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Why do we love music?
Music is our oldest and most cherished ritual. How we treat it is reflective of who we are.

A number of years ago I happened upon a curious book tucked away in a vintage store on Martha's Vineyard. In 1896 the American music critic and musicologist Henry Edward Krehbiel published How to Listen to Music; the worn pages in my hand were from a 1912 edition. Unlike discovering a rare volume of Shakespeare, the $4 price of admission seemed reasonable.

After an odd analogy of a newspaper reporter being unable to scale the Swiss Alps, Krehbiel makes his case: a concert requires a capacity for listening, not only the presentation of performance. Music fans share a responsibility to show up prepared and be educated on the nuances presented during the show. Since music is our most popular art, he continues, one which stirs such passion in us,
It remains passing strange that the indifference touching its nature and elements, the character of the phenomena which produce it, or are produced by it, is so general.
Forty-three years later the composer Aaron Copland asks a similar question in What To Listen For in Music. Music is to be enjoyed, so why this need to understand our love? He responds to himself: knowledge enhances enjoyment.
Copland had a leg up on Krehbiel, who penned his book at the very beginning of recorded music, and that for a wealthy clientele. By the time Copland scribed his instruction manual, vinyl was circulating around the world. Though he wrote his book for composers, he believed his profession has a duty to educate the public, to be society's ears, which creates a feedback loop:
In helping others to hear music more intelligently, he is working toward the spread of a musical culture, which in the end will affect the understanding of his own creations.
Both writers express an idea I learned early in my former career as a music journalist: the critic is a mirror reflecting back onto the artist and culture as a whole. Just as music travels across an extensive geography of brain maps, affecting regions dedicated to motor control, speech, memory, vision, and emotion, it is also a social force. If a note falls in the woods and no one hears it, there is no music. It is an entirely human construction, meant for our pleasure alone.

In his masterful survey of twentieth century classical music, The Rest is Noise, the critic Alex Ross notes that numerous subcultures arose during those hundred years. Such widespread movements would have been impossible without recorded music. It seems silly to contemplate during a time when the planet's catalog fits inside a chip smaller than your fingernail, but for most of history listening to music apart from its performers was not possible.
The more music spreads, the more it changes, the more it changes us. Ross writes of Hitler's treacherous artistic destruction, murdering composers and destroying concert halls in his futile quest for dubious purity. Yet much music has since been created to counteract those forces of evil. Ross concludes,
Music may not be inviolable, but it is infinitely variable, acquiring a new identity in the mind of every new listener. It is always in the world, neither guilty nor innocent, subject to the ever-changing human landscape in which it moves.
Music has always been a social force. While its evolutionary roots are not understood, most accounts include a communal aspect. Archaeology professor Steven Mithen speculates that music was a communication system that might have predated language (and helped to form it). Neuroscientist Daniel Levitin, author of This Is Your Brain on Music, writes that music exploits a variety of brain regions, and is ultimately a form of perceptual illusion. The seemingly random collection of sounds is processed by a human brain that loves to impose order on everything. We see faces in clouds, we believe spirits transcend biology, and we love the collection of drums, guitars, and bass making our hips instinctively shake.
To understand music is to recognize place. Life is a soundtrack. This too is accounted for by neurochemistry, as Levitin writes:
Each time we hear a musical pattern that is new to our ears, our brains try to make an association through whatever visual, auditory and other sensory cues accompany it; we try to contextualize the new sounds, and eventually, we create these memory links between a particular set of notes and a particular place, time, or set of events.

We don't only experience music through our ears. We hear music through our skin. Our eyes hear music as well, at least when attending (or watching a video of) a performance. Elizabeth Hellmuth Margulis calls music a “multimodal phenomenon." She writes about research showing we are influenced by physical performance regardless of what music is being played. Performer and sound are intertwined. Music is a surround-sense experience surpassing the vibrations being pushed into our eardrums and rattling our fascia.
Beyond just what we hear, what we see, what we expect, how we move, and the sum of our life experiences all contribute to how we experience music.
During a time when brain images are revealing many of music's secrets, no amount of chemical knowledge will change the social role it plays (though, as Copland might argue today, it could enhance our appreciation of it). Beyond numbers and mathematics, Margulis writes, every facet of perception and relationship is encoded in our love of music. This is the beauty of music, but it also reflects our darker angels.
