petergabriel.com

Dear Fellow Moon Clubbers, I thought some of you out there might be interested to learn about this, especially if you love music (that's a given) AND just a little science. This is something that would definitely interest Peter, I presume. NEWBORN INFANTS DETECT THE BEAT IN MUSIC Istva´n Winklera,b,1, Ga´ bor P. Ha´dena,c, Olivia Ladinigd, Istva´n Szillere, and Henkjan Honingd (Abstract) To shed light on how humans can learn to understand music, we need to discover what the perceptual capabilities with which infants are born. Beat induction, the detection of a regular pulse in an auditory signal, is considered a fundamental human trait that, arguably, played a decisive role in the origin of music. Theorists are divided on the issue whether this ability is innate or learned. We show that newborn infants develop expectation for the onset of rhythmic cycles (the downbeat), even when it is not marked by stress or other distinguishing spectral features. Omitting the downbeat elicits brain activity associated with violating sensory expectations. Thus, our results strongly support the view that beat perception is innate. I had a problem providing the link to the article, but you can find it by searching for the title on the following page: www.pnas.org It's an OPEN ACCESS article, so you can freely download it if you are interested in the full version (it's not long). ENJOY! Best wishes, Peter Antonyi (Hungary)

Thank you, interesting! But do not forget, that the very first rhythm is the mother's heartbeat. . .and a lot of first experiences go via drummings in that rhythm, be it quiet, normal or excited, passed on in many generations. Which is, why also shamanistic rituals all over the world are based on this.

Not to forget, that whichever culture or religion, who ignores this, are "baseless", so to say. It always switches back, particularly when ignored for too long. There are loads of according examples. We simply need this.

- bump -