Bring in an example of Classical Crossover as defined and exemplified in the following paragraph along with a cogent description of the use of classical music and its goals. Does it accomplish it successfully? How does it change the example?  Finally, there is of course deafness. But are those who are deaf unable to "hear" music in their own way? Let's hear from  someone with a cochlear implant  exactly what their experience is with music. There is even evidence that your brain recognises the stuff you like versus stuff you like less even when you're not aware of it. Check out this  fMRI video of Oliver Sacks. It's important to note that when we discuss the mind and the brain, we're sort of referring to the software and hardware parts of what makes you, you. The mind is thoughts, feelings, hopes, desires, memories, beliefs, experiences, and the brain is a physical collection of neutrons, whose activity creates the mind. This duality dates from Descartes who said, "I think, therefore I am."  Contemporary scientists and philosophers continue to believe that they are two parts of the same whole. The sum total of the mind is the patterns of firings in the brain. However, even when the mind is gone and the brain ceases functioning, the brain can continue to exist thoughtless in a jar.  Curiosity about music and the brain is not a new concern. Darwin, in his seminal text, On the Origin of Species, spent 10 pages ruminating on the origins of music, and its ancient utility for evolution. He believed that music evolved before speech as emotional utterances, kind of the way we can understand our pet dogs and cats when they whine and make different sounds at us. Music was pure emotion used to tell a story and communicate. Thus, baby babbling is a precursor not just to speech, but to music making. Both speech and music feature syntax, context, linking nonadjacent ideas that require cues to fill in the blanks, creating and fulfilling expectation. In fact, it has been shown that kids studying music gain the same levels of understanding towards speech and as kids studying drama.  Studies involving primates and human music have shown that they would prefer silence to human music. Here's a hilarious video of  how much penguins hate opera . However, if we readjust our parameters, and use the cadences of the animal's specific emotional utterances, it appears to create quite different results. Here's a study using  tamarind monkeys  and tamarind monkey specific music. Here's an example of  a musician that created music to calm his girlfriends dog that turned out to have broader application for all dogs . And of course, if we're going to talk about animals, we need to discuss songbirds. Their music is different from ours in that much of it is instinctual and not learned, but we can consider parrots, who are incredible vocal learners. To demonstrate just how amazing they are, let's consider the parrot of a musician, pianist Bruce Adolphe, who plays the se ...

1. Bring in an example of Classical Crossover as defined and
exemplified in the following paragraph along with a cogent
description of the use of classical music and its goals. Does it
accomplish it successfully? How does it change the example?
Finally, there is of course deafness. But are those who are deaf
unable to "hear" music in their own way? Let's hear from
someone with a cochlear implant
exactly what their experience is with music.
There is even evidence that your brain recognises the stuff you
like versus stuff you like less even when you're not aware of it.
Check out this
fMRI video of Oliver Sacks.
It's important to note that when we discuss the mind and the
brain, we're sort of referring to the software and hardware parts
of what makes you, you. The mind is thoughts, feelings, hopes,
desires, memories, beliefs, experiences, and the brain is a
physical collection of neutrons, whose activity creates the mind.
This duality dates from Descartes who said, "I think, therefore I
am." Contemporary scientists and philosophers continue to
believe that they are two parts of the same whole. The sum total
of the mind is the patterns of firings in the brain. However,
even when the mind is gone and the brain ceases functioning,
the brain can continue to exist thoughtless in a jar.
Curiosity about music and the brain is not a new concern.
Darwin, in his seminal text, On the Origin of Species, spent 10
pages ruminating on the origins of music, and its ancient utility
for evolution. He believed that music evolved before speech as

2. emotional utterances, kind of the way we can understand our pet
dogs and cats when they whine and make different sounds at us.
Music was pure emotion used to tell a story and communicate.
Thus, baby babbling is a precursor not just to speech, but to
music making. Both speech and music feature syntax, context,
linking nonadjacent ideas that require cues to fill in the blanks,
creating and fulfilling expectation. In fact, it has been shown
that kids studying music gain the same levels of understanding
towards speech and as kids studying drama.
Studies involving primates and human music have shown that
they would prefer silence to human music. Here's a hilarious
video of
how much penguins hate opera
. However, if we readjust our parameters, and use the cadences
of the animal's specific emotional utterances, it appears to
create quite different results. Here's a study using
tamarind monkeys
and tamarind monkey specific music. Here's an example of
a musician that created music to calm his girlfriends dog that
turned out to have broader application for all dogs
. And of course, if we're going to talk about animals, we need to
discuss songbirds. Their music is different from ours in that
much of it is instinctual and not learned, but we can consider
parrots, who are incredible vocal learners. To demonstrate just
how amazing they are, let's consider the parrot of a musician,
pianist Bruce Adolphe, who plays the segment Piano Puzzler for
NPR.
Isn't that uncanny?
In terms of answering Darwin's question about the evolutionary
function of music, we know that the first instrument
archeologically excavated was a flute made from bird bones
40,000 years ago, which means our involvement with music
predates even that. We know from studying gym music that

