Dreams are really what you choose them to be. Although nobody seems to have come up with any more than good theories, dreams are one of those things that many people have figured out enough on an empirical basis to put them to good use.
Here’s another way of thinking about it in a scientific way: Scientists know a lot about Quantum Mechanics, for example. They have theories about it and have put it to good use for a variety of electronic devices. But when it gets down to brass tacks, Quantum Mechanics is really just a convenient working model which may be wholly inaccurate if we were able to know more about the underlying rules. Physicists argue about super strings and other possibilities, but when you dig too deep, things literally begin to fall about due to observation.
Dreams are like this. I imagine that if you put them under the microscope somehow, examining neurons and synapses with Scanning Tunneling Microscopes or some large scale Quantum Detector, we’d likely “collapse the waveform” altogether in a Quantum Mechanical sense.
For now, the question of “Why we Dream” probably is less important than the fact that most of us dream and there seems to be some real practical value in it unless the person is plagued by nightmares. Psychology aside, many people get results (Thomas Edison for example) because of REM Sleep and dreams, so were scientists to study the capabilities of the dream state, perhaps we’d be able to move forward with something more concrete.
Why do some people dance more rhythmically to music than others? Are these differences genetically or culturally determined? These are some typical questions peoples who are interested in rhythm research like to ask.
The link between musical rhythm and movement has been a fascination for a small yet passionate group of researchers. Early examples, from the 1920s, are the works by Alexander Truslit and Gustav Becking. More recently researchers like Neil Todd (University of Manchester, England) defend a view that makes a direct link between musical rhythm and movement. Direct in the sense that it is argued that rhythm perception can be explained in terms of our physiology and body metrics (from the functioning of our vestibular system to leg length and body size).
While this might be a natural line of thought for most people, the consequences of such theories are peculiar. They predict, for instance, that body length will have an effect on our rhythm perception, longer people preferring slower musical tempo (or rates), shorter people preferring faster ones. Hence, females (since they are on average shorter than men) should have a preference for faster tempo as compared to males.
It is too direct and naive a relationship. There are quite a few studies that looked for these direct physiological relations (like heart rate, spontaneous tapping rate, walking speed, etc.) and how these might influence or even determine rhythm perception. However, none of these succeeded in finding a convincing correlation, let alone a causal relation. In addition, they ignore the influence that culture and cognition apparently have on rhythm perception. Nevertheless it should be added that embodied explanations do form a healthy alternative to the often too restricted ‘mentalist’ or cognitive approach.
An intriguing study in that respect was done by Jessica Phillips-Silver and Laurel Trainor (McMaster University, Canada) a few years ago. They did an inventive experiment with seven month old babies, and showed that body movement (i.e. not body size) can influence rhythm perception. They had a group of mothers bounce their infants on a rhythm that could be interpreted as either being in double or in triple meter. They could show (using a head-turn preference procedure, measuring the time an infant pays attention to a stimulus) that bouncing in three or in four influenced the perception of the infant. While one could be critical on some important details, this is a striking empirical finding, and a small step forward in trying to underpin the relationship between rhythm cognition and human movement.
Reference:
J. Phillips-Silver (2005). Feeling the Beat: Movement Influences Infant Rhythm Perception Science, 308 (5727), 1430-1430 DOI: 10.1126/science.1110922
Once all the scientists die and go to heaven. They decide to play hide-n-seek. Unfortunately Einstein is the one who has the den. He is supposed to count up to 100…and then start searching.
Everyone starts hiding except Newton. Newtonjust draws a square of 1 meter and stands in it right in front of Einstein.
Einstein’s counting 1, 2, 3……97, 98, 99…..100.
He opens his eyes and finds Newton standing in front. Einstein says “Newton is out. Newton is out.”
Newton denies and says “I am not out”. He claims that he is not Newton. All the scientists come out to see how he proves that he is not Newton.
Newton says “I am standing in a square of area 1square meter. That makes me Newton per square meter. Since one Newton per square meter is one Pascal, I’m Pascal, Therefore Pascal is OUT!”
