Drummin to the Brain's Beat

Since the 1920s it has been known that the brain has its own rhythm of electrical activity that were known as brain waves but new studies done by University of California neuroscientist Adam Gazzaley with the help of Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart have shown that this rhythm can be so much more.  They believe, with some evidence to support, that the rhythm of the brain could be the cause of, and the solution to diseases in the brain such as Alzheimer's, which Hart's grandmother dealt with.  Hart noticed that she could communicate better when he played the drums and that's when he decided to connect with Gazzaley and take part in this study.

In the last twenty years they have found that rhythm can be a factor in perception, attention, working memory, and learning.  That means that certain beats you hear can affect the way you learn or the way you look at things.  Music is now much more important than ever before because it can help someone with a brain disease hopefully recover a little bit.  It has already been shown that rhythm can reduce seizures in rodent models of epilepsy and they hope that this is no where near the end of what changing and messing with the rhythm of peoples' brains can do.  The hope is that music can be a real medicine for people with brain disease.