Homedemo

Danish Researchers on Music and Memory

dailyscandi

October 22, 2016

Does music affect memory? Danish researchers are testing a hypothesis that children with musical skills such as rhythm and melody also develop stronger memories.

School children aged 6-19 are guinea pigs for research assessing the effect good rhythm and melody skills can have

The project involves 30,000 school children at public school and gymnasium and is being conducted by the Centre for Music in the Brain at the University of Aarhus in conjunction with the Royal Academy of Music. Professor and neuroscientist Peter Vuust is the lead researcher.

“We developed this hypothesis following studies of very small groups of adults that showed that the ability to maintain and manage information was better among musicians than non-musicians,” Vuust told Videnskab.

There’s an app for that
The children in the study will train their musical abilities using an app. Pupils from 450 schools across Denmark are included in the mass experiment that started on Monday. It is one of the largest studies ever undertaken in Denmark.

“First, students will take a test that looks at the two most basic parts of musicality: rhythm and melody,” said Vuust. “Then there is a memory game that features combinations of numbers. We will see how many they can remember.”

The children will train their musical chops for two weeks, after which test number two will examine whether two weeks of musical training has changed anything.

From Green Day to calculus
Vuust said the experiment should not be viewed as an absolute guarantee that if a student is good at music they will also excel at maths, but that previous results did suggest that musical ability did correlate with a good working memory.

Along with the memory test, the experiment on the 30,000 children and adolescents will also collect data on their ages, gender, language abilities, musical habits and whether they play or sing.

“What I find most interesting is chatting about the musical landscapes to the different age groups for the first time ever,” said Vuust.

In December last year Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) announced that neuroscientists at the university were able to identify a neural population highly selective for music … for the first time ever!

“The brain is a highly organized and complex organ that functions as the coordinating center of sensation and intellectual and nervous activity. Each area of the brain directly corresponds to a very specific function (emotions, movement, visual processing, memory, etc.), but, up until two days ago December 14), scientists were unable to decipher exactly which area of the brain corresponded to music perception.

Peter Vuust, jazz basist and Professor at Royal Academy of Music, Aarhus and associate Professor at Center of Functionally Integrative Neuroscience, Aarhus University

Peter is a unique combination of a world class musician and a top-level scientist. He plays and records with international jazz stars such as Lars Jansson, Tim Hagans, John Abercrombie and Jukkis Uotila, and appears on more than 85 records, 6 of these as band leader. Based on his distinguished music and research career, he was appointed Professor at RAMA in 2012. After graduating from AU in Mathematics, French and Music, he devoted ten years to playing music, before resuming an academic career in 2000. He wrote a book on polyrhythms in Miles Davis’ quintet that laid out the musicological framework for his PhD in neuroscience in 2006 concerning the neural processing of polyrhythms.

Danish Researchers on Music and Memory, compiled by Tor Kjolberg

Sweet Dreams in Scandinavian Hotels

dailyscandi

October 22, 2016

During the summer months, guests at all Clarion hotels in Norway and Sweden have had the opportunity to contribute to the environment through the hotel chain’s commitment to “Green Stay”.

The initiative allows guests to opt out of cleaning the room, and instead give money to UNICEF’s project “Sweet Dreams”. Instead of keeping loyalty points guests can choose to donate them to combat human trafficking in Cambodia.

“Combining environmental commitment and simultaneously contribute to UNICEF feels really good,” says Henrik Berghult, senior vice president of Clarion Hotels. He adds, “This is also a great tribute to our creative staff, who has received the chain’s award “This Year’s Strawberry”.

Henrik Berghult, senior vice president of Clarion Hotels

Green Stay is developed on the basis of Nordic Choice Hotels’ environmental strategy, which aims to become a climate neutral company. In its pursuit of reduced consumption of chemicals and water, Clarion Hotels promote the chain’s and the visitors’ interest to preserve the environment.

Guests staying more than one night have the choice to opt out of cleaning for a maximum of 3 nights per stay. Clarion rewards the guest for the active environmental choice, with the points in the chain’s loyalty program. Guests can keep the points or donate them to the Nordic Choice project, Sweet Dreams, in collaboration with UNICEF.