Music bonds us to the culture we're raised in. As your perspective changes so does the music you listen to—or vice-versa, as has been known to happen. A wide musical vocabulary means you can communicate with a variety of people, and by extension, cultures. A people's music offers a direct line into understanding their identity.
That's why a 2015 report from Spotify that discovered the majority of listeners stop searching for new music after age 33 is so disconcerting. It's as if fans decide to stop learning about new possibilities and other people. During a time when music is more widely available than ever before, they're comforted only by what's already known.
This isn't to say that the music of your youth should not be enjoyed. My sonic “coming of age" was in the early- to mid-nineties. A fair amount of my listening time is devoted to this era of hip-hop and rock. To revisit is one thing; to be stuck is quite another. Many nationalistic fantasies playing out in America today are errant daydreams of a country that never actually existed. One wonders what era the playlists of those engaging in such fictions are from.
True, music is not only for pleasure. We're more complex than that. A long history of battle songs exists, just as there is a lineage of romance. Music has played a role in every function of our journey through time together. Like an orchestra, societies function better when they're in harmony, which gives us pause to recognize how we're experiencing music, and life, today.
I thought of Krehbiel's book recently when attending Bonobo at the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles. As my wife and I stood near the stage swaying to the first songs I was pleased to note how much everybody around us was enjoying the show. No cell phones, no rowdy conversations, just a little drink, a little smoke, and plenty of heads bobbing.
Then a group of eight young men and women appeared during the third song to dominate the row behind us. Phones out the entire time, rambunctious conversations were broken up with loud yelps at a performance they weren't actually watching. It's the reason I rarely attend shows anymore, which is a shame considering that for over a decade they were a mandatory part of my career. I'm simply amazed anyone would attend a show they have no intention of paying attention to.
Which makes one wonder if the cheap and ready availability of so much music has had the contradictory effect of making us immune to its power. I am not alone in this frustration. Some legendary artists refuse to perform live, while others employ cell phone lock pouches to keep audience noise at a minimum. Music is interactive, yes, but an understanding of roles should still be honored. You don't attend a concert to have the light shine upon you.
A hard lesson in the era of immediate gratification and selfie validation, though one music is equipped to teach. Music is our oldest and most cherished ritual. It is a mirror of who we are as a species—valuable advice for when the looking glass is turned back upon us to see what we've created. The sound doesn't lie.
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Derek is the author of Whole Motion: Training Your Brain and Body For Optimal Health. Based in Los Angeles, he is working on a new book about spiritual consumerism. Stay in touch on Facebook and Twitter.
Weird science shows unseemly way beetles escape after being eaten
Certain water beetles can escape from frogs after being consumed.
R. attenuata escaping from a black-spotted pond frog.
- A Japanese scientist shows that some beetles can wiggle out of frog's butts after being eaten whole.
- The research suggests the beetle can get out in as little as 7 minutes.
- Most of the beetles swallowed in the experiment survived with no complications after being excreted.
In what is perhaps one of the weirdest experiments ever that comes from the category of "why did anyone need to know this?" scientists have proven that the Regimbartia attenuata beetle can climb out of a frog's butt after being eaten.
The research was carried out by Kobe University ecologist Shinji Sugiura. His team found that the majority of beetles swallowed by black-spotted pond frogs (Pelophylax nigromaculatus) used in their experiment managed to escape about 6 hours after and were perfectly fine.
"Here, I report active escape of the aquatic beetle R. attenuata from the vents of five frog species via the digestive tract," writes Sugiura in a new paper, adding "although adult beetles were easily eaten by frogs, 90 percent of swallowed beetles were excreted within six hours after being eaten and, surprisingly, were still alive."
One bug even got out in as little as 7 minutes.
Sugiura also tried putting wax on the legs of some of the beetles, preventing them from moving. These ones were not able to make it out alive, taking from 38 to 150 hours to be digested.
