Posted on 04/16/2008 7:00:59 PM PDT by blam
'Drummers are natural intellectuals'
By Gary Cleland
Last Updated: 1:26am BST 17/04/2008
Drummers are better known for their beats than their brain power, but research has suggested that they might actually be natural intellectuals.
Scientists who asked volunteers to keep time with a drumstick before taking intelligence tests discovered that those with the best sense of rhythm also scored highest in the mental assessments.
Born smart? The late Keith Moon, drummer with The Who, could have had natural intellect
Prof Frederic Ullen, from the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, concluded that there was a link between intelligence, good timing and the part of the brain used for problem-solving.
He said: "The rhythmic accuracy in brain activity that is observed when a person maintains a steady beat is also important to the problem-solving capacities measured with the intelligence tests."
For the study, Prof Ullen and Guy Madison, from Sweden's Umea University, asked 34 right-handed men aged between 19 and 49 to tap a drumstick at a variety of different intervals.
They were then given a psychometric test of 60 questions and problems.
Prof Ullen said: "We found that people with high general intelligence were also more stable on a very simple timing task.
advertisement "We also found that these participants had larger volumes of the white matter in the brain, which contains connections between brain regions."
Scans of the brain have shown that it uses a wide distribution of areas to listen to music.
The left side tends to process rhythm and pitch and the right looks after timbre and melody.
(Read it twice, thrice, until you get it!)
Q:What do you call a guy who hangs out with musicians?
A: A drummer.
I always knew that I was “special”.
Keith Moon was an outstandig drummer. But he was in no way the sharpest tool in the shed.
Bah da bing!
Feynman was a drummer.
The drummer for Santana was one of the best.
But...then...so was Keith...
My bass player left his keys in the van’s ignition. It took us two hours to get the drummer out. We were worried he would get dehydrated.
We’re better drivers, too.
A: The drummer drools out of both sides of his mouth.
I start getting out of time after maybe 2 or 3 beats. This does bode well for me.
On the other hand, you know what you call a bass player when he breaks up with his girlfriend?
Homeless
Assuming facts not in evidence.
Should be “does not bode well for me” see I told ya.
Drummer thread. Let me warm up my paradiddle and I’ll be right with you. And I mean that at intellectually as you can imagine!
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