....

With brains wired for song, we derive pleasure, feel less pain and transcend our body's limits

By Judy Foreman  

Dan Ellsey, 33, was sitting in his wheelchair in a soulless room at Tewksbury Hospital, his virtually useless arms and weak torso strapped to the chair for safety.

Suddenly, as soon as we were introduced, he arched his back, grinned broadly, and aimed the riveting power of his dark brown eyes at me, as if eye contact were his only means of transcending the prison of his body.

But it isn't. In the last few years, Ellsey, who was born with cerebral palsy, has discovered another, almost miraculous, way of expressing himself: music. Not just listening to country and soft rock, as he has done for years, but composing music himself with a special computerized system called Hyperscore, developed by composer-inventor, Tod Machover, professor of music and media and director of the Opera of the Future group at the MIT Media Lab.

I stand there, awed, as we listen to Ellsey's music, which on the computer has an abstract, eerie sound that swells and recedes like ocean waves. As we listen, we watch on the computer screen as the "score" - colored lines on a graph that represent different instruments - unfolds before our eyes.

A look of pure bliss crossed his face. For Ellsey, as for most human beings, music has almost inexplicable power - to rouse armies to battle, to soothe babies, to communicate peaks of joy and depths of sorrow that mere words cannot.

Just why evolution would have endowed our brains with the neural machinery to make music is a mystery.

"It's unclear why humans are so uniquely sensitive to music - certainly music shares many features with spoken language, and our brains are particularly developed to process the rapid tones and segments of sound that are common to both," said Dr. Oliver Sacks, the neurologist whose latest book, "Musicophilia," is about the brain's sensitivity to music. Some researchers, he added in an e-mail interview, believe that in primitive cultures, music and speech were not distinct. Other researchers debate which came first in evolution, speech or song.

What is clear is that the brain is abundantly wired to process music.

Scientists at the Montreal Neurological Institute, for instance, have found dramatic evidence on brain scans that the "chills," or a visceral feeling of awe, that people report listening to their favorite music are real. Music that a person likes - but not music that is disliked - activates both the higher, thinking centers in the brain's cortex, and, perhaps more important, also the "ancient circuitry, the motivation and reward system," said experimental psychologist Robert Zatorre, a member of the team. It's this ancient part of the brain that, often through the neurotransmitter dopamine, also governs basic drives such as for food, water, and sex, suggesting the tantalizing idea that the brain may consider music on a par with these crucial drives.

But music has the power not just to awe but to heal. If a person has a stroke on the left side of the brain, where the speech centers are located in most people, that "wipes out a major part of communication," said Dr. Gottfried Schlaug, chief of the Cerebrovascular Disorder Division and Stroke-Recovery Laboratory at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.

But if the right side, where a lot of music is processed, is intact, some stroke patients can use "melodic intonation therapy," which involves singing using two tones (relatively close in pitch) to communicate. Schlaug's research suggests that with intense therapy some patients can even move from this two-tone singing back to actual speech.

Stroke patients with gait problems also profit from neurologically based music therapy. At the Center for Biomedical Research in Music at Colorado State University in Ft. Collins, director Michael Thaut and his team have shown that people partially paralyzed on one side can retrain to walk faster and in a more coordinated way if they practice walking rhythmically, cued by music or a metronome. Combining rhythmic training with physical therapy also helps stroke patients recover gait faster, he said in an e-mail.

"Music helps us organize our movement," said Kathleen Howland, who has a PhD in music and cognition and teaches at Lesley University in Cambridge. Twenty years ago, she said, therapists tried to get stroke patients to walk better by flashing lights at them. But music, especially rhythm, works much better, she said.

A number of studies show that music therapy - the use of music for medical goals - can reduce pain. In a 2001 study on burn patients, whose burns must be frequently scraped to reduce dead tissue, researchers found that music therapy significantly reduced the excruciating pain. Patients undergoing colonoscopy also seem to feel less pain and need fewer sedative drugs if they listen to music during the procedure, according to several studies.