Naturally, as anyone would upon encountering such a story, you're wondering where's the video. Thankfully, the scientists recorded the proceedings:
The Regimbartia attenuata beetle can be found in the tropics, especially as pests in fish hatcheries. It's not the only kind of creature that can survive being swallowed. A recent study showed that snake eels are able to burrow out of the stomachs of fish using their sharp tails, only to become stuck, die, and be mummified in the gut cavity. Scientists are calling the beetle's ability the first documented "active prey escape." Usually, such travelers through the digestive tract have particular adaptations that make it possible for them to withstand extreme pH and lack of oxygen. The researchers think the beetle's trick is in inducing the frog to open a so-called "vent" controlled by the sphincter muscle.
"Individuals were always excreted head first from the frog vent, suggesting that R. attenuata stimulates the hind gut, urging the frog to defecate," explains Sugiura.
For more information, check out the study published in Current Biology.
We're creating pigs with human immune systems to study illness
Are "humanized" pigs the future of medical research?
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration requires all new medicines to be tested in animals before use in people. Pigs make better medical research subjects than mice, because they are closer to humans in size, physiology and genetic makeup.
In recent years, our team at Iowa State University has found a way to make pigs an even closer stand-in for humans. We have successfully transferred components of the human immune system into pigs that lack a functional immune system. This breakthrough has the potential to accelerate medical research in many areas, including virus and vaccine research, as well as cancer and stem cell therapeutics.
Existing biomedical models
Severe Combined Immunodeficiency, or SCID, is a genetic condition that causes impaired development of the immune system. People can develop SCID, as dramatized in the 1976 movie “The Boy in the Plastic Bubble." Other animals can develop SCID, too, including mice.
Researchers in the 1980s recognized that SCID mice could be implanted with human immune cells for further study. Such mice are called “humanized" mice and have been optimized over the past 30 years to study many questions relevant to human health.
Mice are the most commonly used animal in biomedical research, but results from mice often do not translate well to human responses, thanks to differences in metabolism, size and divergent cell functions compared with people.
Nonhuman primates are also used for medical research and are certainly closer stand-ins for humans. But using them for this purpose raises numerous ethical considerations. With these concerns in mind, the National Institutes of Health retired most of its chimpanzees from biomedical research in 2013.
Alternative animal models are in demand.
Swine are a viable option for medical research because of their similarities to humans. And with their widespread commercial use, pigs are met with fewer ethical dilemmas than primates. Upwards of 100 million hogs are slaughtered each year for food in the U.S.
Humanizing pigs
In 2012, groups at Iowa State University and Kansas State University, including Jack Dekkers, an expert in animal breeding and genetics, and Raymond Rowland, a specialist in animal diseases, serendipitously discovered a naturally occurring genetic mutation in pigs that caused SCID. We wondered if we could develop these pigs to create a new biomedical model.
Our group has worked for nearly a decade developing and optimizing SCID pigs for applications in biomedical research. In 2018, we achieved a twofold milestone when working with animal physiologist Jason Ross and his lab. Together we developed a more immunocompromised pig than the original SCID pig – and successfully humanized it, by transferring cultured human immune stem cells into the livers of developing piglets.
During early fetal development, immune cells develop within the liver, providing an opportunity to introduce human cells. We inject human immune stem cells into fetal pig livers using ultrasound imaging as a guide. As the pig fetus develops, the injected human immune stem cells begin to differentiate – or change into other kinds of cells – and spread through the pig's body. Once SCID piglets are born, we can detect human immune cells in their blood, liver, spleen and thymus gland. This humanization is what makes them so valuable for testing new medical treatments.
We have found that human ovarian tumors survive and grow in SCID pigs, giving us an opportunity to study ovarian cancer in a new way. Similarly, because human skin survives on SCID pigs, scientists may be able to develop new treatments for skin burns. Other research possibilities are numerous.
The ultraclean SCID pig biocontainment facility in Ames, Iowa. Adeline Boettcher, CC BY-SA
Pigs in a bubble
Since our pigs lack essential components of their immune system, they are extremely susceptible to infection and require special housing to help reduce exposure to pathogens.
SCID pigs are raised in bubble biocontainment facilities. Positive pressure rooms, which maintain a higher air pressure than the surrounding environment to keep pathogens out, are coupled with highly filtered air and water. All personnel are required to wear full personal protective equipment. We typically have anywhere from two to 15 SCID pigs and breeding animals at a given time. (Our breeding animals do not have SCID, but they are genetic carriers of the mutation, so their offspring may have SCID.)
