Previous 'Education' and 'Abortion' Are Hot Search Terms at Political Web Sites |
Next |
July 09, 2008, 08:20 AM ET
Don't Cry For Me, R2D2
Musicians can breathe a sigh of relief: Computers don’t do as well when performing music at eliciting an emotional response. That’s the conclusion of a study published today in the journal PLoS ONE.
Researchers in Germany and the United Kingdom played selections from piano sonatas by Beethoven, Haydn, Mozart, and Schubert to 20 listeners, while monitoring their brains’ responses by electroencephalogram, better known as EEG.
Volunteers who listened to recordings of professional pianists showed more emotional activity of the brain than did those who listened to recordings made by computer.
“Our results suggest that musicians actually tell us something when they play,” said Stefan Koelsch, who led the work, in a prepared statement.
Mr. Koelsch is a neuroscientist at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences. The institute is in Leipzig, Germany, where J.S. Bach spent much of his life and composed many of his best-known pieces.—Lila Guterman
Add Your Comment
Commenting is closed.