Innovation: Music
There are few activities in life that utilize the entire brain, and music is one of them. Music is found to regulate heart rate, blood pressure and respiration. It triggers networks of neurons into organized movement, helping individuals with Parkinson’s Disease and stroke victims overcome basic motor skill struggles and speech difficulties. And it has even been proven to increase vocabulary and reasoning skills.
Today we are looking at discoveries that are amplifying the importance of music in our daily lives and a technology that helps capture sound.
DNA encoding technology allows people to literally ‘bathe’ in music
Music of the Spheres is an art-science collaboration project that uses bioinformatics technology developed by Dr. Nick Goldman to encode music into DNA molecules.
The encoded DNA, with music commissioned from the Kreutzer Quartet, was turned into a soap solution and is now used in an exhibit of performances and installations filled with bubbles. The ‘recording’ fills the air, pops on visitors’ skin and literally bathes the audience in music.
Researchers discover the anatomic reasons for the persistence of musical memory in Alzheimer patients
In comparison to other memory functions, long-term musical memory in Alzheimer patients often remains intact and functional for a surprisingly long time. However, until now, the underlying causes of this phenomenon have remained in the dark.
Scientists ran a behavioral experiment by locating the seat of long-term musical memory in the brain with the help of functional ultra-high-field magnetic resonance imaging. While being monitored by MRI, the subjects listened to groups of three musical samples consisting of a long-known song, a song they had just heard and a completely unknown melody. They found that the brain area that had been identified as the seat of long-term musical memory does in fact lose fewer neurons than the rest of the brain.
Musicians can now record high-quality audio on the go
Recording audio is becoming increasingly simple with the help of devices like smartphones. Recording high-quality audio, however, is not as easy.
Mikme is the world’s first fully wireless recording microphone equipped with a gold-plated condenser capsule that captures audio using bluetooth technology. The microphone captures audio at 24 bit / 96 kHz, which is a higher quality audio than even many studios use. The Mikme app is able to mix up to eight tracks in-app, making audio recording very easy for even the novice user.
By Amanda Stamper – Lexmark News Blog