This Week in Sound: Entrainment, Radio, Fungi
These sound-studies highlights of the week originally appeared in the February 20, 2024, issue of the Disquiet.com weekly email newsletter, This Week in Sound. This Week in Sound is the best way I’ve found to process material I come across. Your support provides resources and encouragement. Most issues are free. A weekly annotated ambient-music mixtape is for paid subscribers. Thanks.
▰ THAT’S ENTRAINMENT: To answer the question as to whether electronic music might inherently “alter the consciousness” of listeners, “researchers used electroencephalography, which measures electrical activity in the brain via electrodes attached to the scalp, to gauge the participants’ neural entrainment to the music.” As described in New Scientist, the effort, which explored the concept of “entrainment,” may have medical applications, such as for therapy and in intensive care units. “Entrainment occurs when synchronisation arises between an external rhythmic stimuli, such as electronic music, and the firing of neurons in the brain.” (Thanks, Paolo Salvagione!)
▰ ADIOS, RADIO: “Who in the world steals a radio tower?” asks the station manager of a radio station, WJLX in Jasper, Alabama. He asks because the station’s tower has gone missing: “The tower, all 190 feet of it, had vanished — its 3,500 pounds of spindly steel beams possibly sliced into pieces and dragged away earlier this month by thieves, the police said. … There are, however, some precedents in Alabama. In 2021, the police in Dothan arrested a man who had stolen a 30-foot aluminum trailer with a collapsible radio tower that reached up to 100 feet. And in the summer of 2013, the police in Talladega said that a 75-foot steel radio tower and other equipment had been stolen from a broadcasting group.”
▰ QUICK NOTES: Vitamin Z: Scientists are exploring the role of zinc in causing and addressing hearing loss. ▰ Roots Music: “A pair of experiments has found that fungus grows much more quickly when it’s blasted with an 80 decibel tone, compared to fungus that receives the silent treatment.” ▰ Physics Ed: The discussion of newly confirmed “second sound” (thanks to everyone who sent this — along with related — links to me) in fluid dynamics made me think about the first and second cracks in coffee roasting. ▰ Root, Root, Root: For the first time, a woman is the lead voice in Major League Baseball play-by-play: Jenny Cavnar of the A’s. ▰ Bird Brain: The Shriek of the Week is that of the wren, “one of our tiniest and yet loudest resident songbirds.” ▰ Don’t Worry, Be Haptic: Learn about vibrational suits, which translate music (and sound in general) into full-body experiences. (Thanks, Rich Pettus!) ▰ Cry It Out: Exploring how infant marmosets use sound to communicate to caregivers.
