Links: Science!

[sonia]

Eye movement MRI! So cool!
Normal and post-traumatic lateral eye movement.

I'm very interested in what's going on inside people's brains and bodies while they're moving to music or making music. This is related, looking at speech vs. music in the brain.

Distinct sensitivity to spectrotemporal modulation supports brain asymmetry for speech and melody by Philippe Albouy, Lucas Benjamin, Benjamin Morillon, Robert J. Zatorre.

To what extent does the perception of speech and music depend on different mechanisms in the human brain? What is the anatomical basis underlying this specialization? Albouy et al. created a corpus of a cappella songs that contain both speech (semantic) and music (melodic) information and degraded each stimulus selectively in either the temporal or spectral domain. Degradation of temporal information impaired speech recognition but not melody recognition, whereas degradation of spectral information impaired melody recognition but not speech recognition. Brain scanning revealed a right-left asymmetry for speech and music. Classification of speech content occurred exclusively in the left auditory cortex, whereas classification of melodic content occurred only in the right auditory cortex.

Also, a summary at NPR: How The Brain Teases Apart A Song's Words And Music by Jon Hamilton.

Once upon a time I was a grad student in Computer Science (I bailed with a Masters) and I still sling the theory lingo a bit. This is an interesting article about a new proof, very well explained in mostly non-technical language. I will admit to skimming some of it. (via conuly)

Landmark Computer Science Proof Cascades Through Physics and Math by Kevin Hartnett.

The new proof establishes that quantum computers that calculate with entangled quantum bits or qubits, rather than classical 1s and 0s, can theoretically be used to verify answers to an incredibly vast set of problems. The correspondence between entanglement and computing came as a jolt to many researchers.

I am an ardent proponent of public transit! (Although to be honest I'd rather be on my bike for the most part.)

Missing the Bus by Emmett FitzGerald.

If you heard that there was a piece of technology that could do away with traffic jams, make cities more equitable, and help us solve climate change, you might think about driverless cars, or hyperloops or any of the other new transportation technologies that get lots of hype these days. But there is a much older, much less sexy piece of machinery that could be the key to making our cities more sustainable, more liveable, and more fair: the humble bus. Steven Higashide is a transit expert, bus champion, and author of a new book called Better Buses Better Cities. And the central thesis of the book is that buses have the power to remake our cities for the better. But he says that if we want the bus to reach its potential, we’re going to have to make the experience riding one, a lot more pleasant.