This undated handout photo provided by the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, shows a jazz pianist playing inside an MRI machine. Jazz musicians are famous for musical conversations — one improvises a few bars and another makes up an answer. Researchers at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore had jazz pianists play this way inside MRI machines to show how their brains respond, and found that language regions enable the musical back-and-forth much like a spoken conversation. / AP
Written by Lauran NeergaardAssociated Press
WASHINGTON — Jazz musicians are famous for their musical conversations — one improvises a few bars and another plays an answer. Now research shows some of the brain’s language regions enable that musical back-and-forth much like a spoken conversation.
It gives new meaning to the idea of music as a universal language.
The finding, published Wednesday in the journal PLoS One, is the latest in the growing field of musical neuroscience: Researchers are using how we play and hear music to illuminate different ways that the brain works.
And to Dr. Charles Limb, a saxophonist-turned-hearing specialist at Johns Hopkins University, the spontaneity that is a hallmark of jazz offered a rare chance to compare music and language.
“They appear to be talking to one another through their instruments,” Limb explained. “What happens when you have a musical conversation?”
Watching brains on jazz requires getting musicians to lie flat inside a cramped MRI scanner that measures changes in oxygen use by different parts of the brain as they play.
An MRI machine contains a giant magnet — meaning no trumpet or sax. So Limb had a special metal-free keyboard manufactured, and then recruited 11 experienced jazz pianists to play it inside the scanner. They watched their fingers through strategically placed mirrors during 10-minute music stretches.
Read more: http://www.thetowntalk.com/viewart/20140225/LIFESTYLE/302250001/Jazz-study-shows-link-between-music-language
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