3. entrainment and the emotional contagion from music helps
create social bonding. There have been other studies indicating
that socialisation has definite results from musical activities.
Researchers performed a study where they invited two groups of
toddlers to come play by a make belief pond of frogs. One
group sang to the frogs to wake them up, and the other group
did everything but anything musical to wake them up. After the
activity, the researchers and parents left to go to the next room
where there are two way mirrors, leaving the children with
sticks filled with marbles and the instruction that there was a
game for them to play with the sticks across the room. One of
the children's sticks was rigged to immediately fall apart. The
group that did not participate in a musical awakening tended to
let that unfortunate child pick up their marbles alone, and the
group that did participate overwhelmingly tended to help them
before going together to play on the opposite wall. Other studies
have been done with even younger infant children. One showed
that if the researcher and the mother holding the infant in her
lap conversed in a musical way, singing their sentences, they
could get the baby to not fuss for an average of 9 minutes vs. 4-
5 minutes using regular speech. In another, they had the
mothers play with their 10 month old infants for a while, then
suddenly stop for 15 seconds with a completely expressionless,
still face. If you ever want to freak a baby out, this is the way.
They will completely freak out. When that happens, one group
was instructed to calm their child by singing, and the other by
any other way, including touch. Music soothed the infants faster
and better than even touch and speech by a lot. Indicators of
stress including skin conductance immediately began to fall,
whereas with speech and touch they continued to rise for a
while before finally falling.
There is something instinctive and important linked to our
emotions and our experiences with music. Here is a
collection of musings on the subject from the Opinions section
of the NYTimes

4. . It would be ideal to read some of these essays and consider
them as you write your blog for this week.
One physiological response common to all of us with music is
the feeling of chills. When they happen and with which piece is
very individual, but everybody has experienced them at some
point.
This article talks about this effect in detail.
Basically, the effect often occurs with sudden changes in
texture, harmony, timber, etc., such that the ancient amygdala
fear response is activated but suddenly suppressed so its a
compressed extra fast fight/flight response.
In fact, we know that there's quite dramatic effects of music on
the physical body. A study was conducted with patients headi ng
for hip replacement surgery. One group listened to classical
music before, one group listened to soothing noises like rain
and whale song, and one group listened to nothing. The group
that listened to classical music overall consumed 15% less
anaesthesia and produced less cortisol (stress hormone) during
surgery. Many major surgical complications are from
anaesthesia, so the less consumed the better in general. The
same fall in the stress hormone, cortisol, was found again when
they played classical music in Neonatal ICU (NICU) wards.
This suppression allowed these music babies to actually grow
faster and leave the NICU sooner. It makes sense if you think
about it. If your body is devoting most of its energy to
fight/flight response and stress, it has less resources to devote
to growth and development.
Music Therapy is a field that's gaining increasing interest
amongst the medical community for what it can do. Here's a
brief video outlining
what is Music Therapy
(UD's MT program is widely regarded by the way!). Here's a
video showing how it can

5. enliven even patients in hospice
who are more gone than there. Here's one on how music therapy
can benefit
children with special needs
including autism. Here's a video of
a project going into retirement communities
to provide stimulation and enhancement for the residents. Here's
a segment of a
news broadcast
on music therapy and its impact on the perception of pain with
possible applications towards the opioid crisis. Here's a video of
a stroke survivor
learning how to walk again
, another
learning how to talk again
, and another
learning how to access their left visual field again
.
Even without having any issues, engaging with music,
particularly through playing an instrument, can have tremendous
benefits for the brain. Music involves every part of the brain:
rhythm and feeling are in the cerebellum and amygdala,
listening involves the auditory cortices, if there's any memories
evoked, the hippocampus and frontal lobes are engaged, reading
music involves the visual cortices in the back of the occipital
lobe, listening and playing/singing back involve the language
areas in the temporal and frontal lobes, playing involves the
premotor and motor cortices on both sides. Here's a neat Ted
talk that emphasises this point and shows it graphically. In fact,
it has even shown that people, especially children, who are
exposed to musical education have far thicker corpus callosums
(the bridge joining the two hemispheres of the brain) than those
who don't. It's like building extra highways for your thoughts to
go across. It's been proven that to train your brain,
learning and playing an instrument is far better than an app

6. , and music training can even
raise school results in subjects like reading and maths more
than extra tutoring in those areas
.