Comments on: “In Sync” is Not Just a Metaphor Anymore

By: Nina Rosenstand

Nina Rosenstand — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 17:38:38 +0000

Just took the trouble to actually read the New Scientist article (just follow the link above). Ask and ye shall receive… Here’s the answer to my query:

“There’s evidence that the [temporal and parietal regions] could be activated during music perception and also during music production, as well as throughout pleasant feelings induced by the music,” they conclude.

Pleasant feelings! I thought so. Let’s see who takes this theory and runs with it—philosophers, psychologists, or sociologists!
And as for Dwight’s query,

Before the guitarists synchronised their actions, says lead researcher, Ulman Lindenberger of the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin, their brain waves were already becoming coupled.

Here is a link to the original study:
http://www.ukdistribute.com/links/1236944478453-BMCNeuroscience_Brains_swinging_in_concert.pdf

By: Nina Rosenstand

Nina Rosenstand — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 06:25:46 +0000

Oh, by the way, I also want to know if the synchronicity affects the pleasure center of the brain! That would account for a number of human group actions that might otherwise seem unwise or even inexplicable. Or explain why some experiences are extra special when they’re shared. But as philosophers know (unless they are eliminative materialists), charting brain waves just doesn’t give us the whole story–we still need to add the importance of phenomenological intentionality: Our experience takes place in a world we are in the middle of, as physical beings, with a sense of ontological and social context. So what we get out of the synchronicity experience is at least as important as the brain phenomenon itself.

By: Paul Moloney

Paul Moloney — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 23:59:17 +0000

I fully intend to watch “A Hard Days Night” again. It’s not every movie that has a character that has a “clean” grandfather, very clean looking grandfather. I first saw the movie in the theater when I was a kid staying with my grandmother for the weekend. Granny lived in Venice Beach. Back then the biggest problem in Venice Beach seemed to be the winos getting into fights. Granny told me, when I was a kid, that the people in the neighborhood weren’t bad, they were poor. Granny lived in an apartment on Venice Blvd. that was across the street from the police and fire stations. When the hippie era came along, granny told me that she saw the police hiding behind cars and throwing eggs at the hippies as they went by.

By: Huan

Huan — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 20:33:34 +0000

Very interesting find! There could be a lot of follow-up experiments couldn’t there? For example we could put them in different rooms and simply have them play together through high quality communication devices, or have them face totally away from each other. I thought in order for mirror neurons to mimic the subjective experiences of other beings, we’d have to be perceiving them in some fashion, is music a medium of perception then?

This maybe pseudo territory, but I can’t help but link this with quantum theory! What if these mirror neurons act like entangled quantum particles in some odd way? That would mean that once they are “entangled”, there’s no further need for direct perception at all! This would make sense of the twin connection and “in sync” lovers and other freaky synced up social phenomenons.

By: Dwight Furrow

Dwight Furrow — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 17:21:23 +0000

This is interesting though not surprising. The musicians intend to play the same melody so each is likely taking an active interest in what the other is doing, which would implicate the “theory of mind” and mirror neurons. It would be interesting to know if the same brain wave patterns were produced if the musicians had the tempo set my a metronome and they were reading the melody from a score.

As to “Now I want to know if all social animals have similar brain synchronizations!”

Probably not with regard to music. My son’s dog is utterly indifferent to my guitar playing. Of course, it could be that his aesthetic standards are simply higher than anything I can achieve.