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If music gives you goosebumps, you’re pretty special

Goosebumps

Does it happen to you that you listen to a piece and your body immediately fills up with thousands of tiny bumps? You wake up and already throw on a song. You feel sad and you listen to music. Music is everywhere you look, and it has completely filled your life.

No matter what type of music you listen to, whether you prefer listening to classical music, or you like to rock out at festivals, we all have one thing in common: how music makes us feel.

However, some people do feel it stronger than others. So, if you’ve ever been told you’re too “sensitive” for reacting emotionally when listening to music, this might just be your article.

Listening to music

Musical stimuli and goosebumps

It’s amazing to see how your body responds to musical stimuli, be it through goosebumps, shivers or even tears. We often don’t realize the massive impact music can have on us. Has it ever occurred to you this might make you special?

A structurally different brain

What we feel when faced with a song that tugs on our heart strings has been looked into by Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience. According to them, people with such strong responses to music are not just “emotional”; they have, structurally, a completely different brain than the rest.

Brain

The auditory cortex

These musically-sensible people have a different auditory cortex, which communicates more efficiently with other parts of the brain. The fun part is, that the parts they’re connected to are the areas associated with emotional processing.

Research shows communication is better between those regions because there are a lot of fibers that connect both areas. These findings shed light on why music is so essential to human life, and why it has been around for so long. It goes directly through the auditory channels into the emotional processing and social parts of the brain.

Images: Unsplash

Finally Fix Your Brain Freeze In Seconds

We all know the dreaded feeling. One minute you’re enjoying a tasty ice cream to cool off in the hot summer months, the next your brain feels a sharp icy tingling that makes you (almost) regret having dined on the delicacy in the first place. Have no fear, you don’t have to give up your beloved treat. We have the quick cure to fix your brain freeze in seconds.

What Causes A Brain Freeze?

Two girls enjoying an ice cream cone.

As you might have guessed, the root cause of your brain freeze is from eating or drinking something cold. Specifically, when this cold drink or food touches the roof of your mouth in the upper palate, a quick rush of blood goes to your brain. This response is what causes the chilling headache.

A Tongue In (Mouth) Solution

A quick, easy solution to warm the upper palate and reduce the pain is by pushing your tongue against the roof of your mouth. By holding your most flexible muscle for 5-10 seconds in that zone, you will get quick relief as the cold and brain freeze starts to subside.

A Self-Made Mask

Boy covering mouth with hands to create a mask to prevent brain freeze.

Another way to warm up the area inside your mouth to reduce the blood rushing to the brain is by creating a small mask over your mouth with your hands. If you breathe in and out several times, you’ll feel the hot air re-enter your mouth, thus counteracting the chill of the food or drink.

Drink A Lukewarm Beverage

Woman drinking out of a mug.

The first reaction to combat the cold might be to drink a beverage that is hot, but this can actually cause more damage and pain! The severe contrast of hot and cold can burn the inside of your mouth, creating a new problem far worse than the original. Rather, try drinking lukewarm water that can steadily and safely increase the temperature of the inside of your mouth.

Photos: Freepik

Animals are starting to come out at night to avoid humans

Nocturnal animals

That human life affects fauna all around the world is no news, but up to what point do we have influence on other living beings? What’s clear is that our existence on earth has slowly but surely been killing our planet. However, up until know we thought it was just climate change we had to be worried about. But studies have shown we also have a big impact on wildlife.

Scientifically proven

A study carried out in Berkeley noticed that activity patterns of numerous species have been changing: animals are becoming nocturnal, even if they had previously always been daytime creatures. This change affects mostly the mammal species around the world, like tigres and coyotes.

Nature tourism

Nature tourism

Scientists claim the reason behind this change seems to be “nature tourism”, amongst other reasons. Nature tourism is the main argument for such pattern changes: their instincts are to avoid human life. However, throughout the last couple of decades they have become more and more invaded by humans, thus being forced to come out at night.

Serious consequences

Although it might be an evolutionary adaptation for these species, researchers do believe these animals are put under high amounts of stress, meaning the changes could have serious consequences in the future that are yet to be discovered.

Worldwide

A world-wide study

This is not just any study: research has been carried out on data on a global scale collected from tens of studies on movements of 60 different mammal species from all five continents. Apparently, where human activity has invaded, animals are on average 1,36 times more nocturnal. Will we ever stop damaging our planet?

Images: Unsplash

Reasons Writing In Cursive Benefits Your Brain

Remember those agonizing days in elementary school of learning how to (and be forced to) write in cursive? Only for the majority of us to never use it again later in life… Well, turns out writing in flowing, cursive handwriting actually helps our brains in many ways. Time to put down the phone and start practicing your fancy script again!

Cursive Enhances Your Concentration

Group of students writing in cursive, looking focused.

Writing in cursive helps our thoughts to stay connected and on topic. In fact, in the United States a study found students who wrote in cursive on the SAT college entrance exam actually scored higher than those who wrote in normal print. The theory behind this advantage is that students who wrote with the flowing letters didn’t have to use extra effort and time by writing in print, thereby having more time to concentrate on the content of their writing.

