The Listening Mind
Music, brain, and well-being.
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The song you can still find when nothing else is left
A woman in the late stages of Alzheimer's could no longer name her own children. She could still sing every word of the hymns she learned as a girl. The neuroscience now has a partial answer for how that happens, and it is stranger than the usual story.
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What a chill down your back is doing
When music gives you goosebumps, your brain has just released dopamine in two distinct waves. The same neural circuits that fire for the body's most basic survival rewards fire for a violin entrance. The strangeness of this finding is worth sitting with.