It’s easy to see that the sound coming from the drum is perfectly synchronized with the motion of the drummer’s hands. Or is it? When a sound enters your ear, it takes less than 1 millisecond for the signal to be transported from the outer to the inner ear, where it can be perceived by the brain. The equivalent process in the eye takes 50 milliseconds. Then there is the matter of the physical difference in the speed of light versus sound. If the drummer is between 15 and 20 meters away, the faster travel of the light makes up for the 49-millisecond difference in processing speed. Sound produced at a longer distance — say, 100 meters or more from the viewer — is noticeably delayed.
But if the drummer is close by — in this case, the camera was placed just 29 cm from the drum — then in principle we should perceive the sound of the drum before we perceive the hand hitting the drum. And we do. Roberto Arrighi, David Alais, and David Burr have actually measured the difference between the time viewers perceive a sound and when they see the sound being made. Even more remarkably, they showed how this difference can vary under different circumstances.
The human perceptual system doesn’t perceive all inputs at the same speed: for example, simultaneous changes in the motion and color of an object have been shown to be perceived as occurring at different times. Intriguingly, in 2004, C. Aymoz and P. Viviani found that this difference disappeared when the motion depicted was the natural movement of a human. Arrighi’s team was excited to extend this research into the realm of hearing as well: that’s where the conga video comes into play.
They taped the drummer playing at three different tempos: 1, 2, or four beats per second. Then they played back the video to three viewers with the audio track randomly shifted by up to 300 milliseconds. Viewers were simply asked to indicate whether the audio and video was in sync. As you may have guessed by now, all three viewers made the same systematic error: when the sound was delayed by around 50 milliseconds, they were significantly more likely to say the sound was in sync than when it was actually precisely in sync. This delay corresponds nearly identically to the physical delay in processing speed between the visual system and the auditory system.
But Arrighi’s team found more. They also found that as the drummer’s tempo increased, the viewer’s error decreased.
Could either perceptual delay be related to the biological motion phenomenon observed by Aymoz and Viviani? To find out, Arrighi’s team developed two types of movies based on the original conga movie. In the first movie, the drummer’s hands were replaced by dots, but the natural motions were preserved.
In the second movie, instead of natural biological motion, the “drumming” action was accomplished by strict linear motion. Was there a difference between the delays perceived with a natural motion and a biological motion? No. The results were essentially the same, with the same decrease in perceived delay as the rate of drumming increased.
So, are we simply more accurate in judging synchronization as the rate of drumming increases? No. In a third experiment, Arrighi’s team randomized the rates of drumming and tested even higher drumming rates. Eventually, sounds occurring before the visual stimulus were accepted as synchronized.
Why does this occur? Arrighi’s team speculates that it may be related to how the brain responds to repeated stimuli: in monkeys, when a visual stimulus is repeated slowly, their brains continue to respond for about 80 milliseconds after each stimulus. But when the stimulus repeats more frequently, the response time shortens to about 30 milliseconds. Perhaps a similar process is occurring in human brains, making us more accurate when sounds or visual images are repeated faster.
A man and his wife were having some problems at home and were giving each other the silent treatment. Suddenly, the man realized that the next day, he would need his wife to wake him at 5:00 AM for an early morning business flight. Not wanting to be the first to break the silence (and LOSE), he wrote on a piece of paper, “Please wake me at 5:00 AM”. He left it where he knew she would find it. The next morning, the man woke up, only to discover it was 9:00 AM and he had missed his flight. Furious, he was about to go and see why his wife hadn’t wakened him, when he noticed a piece of paper by the bed. The paper said, “It is 5:00 AM. Wake up.”
Men are not equipped for these kinds of contests.
WIFE VS HUSBAND
A couple drove down a country road for several miles, not saying a word. An earlier discussion had led to an argument and neither of them wanted to concede their position. As they passed a barnyard of mules, goats, and pigs, the husband asked sarcastically, “Relatives of yours?” “Yep,” the wife replied, “in-laws”.
WOMEN’S REVENGE
“Cash, check or card?” I asked, after folding items the woman wished to purchase. As she fumbled for her wallet I noticed a remote control for a television set in her purse. “So, do you always carry your TV remote?” I asked. “No,” she replied, but my husband refused to come shopping with me, and I figured this was the most evil thing I could do to him legally.”
W O R D S
A husband read an article to his wife about how many words women use a day… 30,000 to a man’s 15,000.