This summer, 15-20% of the guests have chosen Green Stay when they stay more than one night, a number that is likely to increase, as the program becomes more familiar. 70% of the Green Stay guests chose to donate their points to UNICEF, rather than keep them for themselves.

Table eatery at Social Clarion hotel, Stockholm

“Considering that business now replaces summer visitors, we hope that the positive trend continues,” says Berghult.

The four best Clarion Green Stay Hotels are Clarion Hotel Visby, Clarion Hotel & Congress Trondheim, Clarion Hotel Malmo Live and Clarion Hotel Amaranten, Stockholm.

Feature image (on top) Clarion Hotel Sign, Central Stockholm

Sweet Dreams in Scandinavian Hotels, source: Clarion Hotels

Life in Lappland

dailyscandi

October 22, 2016

The indigenous Sami of northern Scandinavia, a hardy semi-nomadic people, can trace their roots back thousands of years. Learn more about life in Lappland

The Sami call themselves “the people of the eight seasons”. They are indigenous people who live in Sweden, Norway and Finland’s most northerly provinces, and can trace their heritage back more than 8,000 years.

They have their own language, religious traditions and customs. While the life of the Sami has changed in modern times (snowmobiles have become ubiquitous in the last decade), the annual cycle of the reindeer – rutting, herding, separating, slaughtering, calving, marking – continues to shape the Lappland calendar.

The winter round-ups are among Europe’s most colorful events, resembling scenes from a Wild West film transposed to an Arctic setting. Visitors can enjoy this ancient culture at festivals and ceremonial occasions held throughout the year, where one can sample reindeer delicacies and marvel Sami handicrafts.

Life in Lapland — Vastenjávrre (Vastenjaure) Photo: Wikimedia Commons

A vivid way to experience the Sami lifestyle and landscape is in spring and summer, when the mountain blossom with heather, globe flowers, cloudberries and countless other species, inviting the visitor to take to the trails and woods of the many national parks in the Sami regions of Scandinavia.

Padjelante (“the higher mountain” in Sami) is the biggest national park in Sweden. It is one of Sweden’s most beautiful areas, with rolling plains, gently rounded mountain massifs, huge lakes such as Vastenjaure and Virihaure, and small streams, which the Lapps call jokk. It has always been an important pasture for their reindeer herds.

Midningt sun golfing. Photo: Visit Bodoe — Golf is the fastest growing sport in Scandinavia, and its popularity has exploded. In Scandinavia’s far north enthusiasts like to play golf under the Midnight Sun. Photo: Visit Bodoe

For golf enthusiasts, nothing can quite top the thrill of golfing under the Midnight Sun in the glorious days of summer, where (depending on latitude and cloud cover) the sun is visible for up to 70 summer days.

Anglers will find true paradise in the primeval wilderness of the north, laces by swift rivers and streams and punctuated by lakes and pools.

To enjoy the wintry wilderness in an entirely different way, try dog-sledging, which is offered by many firms in northern Scandinavia. Drive the dog-sledge yourself or sit back in the vast silence of the mountains and be driven by a team of huskies. Your guide will tell you how to take care of a sledge dog and share bits of trivia, like the fact that in the Inuit language there are 18 different words for snow.

Dog-sledging, common in Greenland, is now well established in Sweden and Norway and is growing in popularity. The Sami winter vistas can also be enjoyed on reindeer sleigh rides and snowshoe treks.

Ice climbing is popular, too. Fishing through the ice is common on most lakes and rivers.

To soak up the hard life of the Sami fully, the visitor can stay in the world’s largest igloo, the Jukkasjärvi Ice Hotel in Sweden. Each autumn, as the Arctic temperature plummets, Lapplanders rebuild this celebrated igloo, from thousands of tons of snow and ice.

Inside it houses a church, hotel, gallery, golf room, cinema and bar, named appropriately Absolute Ice. Guests sleep in warm sleeping bags on mattresses of spruce bough and reindeer skins. Temperature average -4 ͦC (25 ͦF).

