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“Saved”: My latest video-game column for Wired News
Here’s a cool experiment: A cardiac electrophysiologist is investigating whether you can calm a recovering heart-surgery patient by playing live harp music. A lovely story in today’s New York Times reports on a four-week study currently underway, in which harpist Alix Weisz wanders through a cardiac recovery unit in Chester, NJ, playing music — while doctors check to see if it helps regularize the patients’ heartbeats or other vital signs.
Apparently the patients dig it quite a lot; as one notes:
“When I was coming out of it, I was filled with tubes — a throat tube, an oxygen tube — and it was very hard to breathe,” Mr. Moran said. “You feel you’re going to gag. The music calmed my body and allowed me to stop thinking about what was going on. It allowed me to feel more relaxed and rested.”
Of course, doctors have long anecdotally supsected that music can help calm patients down. But as I discovered when I started Googling this a bit, there’s a ton of interesting research underway that is tentatively finding that music can help calm down even unconcious patients. Though the Times story doesn’t mention him directly, I think the Chester study is being done by Abraham Kocheril, a cardiac researcher who last year played harp music for patients under anesthesia and found that it appeared to regularize their heartbeats — making an unhealthy heart function more like a healthy one and, presumably, improving the patients’ chances on the operating table. (There’s a good CNN story about his work here.)
Another researcher, Harvard’s Ary Goldberg, argued that there are fractal features common to both music and the human heartbeat, and that music can help tune the heart by rebooting with healthy fractal noise — allowing it to respond with more dynamism to a bigger array of physical challenges.
(Funny side story: When I did a Google search for “‘Ary Goldberg’ music”, I noticed that the seventh link was to … Collision Detection. Wha? I hadn’t recalled ever posting about him. But when I clicked on the link I discovered that Dusty Bear, a regular commenter on this site, had namechecked Goldberger back in March when I wrote about an album of music made from the stock market.
Heh. Talk about fractal patterns, eh?)
I'm Clive Thompson, a writer on science, technology, and culture. This blog collects bits of offbeat research I'm running into, and musings thereon.
Currently, I'm a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine and a columnist for Wired magazine. I also write for Fast Company and Wired magazine's web site, among other places. Email or AOL IM me (pomeranian99) to say hi or send in something strange!
The “Milky Way Transit Authority” map
Should automobile software be open-sourced?
My Bookforum review of Jaron Lanier’s “You Are Not A Gadget”
Molecular secrets of the “iron-plated snail”
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January 31, 2010 » 07:29 PM
V. A. To me death seems to be an evil.
M. What, to those who are already dead? or to those who must die?
A. To both.
M. It is a misery, then, because an evil?
A. Certainly.
M. Then those who have already died, and those who have still got to die, are both miserable?
A. So it appears to me.
M. Then all are miserable?
A. Every one.
January 24, 2010 » 03:22 PM
One of the more interesting trends is family, which came in at number five. Specifically, discussion about family, moms, dads, daughters, etc. jumped during 2009. With Facebook users getting older, this isn’t a big surprise. However, the fact that the mention of “kids” jumped by a factor of five this year is rather dramatic. It’s tough to know what this means, though. (via Facebook Unveils Most-Mentioned Topics of 2009
)
January 15, 2010 » 01:36 PM
BEYOND AWESOME. They are announcing a recall of the Plush Uterus “due to a potential choking hazard for children”. To apply for it, “Please send an email to the address below with the subject line, ‘UTERUS OPT OUT’”.
January 14, 2010 » 10:04 PM
“To order, please TYPE “YES” IN CHECKBOX BELOW TO AGREE YOU UNDERSTAND THIS PLUSH MUST BE KEPT AWAY FROM KIDS (it is a sex organ, after all). If it is not checked, WE WILL NOT SEND THE UTERUS.” (via @ibogost)
January 11, 2010 » 01:45 PM
I watched Space: 1999 back in the day, but I swear to god I do not remember this scene.
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