The wife replied, “The reason has to be because we have to repeat everything to men…
The husband then turned to his wife and asked, “What?”
CREATION A man said to his wife one day, “I don’t know how you can be so stupid and so beautiful all at the same time. The wife responded, “Allow me to explain.
God made me beautiful so you would be attracted to me; God made me stupid so I would be attracted to you!
WHO DOES WHAT
A man and his wife were having an argument about who should brew the coffee each morning. The wife said, “You should do it, because you get up first, and then we don’t have to wait as long to get our coffee.” The husband said, “You are in charge of cooking around here and you should do it, because that is your job, and I can just wait for my coffee.”
Wife replies, “No, you should do it, and besides, it is in the Bible that the man should do the coffee.” Husband replies, “I can’t believe that, show me.” So she fetched the Bible, and opened the New Testament and showed him at the top of several pages, that it indeed says……….”HEBREWS”
God may have created man before woman, but there is always a rough draft before the masterpiece.
THIS IS FOR SMART WOMEN TO HAVE A GOOD LAUGH AND TO MEN WHO CAN HANDLE THIS!
Affection is usually identified with emotion, but actually these are very different phenomena although closely related. Whereas the emotion is an internal individual response which informs of the survival probabilities that every concrete situation offers, affection is a process of social interaction between two or more organisms.
Considering the use that we make of the word ‘affection’ in every day’s life, it can be inferred that affection is something that can be given to others. We say that we “give affection” or we “receive affection”. This way, it seems that affection may be something that we can provide and receive. On the contrary, emotions are neither given nor taken; they are only experienced by oneself without the requirement of any other person.
Unlike emotions, affection is something that can be stored (accumulated). We talk about holidays, for instance, as a time of “loading batteries”, having in mind a better disposition to assist our children, friends, clients, students, partners, etc. This means that in certain circumstances, we store a high capacity of affection; affection that we can give to the other people. It seems that affection is a phenomenon like the mass or the energy that it can be stored and moved or transported.
On the other hand, our experience teaches us that giving affection is something that requires some effort. Taking care, helping or understanding another person cannot be carried out without an effort. Sometimes, we don’t realize the effort made. For example, the illusion of a new relationship doesn’t let us see the effort that we carry out to please our partner and provide his/her well-being. To understand this, we must distinguish between our good and happy predisposition to give affection (this is a positive emotion) and the physical amount of energy that we spend when we give affection. And that positive emotion may frequently hide the efforts made.
For example, caring for somebody that is sick requires an effort and it is a way of providing affection. Trying to understand the problems of the other people is an effort and it is another way of giving affection. In spite of the differences between emotion and affection, it seems that affection is intimately related to emotions, given that similar terms can be used to express one or the other. This way, we say: “I feel very safe” (emotive fact) or “he/she provides me withfull” (affective fact). It seems, then, that we designate the affection received by the particular emotion that it brings us.
Lastly, we all agree that affection is something essential in the humans. We won’t hear any opinion that denies the necessity of affection that people have. In this sense, we all share the sensation that human species needs in great measure affection contrary to other species as cats or snakes, for example. This necessity is accentuated to the maximum in certain circumstances, for example, in the childhood and in the illness.
We can say that our knowledge of affection allows us to point out some clear characteristics:
- Affection is something that flows among people, something that one gives and one receives.
- To provide affection is something that requires effort.
- Affection is something essential for human species, especially in the childhood and in the illness.
In summary, affection is the help and collaboration from others that all social individual need to survive. Affection is provided through the execution of any type of work (non-remunerated work in the modern human species) done in benefit of the survival of another individual and, therefore, it is transferable, limited and accumulative. As the social complexity of the species increases appear the affective signs, which are stereotyped behaviors to ensure the reciprocity in the affective exchanges in the group.
The affection economy in human social relationships is extremely complex while the knowledge that we nowadays have about it is very general and rudimentary. Let us hope that the scientific attitudes towards affective exchange will significantly change during the next decades.