But not all studies have been so clear-cut. One 2007 review by the Cochrane Collaboration, a nonprofit, international organization that evaluates medical research, involved pooling data from 51 pain studies; it showed that listening to music can reduce the intensity of pain and the need for narcotic drugs, but cautioned that, overall, the benefit was small.

Music therapy may also improve mental state and functioning in people with schizophrenia, according to a 2007 Cochrane review. Premature infants who listen to lullabies learn to suck better and gain more weight than those who don't get music therapy. And Deforia Lane, director of music therapy at the University Hospitals Ireland Cancer Center in Cleveland, has found an improvement in immune response among hospitalized children who played, sang, and created music compared to children who did not get music therapy.

Indeed, the list of potential benefits from music therapy seems almost endless (check out the website of the American Music Therapy Association, musictherapy.org).

For some people, like Dan Ellsey, they can be nothing short of liberating.

As the sound of Ellsey's music faded away the other day, I asked him what message he would like to tell people through his music. Painstakingly, he tapped out his answer, aiming a laser device on his forehead to highlight pictures and letters on his computer.

"I am smart," he wrote, arching his back, joy beaming from his eyes. "I have a good personality."

Anything else? Eyes alight, he tapped: "I am a musician."

Correction: Because of a reporting error, the Health Sense column about the power of music in Monday's Health/Science section misrepresented research comparing the use of flashing lights and music to help people walk better. The research was done on healthy volunteers, not stroke patients. 

http://www.banditos.info/speles/sobersanta2.swf (Xmas game)

http://pcdevils.com/flashme.php?swf=/media/flash/wp_game_border_patrol.swf (shoot immigrants game, ricky)

http://www.unoriginal.co.uk/gun-master.html (Gun shooting game)

http://www.turbotanks.com (tank battle game

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cH_E6YSQqTo (Join the Ukrainian army)

http://www.usdoj.gov/dea/job/agent/before.html (Join the DEA)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pG0uYjcjBR8&feature=related https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdZXp0Tq6Jk

http://www.stanleygibbons.com ('Are you struggling to buy for the philatelist in your life?')

http://3voor12.vpro.nl/programmas/29794118/2007 (Dave Clarke on the radio)

http://www.myspace.com/paolomojo (Paolo Mojo in action)

http://www.rapestop.net http://www.janthor.com/on.html (The Chastity Belt page)

http://www.lockmeup.com (Chastity belts- NOT REALLY SAFE FOR WORK)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7R5OkWVNfM (MC5: Kick Out The Jams)

http://www.black-history-month.co.uk/articles/angeladavisprofile.html (Angela Yvonne Davis)

http://makemyday.free.fr/whitepanthers.htm (White Panthers: In October of 1970, the FBI referred to the White Panthers as "potentially the largest and most dangerous of revolutionary organizations in the United States . . .') 

http://www.funny-games.biz/serious-santa.html (Shooting Santa game)

http://www.goyk.com/flash.asp?path=405 (John Holmes game, BIT IFFY FOR WORK!!!)

http://www.goyk.com/flash.asp?path=975 (Swearing game)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8a_hBR9YuNw&feature=related (Disco Demolition)

http://www.dahl.com/about ( 'Tuned into Channel 7's Monsters Of The Monday show with Mark Giangreco and Jeff Blanzy. Jim Rose is in Champaign covering the Illini. JR said the Illini will lose in the Rose Bowl. Nice! Ryan Chiaverini is in MN acting like a game show host. I'd rather watch gay porn . . .')

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8ehsRAVcuQ (Steve Dahl sucks)

http://www.freeworldgroup.com/games6/gameindex/cyborg.htm (Excellent hunt George W game)

http://scrubya.com ('when you shower alone you shower with Bin Laden)

http://www.planetdan.net/pics/misc/nakedhillary.htm (Falling Hillary Clinton screensaver)

http://www.nswombudsman.nsw.gov.au/show.asp?id=431

http://www.nswccl.org.au/docs/pdf/Shaggydog1.pdf (Shaggy dog stories)

http://www.k9gta.com (Drug dogs)

$31 million worth of lost valuables on the TSA's watch

Git yo Binary Watch on!!!!