As with any animal research, ethical considerations are always front and center. All our protocols are approved by Iowa State University's Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee and are in accordance with The National Institutes of Health's Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals.
Every day, twice a day, our pigs are checked by expert caretakers who monitor their health status and provide engagement. We have veterinarians on call. If any pigs fall ill, and drug or antibiotic intervention does not improve their condition, the animals are humanely euthanized.
Our goal is to continue optimizing our humanized SCID pigs so they can be more readily available for stem cell therapy testing, as well as research in other areas, including cancer. We hope the development of the SCID pig model will pave the way for advancements in therapeutic testing, with the long-term goal of improving human patient outcomes.
Adeline Boettcher earned her research-based Ph.D. working on the SCID project in 2019.
Christopher Tuggle, Professor of Animal Science, Iowa State University and Adeline Boettcher, Technical Writer II, Iowa State University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
A new warning to sign to predict volcanic eruptions?
Satellite imagery can help better predict volcanic eruptions by monitoring changes in surface temperature near volcanoes.
Volcano erupting lava, volcanic sky active rock night Ecuador landscape
- A recent study used data collected by NASA satellites to conduct a statistical analysis of surface temperatures near volcanoes that erupted from 2002 to 2019.
- The results showed that surface temperatures near volcanoes gradually increased in the months and years prior to eruptions.
- The method was able to detect potential eruptions that were not anticipated by other volcano monitoring methods, such as eruptions in Japan in 2014 and Chile in 2015.
How can modern technology help warn us of impending volcanic eruptions?
One promising answer may lie in satellite imagery. In a recent study published in Nature Geoscience, researchers used infrared data collected by NASA satellites to study the conditions near volcanoes in the months and years before they erupted.
The results revealed a pattern: Prior to eruptions, an unusually large amount of heat had been escaping through soil near volcanoes. This diffusion of subterranean heat — which is a byproduct of "large-scale thermal unrest" — could potentially represent a warning sign of future eruptions.
Conceptual model of large-scale thermal unrestCredit: Girona et al.
For the study, the researchers conducted a statistical analysis of changes in surface temperature near volcanoes, using data collected over 16.5 years by NASA's Terra and Aqua satellites. The results showed that eruptions tended to occur around the time when surface temperatures near the volcanoes peaked.
Eruptions were preceded by "subtle but significant long-term (years), large-scale (tens of square kilometres) increases in their radiant heat flux (up to ~1 °C in median radiant temperature)," the researchers wrote. After eruptions, surface temperatures reliably decreased, though the cool-down period took longer for bigger eruptions.
"Volcanoes can experience thermal unrest for several years before eruption," the researchers wrote. "This thermal unrest is dominated by a large-scale phenomenon operating over extensive areas of volcanic edifices, can be an early indicator of volcanic reactivation, can increase prior to different types of eruption and can be tracked through a statistical analysis of little-processed (that is, radiance or radiant temperature) satellite-based remote sensing data with high temporal resolution."
Temporal variations of target volcanoesCredit: Girona et al.
Although using satellites to monitor thermal unrest wouldn't enable scientists to make hyper-specific eruption predictions (like predicting the exact day), it could significantly improve prediction efforts. Seismologists and volcanologists currently use a range of techniques to forecast eruptions, including monitoring for gas emissions, ground deformation, and changes to nearby water channels, to name a few.
Still, none of these techniques have proven completely reliable, both because of the science and the practical barriers (e.g. funding) standing in the way of large-scale monitoring. In 2014, for example, Japan's Mount Ontake suddenly erupted, killing 63 people. It was the nation's deadliest eruption in nearly a century.
In the study, the researchers found that surface temperatures near Mount Ontake had been increasing in the two years prior to the eruption. To date, no other monitoring method has detected "well-defined" warning signs for the 2014 disaster, the researchers noted.
The researchers hope satellite-based infrared monitoring techniques, combined with existing methods, can improve prediction efforts for volcanic eruptions. Volcanic eruptions have killed about 2,000 people since 2000.
"Our findings can open new horizons to better constrain magma–hydrothermal interaction processes, especially when integrated with other datasets, allowing us to explore the thermal budget of volcanoes and anticipate eruptions that are very difficult to forecast through other geophysical/geochemical methods."
Moral and economic lessons from Mario Kart
The design of a classic video game yields insights on how to address global poverty.