An engineer, an economist, a physicist, and a philosopher are hiking through the hills of Scotland. On the top of a hill they see a black sheep. “What do you know,” the engineer remarks. “The sheep in Scotland are black.” “No, no”, protests the economist. “At least one of the sheep in Scotland is black.” The physicist considers this a moment. “That’s not quite right. The truth is that there’s at least one sheep which is black from one side.” “Well, that’s not quite right either,” interjects the philosopher. “There appears to be something describable as a ’sheep’ that seems to be black from one side…”
The French existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre was sitting in a cafe when a waitress approached him: “Can I get you something to drink, Monsieur Sartre?”
Sartre replied, “Yes, I’d like a cup of coffee with sugar, but no cream”.
Nodding agreement, the waitress walked off to fill the order and Sartre returned to working. A few minutes later, however, the waitress returned and said, “I’m sorry, Monsieur Sartre, we are all out of cream — how about with no milk?”
Philosophy is a game with objectives and no rules.
Mathematics is a game with rules and no objectives.
A mathematician, a physicist and an engineer were each given the following problem to solve.
A school dance floor included a straight line down the middle dividing the floor in two equal halves. Boys were lined up against one wall and girls against the opposite wall, each facing the centre line. They were instructed to advance in stages towards the centre line every ten seconds, where the distance from the person to the centre line at each stage is equal to one-half the distance at the past stage.
i.e.: If the starting distance from the wall to centre line was D, the progressive series of distances at t = 0, 10 seconds, 20 seconds…10n seconds to the centre line is (D, D/2, D/4, D/8, …..D/2n)
The question is when will they meet at the middle?
The mathematician said that they would never meet.
The physicist said they would meet when time equals infinity.
The engineer said that in one minute they would be close enough for all practical purposes.
A biologist, a physicist and a mathematician were sitting in a street cafe watching the crowd. Across the street they saw a man and a woman entering a building. Ten minutes they reappeared together with a third person.
- They have multiplied, said the biologist.
- Oh no, an error in measurement, the physicist sighed.
- If exactly one person enters the building now, it will be empty again, the mathematician concluded.
Music can be used to convey a range of emotion, from sadness to happiness, from anger to fear. We use music to help fall asleep at night, and to wake up in the morning. Its effect on our mood may be enough to improve our performance on a range of intellectual tasks. But where do these effects come from? Are we born with an association between music and emotion, or does it develop as we grow older?
Studies have found some evidence for an appreciation of music even in infants. Babies as young as 9 months old prefer musical scales to monotonic scales the notes in the western musical scale do not progress in even increments, and babies seem to “know” this. So we do appear to have some innate ability to appreciate music, but how sophisticated is that ability? Do small children and even babies experience the same emotions as adults when listening to music?
A team led by Simone Dalla Bella tested children ranging in age from three to eight, as well as adults, by playing musical excerpts for them and asking whether the music was happy or sad. The participants listened to 32 pieces of classical music, 16 of which were determined to be “happy” and 16 “sad” in a previous study. In addition, the same pieces were systematically altered by changing mode (from major to minor key or vice versa), tempo, or both. Sad music is generally played in a minor key at a slow tempo, and happy music is usually played fast and in a major key. The researchers found that when happy music was slowed down to the same tempo as sad music, it no longer sounded musical; likewise for sad music played as fast as happy music, so they settled on a moderate tempo in between the happy and sad tempo (about 84 beats per minute), and adjusted both the happy and sad music to be played at this rate.
As expected, the adults rated the happy and sad music correctly. When the tempo of happy music was slowed, it was rated as sadder. The mode changes had larger effects, and the combined tempo and mode change had the largest effect of all. The children, instead of rating on a numerical scale, pointed to happy or sad faces to indicate the emotion conveyed by the music. Three and four-year-olds were not able to complete the task, rating it no more accurately than random chance. For older children, however, a more complex pattern emerged.
Responses were counted as “correct” when the participants rated the music with the same emotion conveyed by the original, unaltered songs. The tempo and mode changes should make the happy music seem sadder and the sad music seems happier. So, for example, if a happy song’s tempo was changed and the listener then rated it as “sad,” this would be graphed as an incorrect response. It was seen for adults that this is exactly what happened. Fewer adults gave “correct” responses when tempo and mode were changed.