http://www.tokyoflash.com/en/watches/tokyoflash/tibida/

 

need survalence ?

http://www.surveillancelight.com/

 

Electrosketch

http://instruct1.cit.cornell.edu/courses/ee476/FinalProjects/s2004/jml66/EAS_final.htm#Intro

George W's Afghan Partner In Crime

 An Afghanistan politician who 20 years earlier was caught selling $2 million worth of heroin in America, dismissed his drug smuggling past as youthful exuberance in September, and compared himself to George W Bush. "It was my honeymoon. I was a youngster and youngsters do stuff. Stuff like gambling, drugs and girls. I was a Las Vegas boy," Afghanistan's anti-corruption Minister Izzatullah Wasifi explained. "Even George Bush has a record," he pointed out, "He was arrested, same shit as me. There's no difference between him and me." (The Guardian) The Guardian suggested Mr Wasifi was referring to the President's drunk driving conviction from 1976, and made no reference to the repeated allegations of Bush's cocaine abuse which have continually surfaced, notably in Kitty Kelly's biography 'The Family: The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty' in 2004. An extract from the book appeared in the Sunday Times the same year, which talked of Bush 'attending and enjoying heavy pot-smoking parties'and 'doing coke at Yale' as well as considerably more recently. "As governor of Texas, he took a hard line on drugs. He supported increased penalties for possession and signed legislation mandating jail time for people caught with less than a single gram of cocaine," Ms Kelly reported. "Yet, as the claims of Sharon Bush, his sister-in-law, show, he could have been subject to jail time himself had he been caught "doing coke" with his brother Marvin at Camp David during his father's presidency (1989-1993). In the midst of an unfriendly divorce from Neil, another of the Bush brothers, Sharon told me last year: "He and Marvin did coke at Camp David when their father was president and not just once, either," she said.

http://www.actionflash.com/ronin.php (Sword game- super complicated but great)

http://www.actionflash.com/attack_helicopter.php (Helicopter attack game)

http://www.funny-games.biz/alpha-bravo-charlie.html (another helicopter game)

http://www.dailyhaha.com/_flash/jetgame%5B1%5D.htm (Jet fighter game)

http://tinyurl.com/2gwqtk (Thriller)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAVVVMcTShQ (Radio Ga Ga)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muP6Xb5jlmo (Hail Holy Queen)

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=3pB6Y2WYZps (P Diddy not buying drugs at DC10)

http://www.spa.ukf.net/spabodyl.htm (Body language- 'Most opportunistic assailants will have already decided who their victim is before any words are exchanged so it follows that a person's body language is a major factor when an assailant is looking for a victim . . .')

http://www.fightingartsdirectory.com/colour_of_violence.htm ('Staying switched on is the important part in self defence and staying out of any street confrontation. Most victims of street crime think the person came from nowhere and just attacked them. The chances are that the attacker had been observing them for sometime and may have bumped into them to check their state of awareness. The street attacker will always take the easy option and most will move away if they feel that you are switched on . . .')

http://www.nononsenseselfdefense.com/five_stages.html (stages of violent crime: 'A person who is prepared to engage in physical violence will give off certain physiological signals. Literally his body will betray that fact. No matter how his words or behavior attempt to cover it. Often this collective set of signals is referred to as "vibes." And yes, someone who is prepared to commit violence gives off "bad" vibes . . .')

http://www.ugoplayer.com/games/tanks.html (Tanks)

http://www.armorgames.com/games/indestructotank_popup.html (bouncing tanks)

http://www.tankmania.com/ (Multi-player tank war game)

http://tinyurl.com/2eu6kl (Water torture: 'Drinking by Force--The Inquisition laid a victim flat, wrapped cloth around his (or her) mouth and nostrils so that he could barely breathe, and poured a steady stream of water into his mouth. The water ran down the cloth to the back of the victim's throat, so he had no chance of breathing. He experienced the same agony as a person about to die . . .')