Activates More Parts Of Your Brain

Brain with lots of electric bolts coming from it.

When compared to typing or writing in normal print, writing in cursive has been found to activate more parts of the brain. Additionally, when people read in cursive, more neurological pathways of both left and right hemispheres in the brain work together, than reading regular manuscript. This enables you to understand and retain learned content better.

Helps You Become A Better Speller

magnet letters all mixed together.

When writing in cursive, you are naturally learning to form words in which each letter is connected. This in turn creates associations and connections in the brain, helping you to remember the proper spelling of words. This is super helpful, especially when you consider how bad spell check can be sometimes…

Fine Tunes Your Motor Skills

Man buttoning his shirt.

To be legible, cursive requires lots of practice using fine motor skills. These skills work the small muscles in our hands so that we can do daily activities, like buttoning a shirt, grabbing items, and feeding ourselves with much more ease. You might not be worried about losing these functions at this point in your life, but it can’t hurt to keep them skilled for lifelong self sufficiency and a great mind too!

Photos: Freepik

These Seals Were Taught To Sing Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star

Typically we don’t think of seals as musically gifted creatures, but scientists at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland have managed to train a choir of three seals, as seen in this latest video.

Granted, the trio of gray seals only have two songs memorized under their belt, “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” and the theme to “Star Wars.” However, this is a far cry from the occasional bark we expect to hear from this sea creature. Yes, all in the name of science!

Singing With A Purpose

The purpose of the study was to see if animals can be successful at vocal learning. This skill is vital for humans in learning language, but rarely seen in animals. Published in the scientific journal Current Biology, the study aimed to see if seals could copy human formants and melodies, which are needed for humans to process information.

grey seal lying on sand.

As you can imagine, learning human languages is not native to seals. For this reason, the animals were first trained to mimic their own sounds and the sounds of human vowels.

While this might seem like a simple task, the reality of it according to the researchers was quite the opposite. It took “hundreds of trials to teach the seal what we want it to do.”

Quick Learners

After many trials and errors, the sea creatures eventually got used to the training and were able to copy new sounds within only a few attempts.

Upon watching the video, you might not be so impressed by the way the seal Zola barks her way through the two songs. However, the researchers were extremely impressed given these sounds are not typical of their species, proving their vocalization is apt for learning.

The Next Steps For The Seals

While their ability to make human sounds is proven, the next step is to see if these creatures understand language. This would require further investigation with the animals labeling different objects, vocally.

seals lying on a chair hugging each other.

This might seem silly research to the average human, but this investigation is useful because seals and humans share the same neural and anatomical structures. Meaning, the research in vocal learning on seals can help better understand human speech disorders and learning.

Photos: Unsplash and Pixabay.

“Doll therapy”: another step in the fight against Alzheimer’s

Elderly

Our experiences and social bonds are what build us into the human beings we are. What we go through, think and feel cause us to be the way we are. We stick to memories that shape us into behaving in certain ways; they partly provide form to the personalities we have.

But what happens when we start losing these memories we so strongly cling to? We lose sight of previous experience, and even entire periods of our lives. We forget the faces and names of people we love, and in the end, we even forget about ourselves.

Alzheimer’s disease

Alzheimers

This is what happens if you suffer from the medical condition called Alzheimer’s. The disease mostly affects the elderly, but it is not necessarily so. Almost 44 million people worldwide suffer from this dreaded condition, and numbers seem to be rising every year.

Therapies

There are numerous therapies that aim to cure, or at least palliate the disease. Such therapies go from musical therapies to building entire villages for people suffering from Alzheimer’s.

Doll therapy against Alzheimer’s

The latest ongoing therapy has been carried out in Spain: non-pharmacological therapies that involve patient-doll interactions. The aim of this therapy is awakening feelings inside the patient that would palliate symptoms caused by Alzheimer’s.

What the interaction between patients and dolls turns into, is the patient treating them like real life babies: they sing lullabies to them or even give them kisses. The interactions, in turn, cause a shift from the patient being the person who has to be taken care of, to actually being the care-giver.

An emotional memory stimulator

The therapy aims to stimulate emotional memory, because this is the last type of memory people lose. By stimulating emotional memory, patients are able to recall and keep certain memories and behaviours. The dolls are provided to the patients, for a short period of time, by experts who know how and when to provide them.

The early stages

However, this doll therapy is still in it’s early stages. The therapy is not to be considered a game, but people also have to realise the many positive effects it might have. There are people against it because they feel it infantilizes the patients. But positive results are what really matter, and this is something the therapy is certainly achieving.

Elderly

A professional guide coming soon

Maribel González, the director of the Spanish “Centro de Referencia Estatal de Atención a Personas con Azhéimer y otras Demencias ” (a medical centre for people suffering from Alzheimer’s and similar), has claimed that as soon as they obtain valid conclusions, they will be publishing a professional guide for both professionals and family. The therapy is certainly a step in the right direction.

Photos: Unsplash and Twitter