For children, however, a split was observed. Six- to eight-year-olds, like adults, responded to both tempo and mode changes. Five-year-olds responded to tempo changes like adults and older children, but for mode changes, their ratings weren’t significantly different from the original, unaltered piece. It might be assumed that five-year-olds determine happiness or sadness solely from tempo and not from mode.
Dalla Bella and her colleagues argue that the ability to understand mode as an ex-pression of emotion is learned between the ages of five and six, but they are less certain about when tempo becomes associated with emotion. It’s possible that the reason three- and four-year-olds were unable to perform the task is related to not understanding the procedure of pointing to happy and sad faces, or to unfamiliarity with the classical music samples. They observed that six-year-olds have mastered matching both tempo and mode changes to their corresponding emotions.
Reference:
Dalla Bella, S., Peretz, I., Rousseau, L., & Gosselin, N. (2001). A developmental study of the affective value of tempo and mode in music. Cognition, 80, B1-B10.
A flower having bloomed loses its meaning… it is no more related with the plant which gave it life and also everything which the bud needed to have flowered into a full-blown. The identity, the ego, the self, lost its meaning the moment the bud bloomed into a beautiful flower. As long as the society, the community felt the sweet fragrance of the flower… it got recognition and the moment came the time to wither out and die… none cared! Life moves on and does not wait for anybody.
The essence of life lies in moving on and on until one gains Enlightenment. And this Enlightenment is the stage when one is totally liberated forever from everything we call as the materialistic world. Materialism is a phenomenon of the physical world. On the contrary, Enlightenment dwells in the absolute truth of our life. It is only related to our true inner self… our soul (the true self of us). And the moment our soul realizes and reaches its final potential… the need for the body vanishes.
The substance of the vastness is so directly perceivable to itself in every moment that the circuitry at times requires another adjustment phase to get used to more infinite awareness. When asked Who I Am, the only answer possible is: I am the infinite, the vastness that is the substance of all things. I am no one and everyone, nothing and everything — just as you are.
I am that very One that lives my body, that lives your body, and I am absolutely energetic; I am in energy, I am as energy, and, I am absolutely delightful, delightful in my trillions and billions of modifications, and “how wondrous it is to be me!” All that exists outside of me as a modification exists inside of me as a modification. Simultaneously I can be all of that and this one thing that I am.
That which rises as ‘I’ in this body is the mind. If one inquires as to where in the body the thought ‘I’ rises first, one would discover that it rises in the heart. That is the place of the mind’s origin. Even if one thinks constantly ‘I’ ‘I’, one will be led to that place. Of all the thoughts that arise in the mind, the ‘I’ thought is the first. It is only after the rise of this that the other thoughts arise. It is after the appearance of the first personal pronoun that the second and third personal pronouns appear; without the first personal pronoun there will not be the second and third.
In the realm of modern science, this is devoid of all subjectivity and is said to deal with only ‘pointer reading’. In the west the beginning of scientific thought is generally traced back to Leucippus and Democritus (5thcentury BC). The elements of reality were reduced to two, being and non-being, full and void,atom and space.A reality was born which was strictly and coarsely material, the subject, the ‘I’ went out in the wilderness. The reality was assumed to be strictly causal. This concept of science continued till the discovery of quantum theory in the 20th century. The realisation that physics has de-humanised science so much that a man has become an impotent ‘observer symbol’ started agitating the minds of scientists in the late 20th century.
Tagore has felt this ‘I’ in his own way, which is marvelous.
I
I wonder if I know him In whose speech is my voice, In whose movement is my being, Whose skill is in my lines, Whose melody is in my songs In joy and sorrow. I thought he was chained within me, Contained by tears and laughter, Work and play. I thought he was my very self Coming to an end with my death. Why then in a flood of joy do I feel him In the sight and touch of my beloved? This ‘I’ beyond self I found On the shores of the shining sea. Therefore I know This ‘I’ is not imprisoned within my bounds. Losing myself, I find him Beyond the borders of time and space. Through the Ages I come to know his Shining Self In the If of the seeker, In the voice of the poet. From the dark clouds pour the rains. I sit and think: Bearing so many forms, so many names, I come down, crossing the threshold Of countless births and deaths. The Supreme undivided, complete in himself, Embracing past and present, Dwells in Man. Within Him I shall find myself - The ‘I’ that reaches everywhere.