http://tinyurl.com/deaxx ('The direct approach is the questioning of a source without having to use any type of approach. The direct approach is often called no approach at all, but it is the most effective of all the approaches. Statistics tell us that in World War II, it was 85 percent to 95 percent effective. In Vietnam, it was 90 percent to 95 percent effective . . .')

http://www.lawcollective.org/article.php?id=54 ('General Interrogation Techniques: You know the police are really trying to manipulate you when they offer a legal defense or moral justification for what you're accused of doing, or imply that what happened was due to an accident or to circumstances beyond your control . . .')

http://www.apa.org/journals/supplemental/psp_93_3_321/Supplement1.mov (Hip swishing signs)

http://tinyurl.com/ywz7jg (Bolivian politicians fighting in parliament this week)

http://youtube.com/watch?v=-qa1kp5KR84&mode=related&search= (Czech politicians)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-iaIj685fw (Indian politicians)

http://www.addictinggames.com/tacticalassassin.html (assassin game)

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/186245 (Sihouette shooting game- tricky)

http://www.2dplay.com/rapid-fire-2/rapid-fire-2-play.htm (Rapid fire game)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8DxTHACthU (Satanic ravers)

http://tinyurl.com/6deow (Signs of Satan: Horned Hand or The Mano Cornuto : This gesture is the Satanic salute, a sign of recognition between and allegiance of members of Satanism or other unholy groups . . .')

http://tinyurl.com/ysejn8 ('The Antichrist is Abaddon the demon king of the Bottomless Pit . . .')

Walk Like A Man

Casual observers are able to correctly detect whether strangers are gay or straight by the way they walk, according to a new UCLA study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Volunteers were filmed from behind walking on treadmills for 2 minutes and the videos were then played to 112 students who guessed people's sexual orientation to accuracy levels of 60%, reportedly using body shapes and gaits (such as hip-swaying for gay men) to make their judgments. "We already know that men and women are built differently and walk differently from each other and that casual observers use this information as clues in making a range of social judgments," UCLA study chief Kerri Johnson told Science Daily. "Now we've found that casual observers can use gait and body shape to judge whether a stranger is gay or straight with a small but perceptible amount of accuracy," she said, "Once you know a person's sexual orientation, the fact has consequences for all subsequent interactions, and our findings suggest that this category of information can be deduced from subtle clues in body movement," Johnson added. Meanwhile, in New York, the Daily News hailed 'new, super-masculine men' this week in a feature celebrating the apparent re-emergence of 'real men'. "But it's not enough to walk like a man: You've got to talk like one, too," the Post added, "Scientists have found that men who speak deeply are likely to father more children than guys with high-pitched squawk boxes. One theory: Women use a man's voice to judge masculinity. Deeper equals manlier," they suggested.

Recreational Drug Use 'Like Mountaineering'

Leading Australian columnist Lisa Pryor called for an 'honest and adult debate' about drug use in October and criticized young people for being 'too gutless' to fight against the war on drugs. Ms Pryor branded official drug warnings 'a complete crock' in her column in the Sydney Morning Herald and attacked 'despicable' officials who try to make drug use unsafe to discourage users. "The truth is that recreational drug taking is like mountaineering. When all goes well, as it does most of the time, the experience can be fun and even profound. But drug taking, like mountaineering, can be dangerous," she pointed out. "Drug takers can develop addictions, scramble their brains and a small minority will die. Mountaineers lose fingers and toes to frostbite. Plenty die. They put the lives of rescuers at risk. When things do go wrong, it always looks like an unnecessary risk in hindsight. Families are destroyed. The difference between drug taking and mountaineering is that no one tries to ban mountaineering," she said. Ms Pryor was speaking soon after Australian rugby hero Andrew Johns admitted using ecstasy regularly for ten years after he was busted with one pill by London cops, as he made his way to the Notting Hill Carnival. His candid confession alarmed leading Australian drugs counselor Paul Dillon (boss of the Drug and Alcohol Research and Training Australia) who said it made his job considerably harder. "Andrew Johns appears to have suffered very few, if any, significant health problems. Too many ecstasy users already believe their drug of choice is relatively benign, and the Johns affair will not have altered that belief," he told the Herald Sun. "Unfortunately, Johns' admission has helped confirm what many people already believe: drug use is out of control and everyone does it," he said.

