To investigate the neural substrates that underlie spontaneous musical performance, we examined improvisation in professional jazz pianists using functional MRI. By employing two paradigms that differed widely in musical complexity, we found that improvisation (compared to production of over-learned musical sequences) was consistently characterized by a dissociated pattern of activity in the prefrontal cortex: extensive deactivation of dorsolateral prefrontal and lateral orbital regions with focal activation of the medial prefrontal (frontal polar) cortex. Such a pattern may reflect a combination of psychological processes required for spontaneous improvisation, in which internally motivated, stimulus-independent behaviors unfold in the absence of central processes that typically mediate self-monitoring and conscious volitional control of ongoing performance. Changes in prefrontal activity during improvisation were accompanied by widespread activation of neocortical sensorimotor areas (that mediate the organization and execution of musical performance) as well as deactivation of limbic structures (that regulate motivation and emotional tone). This distributed neural pattern may provide a cognitive context that enables the emergence of spontaneous creative activity.

Neural Substrates of Spontaneous Musical Performance: An fMRI Study of Jazz Improvisation

For the past two decades, Kay E. Holekamp has been chronicling the lives of spotted hyenas on the savannas of southern Kenya. She has watched cubs emerge from their dens and take their place in the hyena hierarchy; she has seen alliances form and collapse. She has observed clan wars, in which dozens of hyenas have joined together to defend their hunting grounds against invaders.

“It’s like following a soap opera,” said Dr. Holekamp, a professor at Michigan State University.

Sociable and Smart

How paint dries, the way flags flutter, how Nature discovered origami, and other marvels of the physical world

"Just because something is familiar doesn’t mean you understand it. That is the common fallacy that all adults make—and no child ever does."

The Physics of the Familiar

These nine panelists describe ways in which the Second Law of Thermodynamics can be stretched, or applied in less traditional ways.

From the archive:

"One of the most fundamental rules of physics, the second law of thermodynamics, has for the first time been shown not to hold for microscopic systems."

Essentially, the smaller a machine is, the greater the chance that it will run backwards. It could be extremely difficult to control.

Finally, and most importantly:

Marge: I'm worried about the kids, Homey. Lisa's becoming very obsessive. This morning I caught her trying to dissect her own raincoat.

Homer: [scoffs] I know. And this perpetual motion machine she made today is a joke! It just keeps going faster and faster.

Marge: And Bart isn't doing very well either. He needs boundaries and structure. There's something about flying a kite at night that's so unwholesome.

[looks out window]

Bart: [creepy voice] Hello, Mother dear.

Marge: [closing the curtains] That's it: we have to get them back to school.

Homer: I'm with you, Marge. Lisa! Get in here.

[Lisa walks in, chuckling nervously]

Homer: In this house, we obey the laws of thermodynamics!

Frontiers of the Second Law

Space Sunset

In a series of experiments, hundreds of students could not bear to let their options vanish, even though it was obviously a dumb strategy.

The experiments involved a game that eliminated the excuses we usually have for refusing to let go. In the real world, we can always tell ourselves that it’s good to keep options open.

You don’t even know how a camera’s burst-mode flash works, but you persuade yourself to pay for the extra feature just in case. You no longer have anything in common with someone who keeps calling you, but you hate to just zap the relationship.

Your child is exhausted from after-school soccer, ballet and Chinese lessons, but you won’t let her drop the piano lessons. They could come in handy! And who knows? Maybe they will.

Why were they so attached? The players, like the parents of that overscheduled piano student, would probably say they were just trying to keep future options open. But that’s not the real reason.

Apparently they did not care so much about maintaining flexibility in the future. What really motivated them was the desire to avoid the immediate pain of watching a door close.

The Advantages of Closing a Few Doors

It is customary to think about fashions in things like clothes or music as spreading in a social network. But it turns out that all kinds of things, many of them quite unexpected, can flow through social networks, and this process obeys certain rules we are seeking to discover. We've been investigating the spread of obesity through a network, the spread of smoking cessation through a network, the spread of happiness through a network, the spread of loneliness through a network, the spread of altruism through a network. And we have been thinking about these kinds of things while also keeping an eye on the fact that networks do not just arise from nothing or for nothing. Very interesting rules determine their structure.

Social Networks Are Like the Eye: A Talk with Nicholas A. Christakis | Edge

For partnered women, a manly man with no attachments seems sexiest when she is fertile.

Fertile wives find single men sexy : Nature News

According to Stanislas Dehaene, humans have an inbuilt “number sense” capable of some basic calculations and estimates. The problems start when we learn mathematics and have to perform procedures that are anything but instinctive.

Numbers Guy

The WorldWide Telescope (WWT) is a rich visualization environment that functions as a virtual telescope, bringing together imagery from the best ground and space telescopes in the world for a seamless, guided exploration of the universe.

WorldWide Telescope, created with Microsoft's high-performance Visual Experience Engine™, enables seamless panning and zooming across the night sky blending terabytes of images, data, and stories from multiple sources over the Internet into a media-rich, immersive experience.

WorldWide Telescope