Whether it is just entertainment, a cultural ex-pression or religious inspiration, music is part of everyone’s life. Music has been found to have a profound effect on our physiological and psychological well-being.
Music therapy interventions can be designed to manage stress, alleviate pain, promote wellness, express feelings, enhance memory, improve communication and promote physical rehabilitation. Music has the power to explore the realms that cannot be accessed with words.
The Indian theory of emotions has been usually associated with a literary appreciation of the theory of ‘Rasa’ (aesthetic emotion) based on Hindu psychology. Studies have been made on the analysis of Rasa therapy for the rejuvenation of the mind.
The nine ‘Rasas’ in Indian Music correspond to nine emotional conditions: Sringara (erotic), Hasya (humorous), Karuna (pathetic), Roudra (furious), Veera (valorous), Bhayanaka (fearful), Beebhatra (odious), Adbhuta (wonderous) and Santa (peaceful).
Indian art, whether it be painting, poetry, dance or music has a characteristically inward quality. This is a manifestation of the bias and world-view of this culture. The nature of creation and its forces are not felt and thought about commencing at the point of material phenomena. Indian thought at its deepest, affirms that mind and matter are rather different grades of the same energy, different organizations of one conscious Force of Existence. Hence the external and its imitation have had little place in our art. The outside is only a projection of this “Force of Existence”, experienced within and “beauty does not arise from the subject of a work of art, but from the necessity that has been felt of representing that subject”. That is why programmatic music is not considered of really deep quality and it is a recent occurrence in the country, specifically with the ballet and the films. Imitations of thunder and the ripple of water is not great music, just as realistic photographic painting is not great art. The languor of rains after an Indian summer is what Malhar expresses but not the patter of drops on a tin roof!
Music, as well as being the most dispensable of arts, is probably the hardest to throw off. Just as memories and landscapes eventually emerge to make emotional claims upon us, music comes uninvited, and stays. It is the lure of place, the call to belong. So the essential purpose of Music would be to dynamically orient the body and mind in relation to the environment, both consciously and unconsciously. Thus the integrated, experiential nature of music makes it a profound and unique way of knowing, being and being well.
Music is capable of improving happiness, peace, health and concentration. It is however important to know the method and duration for which Music Therapy is to be administered. This knowledge can be obtained through regular experiments and experience. The first step towards this is the correct diagnosis of the disease and then the selection of the precise raga that will be helpful. Procedure, discipline and a systematic method will help to achieve this goal.
It is believed that music stimulates the pituitary gland, whose secretions affect the nervous system and the flow of blood. It is believed that for healing with music, it is necessary to vibrate the cells of the body, for it is through these vibrations that the diseased person’s consciousness can be changed effectively to promote health. The right kind of music helps one to relax and refresh. Even during the course of working, light music improves efficiency. Listening to music helps control negative aspects of our personalities like worry, bias and anger. In addition, it can help cure headache, abdominal pain and tension. Music therapy is one of the most effective ways controlling emotions, blood pressure and restoring the functioning of the liver.
The latest findings, presented at a meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in Los Angeles, underscore how music as an almost universal language of mood, emotion and desire, orchestrates a wide variety of neural systems to cast its evocative spell. “Undeniably, there is a biology of music,” said Harvard UniversityMedical School neurobiologist Mark Jude Tramo. “There is no question that there is specialization within the human brain for the processing of music. Music is biologically part of human life, just as music is aesthetically part of human life.”
Overall, music seems to involve the brain at almost every level. Even allowing for cultural differences in musical tastes, the researchers found evidence of music’s remarkable power to affect neural activity no matter where they look in the brain, from primitive regions in all animals to more recently evolved regions thought to be distinctively human. Music exists in every culture, and infants have excellent musical abilities that cannot be explained by learning. Mothers everywhere sing to their infants because babies understand it. Music seems to be part of our biological heritage. From enhancing concentration and memory to dealing with diabetics as well as boosting ones immunity, music therapy lends its healing touch. The passive form of music therapy, (listening) has a beneficial effect in almost all ailments whereas the active form, (participating) is especially helpful for neurological problems. Music integrates mind, body and spirit and provides opportunities for self-ex-pression.