Love Rats Play Further Away

A September study of philanderers revealed that men on average travel eight times further than women for affairs, with one in five happy to go 'as far as it takes'. The survey was carried out for sex portal IllicitEncounters.com and revealed that men typically travel an average of 131.7 miles per date compared to 16.5 miles for women, the Metro newspaper reported. "Women wanted to cut a fine balance between being far enough away to be 'off-territory', but close enough to home to get back that night," a website spokesperson told the paper, "While men said they didn't believe they were under any suspicion at all by traveling away on a regular basis. But the over-riding factor was that virtually all women said they expected men to travel to them," she added. Meanwhile in Russia, Sky News reported the scary story of a Russian man who left his wife, though stayed in the marital home to watch TV, with disastrous consequences. The unnamed TV addict was reportedly sitting naked in front of the television when his wife became angry, dousing him with vodka before setting his penis on fire. "It was monstrously painful," he revealed, "I was burning like a torch. I don't know what I did to deserve this," he added.

Tattooing's Last Taboo

The BBC examined the increasing popularity of tattoos amongst 'normal people in October, declaring 'would-be prime ministers' wives have them. Lawyers have them. Doctors have them. So how did tattoos become so acceptable?' BBC writer Finlo Rohrer suggested tattoos are now an 'everyday thing', particularly for women and interviewed sociology professor (and tattoo expert) Katherine Irwin, who pointed out that many new tattoos are wimpy generic concealed ones which in reality are nowadays 'middle class symbols'. "They (middle class people) like to play with fringe identities without sacrificing their middle class status," Professor Irwin suggested, "They get a tattoo that is thumbing their nose at middle class society in a way that is so mainstream that it would be hard to push them out," she said. Skrufff man-in-Bangkok Bee, who has well as having his entire back covered by a giant centipede, has a face tattoo, was unimpressed with the general trend, declaring 'tattoos are no longer a statement now unless it's a fashion statement.' "Though I don't mind normal people getting them," Bee added, "Anything that makes 'norms' more colourful is a good thing." The British born DJ and guitarist has long based himself in Bangkok where he DJs and plays with Futon and spoke proudly of his face tattoo, which he's continued to gradually expand, he said. "My first face tattoo was three white lines on my cheekbone in the mid eighties and since then I have had 2 beauty spots and a blue /jade coloured rune added," said Bee. "Charles Manson drew an X on his forehead to cross himself out of society; I guess my face tattoos were a similar statement. The blue Vikings used the rune I had done, they believed it could make them invisible in battles. It has worked for me in several other situations," he added. "Facial tattoos are the last bastion of tattoos that have any effect on other people," he said. Despite admitting that he was barred from several gyms recently when on tour in Japan, Bee said even his face tattoo is no longer so shocking. "Most people don't think my blue rune is a real tattoo because they have never seen anything like it before. Either that or they can't see me coz I am invisible," he laughed. He also chatted happily about his massive centipede tattoo that took 87 hours of work to be inked onto his back (spread over a year). "I had it all done in Thailand by a Thai tattooist and his wife. It's kind of a homage to William Burroughs (he had a centipede phobia)," Bee explained, "It teaches me to overcome my fears. Plus centipedes are such beautiful ferocious creatures." Bee offered one piece of cogent advice for anyone thinking to follow in his footsteps; 'never bargain the price of a tattoo down'. "You want to be tattooed by a happy tattooist," he laughed. Tatttoo fanatic Judge Jules also urged caution when deciding to be inked, advising sober reflection before making the decision. "I've got a mate who's a tattoo artist, and I was in his studio watching people come in and make five second choices from a book full of designs. They were making rapid fire decisions about something that would be with them for the rest of their lives," he told Skrufff. "In my case he did a number of different bespoke designs especially for me, and I chose one after rejecting a number of his sketches as unsuitable. At best tattooists are great artists, and I'd like to think that mine count as such." Futon's new album Painkiller is out now. To remix their music, click here:http://www.rehabisfab.com