomenon. There was also a published study were people had the right side of their brain electrically stimulated to match the left side. This also toughed on psychic phenomenon. As the study above it was said a slight increase of 'guessing right'. However neither study proclaimed anything supernatural. These findings were also duplicated in mathematical studies done side by side with psychological research in the decision making process in the brain. All had the same conclusions.
The Berlin study has major flaws. Knowing that all our brains are wired the same. Then having everyone play the same piece of music. You will get almost the same results from each brain scanned. Sorry, no psychic connection. Hate to be the wet blanket here. Try this experiment on your own. It'll prove me right. Get together with someone who is also a guitar player. To set this experiment up choose a song you both know really well. Plan to play this song three times without stopping. Ask the other musician to start playing a completely different song sometime within the three times you both plan on playing the first song. In the middle of a verse, chorus or where ever. Don't ask the other musician for the name or key of this other song. Play back to back so you can't see what the other musician is doing, If you can automatically switch to that different song then there is a psychic connection.
Reasoning
Both of your brains will have almost the same energy signatures as your playing the known song. The other musicians brian will develop a different signature when thinking about starting the new song. If there is a psychic connection your brain will also prepare to play something different. Weather you know this new song or not. When the new song is started you will hit the very same chord or note at the very instant the other musician plays it. If there's no psychic connection this won't happen.
i "knew " you were gonna say that .
;-)