Tag Archives: In Our Time

Concepts, Improvisation, Listening, Practice, Radio Links, Reading, Science, Technique, Technology, Testing, Wider Connections, YouTube links

Free Will & Sight-Reading

Catching up with a podcast of Start The Week, I was delighted to be pointed in the direction of The Mysteries of the Brain – a series of programmes on BBC World Service by Professor Barry Smith.* In his discussions with Andrew Marr, he referred to experiments carried out by John-Dylan Haynes, which pointed to the illusory nature of free will. Volunteers were asked, repeatedly, to decided whether to press a button with their left or right hand while in an fMRI scanner. Evidence of brain activity, which enabled those reading output to predict with 100% accuracy which hand would be used, appeared up to 7 seconds before the volunteer was aware of their conscious choice. John-Dylan Haynes describes the situation as follows:

“Your decisions are strongly prepared by brain activity. By the time consciousness kicks in, most of the work has already been done.“
I couldn’t help wondering what kind of activity would be produced by someone sight-reading this:
[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/nuvzMq0YZ3k?rel=0" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]
I wonder if, one day, we’ll have much more of a handle on what helps us turn a skill, with which we are not born, into a learned reflex and of ways in which this can be done more effectively. Perhaps until then we’ll need to content ourselves with the following equation:
10,000 hours = expert

You can listen again to Professor Smith’s series here.
You can see John-Dylan Haynes lecture on this material here.

* I first came across Professor Smith in an excellent episode of In Our Time on Ludwig Wittgenstein.

Blogging, Improvisation, In Service/CPD, Science, Technology, Wider Connections

Improvisation and the brain

Where it seems relevant, I like to post about anything interesting in the interface between music and science. So you can imagine how pleased I was to receive an email notification of an event entitled Tune-In at the Wellcome Collection* on Saturday 8 Nov. Entry is free and so, if you’re in the neighbourhood, it seems like as fascinating a way to spend a Saturday as I can imagine. 

I’ll write more after the event, at which I hope to meet up with my guitar-playing cousin Martin Byatt.

Speaking of science, I heard today on Today that Richard Dawkins has stood down from the Chair For The Public Understanding of Science. The chair is to be filled by Marcus du Sautoy – a frequent guest on In Our Time and presenter of BBC 4’s The Story of Maths.

Do we have a chair for the public understanding of education? Do we need one?

* In association with Artakt, Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design and University of the Arts London. With thanks to the European Dana Alliance for the Brain.