Arts

Healing Music: An Interview with Stanley Jordan

In a career that took flight in 1985 with commercial and critical acclaim, guitar virtuoso Stanley Jordan has consistently displayed a chameleonic musical persona of openness, imagination, versatility, respect, and maverick daring. Be it bold reinventions of classical masterpieces, soulful explorations

Why Fear Sells: The Business of Panic & Paranoia

In 1957 a journalist named Vance Packard wrote “The Hidden Persuaders,” a book that pulled back the curtain on all the psychological tricks and tactics companies and their marketers and advertisers were using to manipulate people’s minds and persuade them to buy. It was shocking. It was groundbreaking

Operation Homecoming: Serving Those Who Have Served

Operation Homecoming was first created in 2004 by the National Endowment for the Arts to help U.S. troops and their families write about their wartime experiences in Afghanistan, Iraq, and stateside. Operation Homecoming was among several programs the NEA has created to bring quality arts

In Search of Morality: An Interview with Dr. Joshua Greene

When making that big decision, do you go with your gut, or do you map out how your judgment will affect those around you? This has been an endless source of fascination for Joshua D. Greene. Greene has been busy bridging the gap between psychology and philosophy at Harvard University

The Creative Brain: Why Do We Create?

Where does creativity come from? It’s a question that’s left us mystified for centuries at the way writers make metaphors or sculptors render clay into arches and statues — and even neuroscientists aren’t quite sure how to explain it. Dr. David Eagleman shows how we’ve only begun to scratch the surface

The Spotless Mind: The Possibilities of Memory-Erasing

More than 5 million people in the United States alone suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and they live in constant fear of their own memories. But what if the emotional response to that memory could be erased? Or, better yet, the memory itself?

Where Beauty Lights Up the Brain: An Interview with Dr. Semir Zeki

The French have an expression, chacun à son goût, which means “to each his own taste.” This can apply to most anything from clothes and cars to choice of intimates and serves as a viable way to shrug off a difference of opinion. Can the subjective experience of beauty which leads to desire be traced to

Fighting the Stigma of Mental Illness: An Interview with Joe Pantoliano

Actor Joe Pantoliano, aka “Joey Pants” to friends and colleagues, vividly remembers the first time he experienced stigma around mental illness. After being diagnosed with clinical depression, Pantoliano — best known for playing the character Ralph Cifaretto on “The Sopranos” — went to work

5 Habits of Great Writers (And What They Tell Us About the Brain)

Whether or not you consider yourself a writer, chances are, you probably have your own writing habits. At the very least, you likely have some ritual that helps you formulate ideas and foster productivity. Here’s what some literary giants did to churn out words and ideas — day after day. When you’re one

3 Ways to Paint Your Way Past “Brain Freeze”

If you, like many of us, let go of visual expression because you forgot how, now is the time to recapture the joy and benefits of creating art, something once as natural to us as breathing. As an artist who is no stranger to creative brain freeze, I want to share with you three of my most successful strategies

How Fantasy Becomes Reality: Our Media in Everyday Life

Some things have changed since Dr. Karen E. Dill-Shackleford published her first edition of “How Fantasy Becomes Reality” in 2009 — but not too many. Superhero movies still dominate the box office, Internet fans may have gotten a bit more belligerent — threatening film critics who would dare give their beloved franchise

Your Brain’s Natural Rhythms: A Q&A with Neuroscientist Jessica Grahn

Why does music make us want to move? Why don’t ordinary sounds we hear in everyday life have the same effect on us? Scientists are now beginning to explore some of these questions. Brain World spoke to cognitive scientist Jessica Grahn on what neuroscience has unravelled about music’s effects on the brain

Music and the Mind: An Interview with Neuroscientist Daniel Levitin

Daniel Levitin’s life has been a strange one. Perhaps that’s one reason why it’s so entertaining to read his books, which are mixtures of cutting-edge neuroscience and good-natured storytelling. A studio musician and engineer, Levitin played with musicians from the Grateful Dead to Chris Isaak before

Notes of Healing: The Power of Music as Therapy

When Grace was born 27 weeks into her mom’s pregnancy, a harpist was conducting research in her Boston neonate intensive care unit. Her mom, Mary Liz Van Dyck, says that the delicate sounds of the harp were a soothing melody amid the clinical noise of constant beeping, alarms, and the bustle of hospital staff.

In The “Creative” Zone: An Interview with Dr. Charles Limb

What do Franz Liszt and Jay Z have in common? Not much — one is a classical composer, the other is a rapper; one is dead, the other is alive. We could go on, but one thing they do have in common is their fantastic ability to improvise. Both have or had musical, skill but what really sets them apart from their contemporaries

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