The hearty fare served from the kitchen and the activities waiting outdoors don’t leave guests much time to feel cold. Next morning the hotel will issue a certificate of survival. It’s not quite the same as herding reindeer, but it brings you one step closer to understanding how climate, custom and sheer human persistence have made the Sami what they are today.

Life in Lappland, written by Tor Kjolberg

Feature image (on top): Sami folk costume from Jokkmokk, Arctic Sweden. Photo: Visit Sweden.

Ten Hours with the Trolls in Norway

dailyscandi

October 22, 2016

My heart sank as I looked at the itinerary. Saturday 4 June – leave hotel 7.45am, arrive at next hotel 5.45pm. In between, two train journeys and a three and a half hour bus ride. Ten hours of travelling. Transfers for ten whole hours. Experience ten hours with the trolls in Norway.

Who on earth would force people to go through that on a fam trip?

Then, of course, it turned out to be one of the most memorable days I’ve ever had. The Norway Cool Agency Challenge, organized by Visit Norway, saw more than 30 event professionals arrive in Trondheim a Thursday lst summer, before an action-packed Friday that saw us whizz out on the fjords on a RIB, taste beer in at a sun-kissed brewery, complete a GPS city exploration challenge and rock out at Rockheim, the Norwegian museum of popular music.

But it was the Saturday that proved most intriguing, as the group split up into four to go and explore four other cities, namely Oslo, Bergen, Tromso and Alesund.

I was in the Alesund group, and so it was that as the three other groups headed to the airport to their respective destinations, we found ourselves chugging across Norway on a train. With the run of the carriage, we found the trip to our first stop Dombas flew by as eight of us in the group nattered away and got to know each other a bit better, while outside the landscape slowly became ever bigger and more breathtaking.

Our next train, from Dombas to Adalsnes, known as the Rauma Railway, is one of those routes that regularly pops up in “Top 10 train journeys to take before you die” lists. And with good reason; it is an hour and a half of sheer wonder. The gradient is too steep to go directly from A to B, which means that the track winds its way slowly down the valley to its final destination, giving you ample time to take in the towering peaks, the lush valley, the raging waterfalls and the overwhelming beauty of Norway’s west coast.

Trollveggen (Troll's Wall) — Trollveggen (Troll’s Wall)

The highlight is the Trollveggen, or the Troll Wall, the tallest vertical rock face in Europe, more than a kilometer in height and capped off with vicious jagged teeth along its extensive summit ridge.

Once we’d got our breath back from that, we found ourselves on a bus heading towards the Trollstigen (also known as the Trolls’ Path – they’re really into trolls in Norway), a series of steep inclines and 11 hairpin bends that scale the almost sheer face of the mountainside.

It felt like we could be on course to recreate the end of The Italian Job at any second, but thankfully we made it up to the viewing platform at 700 meters where we were able to finally relax and take in the mind-boggling mountain scenery.

Being up so high, the tops still had a healthy covering of snow, and so it was that a little further on we stopped to make snow angels, an activity that quickly descended into a pretty vicious snowball fight. Whether by accident or design, this wore out the group and we dozed happily all the way over into the next valley as we approached our final destination, the Storfjord Hotel in Skodje.

A secluded luxury boutique hotel on a hillside overlooking a fjord and a mountain range, the Sunnmøre Alps, I can’t think of a more picturesque place to find yourself for the night. The wooden cabins, the roaring log fires, the four poster beds – and on top of all this a high-end restaurant turning out food to die for.

Over a stunning evening meal, we reminisced about the day’s activities and one thing was agreed – in most places, 10 hours of travelling would be a chore, but when your surroundings are as staggeringly beautiful as they are in Norway, 10 hours of travelling is a very rare pleasure indeed.

Written by Paul Harvey

Feature image (on top): Dombås – Åndalsnes by train

Ten Hours with the Trolls in Norway, was published in Meetpie. We thank editor Gareth Roberts for his kind permission to reprint the article.