Athletic Music

    A piece from the WSJ going into the uses of music in athletics. Many athletes use music to help improve their physical performance. In the learning materials I'm developing, one of the ideas used in explaining the workings of music and music making is that there's a continuum from speech to music to dance, with there being a lot of overlap between speech and music and between music and dance.

     "Music and movement appear to have evolved together," according to Dr. Trainor. "There are multi-sensory connections between the auditory system and the movement systems"

     Dr. Solomon H. Snyder, chairman of the department of neuroscience at the Johns Hopkins Medical School in Baltimore, emphasizes that much remains to be learned in the field, but he acknowledges that music is "well known to involve the auditory part of the cerebral cortex, the temporal part of the cortex. And the temporal lobe of the brain is intimately linked to the limbic system, the major regulator of emotions." These emotions, he observes, include one's "readiness to perform."