Language

When it comes to animal intelligence, dolphins are near the top of the brain chain. The species is generally considered the second most intelligent species after us, with chimps coming in third. In certain ways, dolphin intelligence surpasses that of people. The brains of certain dolphin species, such as the bottlenose, are larger than human brains.

Keep in mind that dolphins are not domestic animals, although individuals have been domesticated. Their ability to think, plan and perceive developed outside of the human experience, unlike smart domestic creatures such as dogs. Dolphins were never bred for specific attributes — they have evolved without human interference.

1. Language system

Dolphins communicate with each other through an intricate language system. It consists of behaviors, such as physical contact to make a particular point. Like people, they use gestures to express feelings and reactions. They make an array of noises that make sense to other dolphins. Each dolphin possesses a “signature whistle,” and it’s hypothesized that whistle is the dolphin equivalent of a name. Unlike some people, dolphins appear to remember the names of fellow dolphins years after they last met.

While their language doesn’t make dolphins smarter than humans, it appears to be more universal. Thus, there isn’t a “language barrier” for dolphins living in different part of the world.

2. Echolocation

Echolocation is the location of objects through reflected sound. Humans don’t have this capability, but dolphins do, and they use it to navigate waters and find food. Researchers developed sonar and radar inspired by the echolocation abilities of dolphins and bats. For dolphins, echolocation is the primary sense, far stronger than vision.

Scientists aren’t sure exactly how dolphins echolocate. The frequency of their echolocation sounds are too high for human ears to hear. To date, no studies have succeeded in replicating this sound. One theory is that mucus on the fatty strips below their blowhole is integral in allowing dolphins to make hundreds of echolocation clicks in just seconds.

Dolphins’ echolocation system is so accurate that the United States Navy uses them in its Marine Mammal Program to find mines buried at sea.

3. Game creation

Dolphins are second only to humans in game creation, but play many of these games with other species. Dolphins and humpback whales are known to play together, with the dolphin swimming onto the whale’s nose. The whale then raises his head, and the dolphin slides down into the water. The sequence is often repeated, with both parties having “a whale of a time.”

4. Quick judgment

The dolphin brain consists of four lobes in its two hemispheres, while our brain has only three lobes. While human senses are split between lobes, all of the dolphin’s senses are located in that fourth lobe. What does that mean in terms of dolphin cognition? It may indicate dolphins are capable of making much faster decisions than we are, and reducing the complexities of a situation much faster than we are capable of doing.

5. Understanding us

We may not be able to understand dolphins when they communicate, but they can learn to understand human language. Trained dolphins are known to comprehend hundreds of words, and respond to specific gestures.

6. Acting ethically

Dolphin society is complex, but appears to have ethical components. We know that dolphins don’t declare war on each other, which makes them smarter than people in one major respect.

7. Only half asleep

Unlike humans, dolphins are never completely asleep. If they went into full sleep, they would drown, since consciousness is required to breathe. Instead, half of their brain sleeps, and the other stays alert. Technically, this is known as “unihemispheric slow-wave sleep.” During sleep, one hemisphere of the brain shuts down, and the dolphin’s opposite eye closes. The awake hemisphere monitors the environment and ensures breathing. Unlike humans, dolphins are not caught unaware because of slumber. It also means that captive dolphins can’t receive anesthesia for treatment of serious wounds or illnesses.

Human intelligence and dolphin intelligence are very different. Comparing one to the other is like comparing apples to oranges. However, dolphins can solve problems and think creatively. They display those traits in their own environment, which is not our world.

—Jane Meggitt

TheAlternativeDaily ~via bodymindsoulspirit

Alternative and complementary treatments such as creative art, meditation, and yoga have been proposed to bridge many gaps that conventional medicine cannot. But music, because of its ubiquity in our society as well as its ease of transmission, has perhaps the greatest potential among alternative therapies to reach people in deep and profound ways. Music matters and it heals.

Music instruction appears to accelerate brain development in young children, particularly in the areas of the brain responsible for processing sound, language development, speech perception and reading skills, according to initial results of a five-year study by USC neuroscientists.

We now know through controlled treatment outcome studies that listening to and playing music is a potent treatment for mental health issues. 400 published scientific papers have proven the old adage that “music is medicine.”

Research demonstrates that adding music therapy to treatment improves symptoms and social functioning among schizophrenics. Further, music therapy has demonstrated efficacy as an independent treatment for reducing depression, anxiety and chronic pain.

The Brain and Creativity Institute (BCI) at USC began the five-year study in 2012 in partnership with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association and the Heart of Los Angeles (HOLA) to examine the impact of music instruction on children’s social, emotional and cognitive development.

These initial study results, published recently in the journal Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, provide evidence of the benefits of music education at a time when many schools around the nation have either eliminated or reduced music and arts programs. The study shows music instruction speeds up the maturation of the auditory pathway in the brain and increases its efficiency.

“We are broadly interested in the impact of music training on cognitive, socio-emotional and brain development of children,” said Assal Habibi, the study’s lead author and a senior research associate at the BCI in the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. “These results reflect that children with music training, compared with the two other comparison groups, were more accurate in processing sound.”

For this longitudinal study, the neuroscientists are monitoring brain development and behavior in a group of 37 children from underprivileged neighborhoods of Los Angeles.

Thirteen of the children, at 6 or 7 years old, began to receive music instruction through the Youth Orchestra Los Angeles program at HOLA. The community music training program was inspired by the El Sistema method, one that LA Philharmonic conductor Gustavo Dudamel had been in when he was growing up in Venezuela.

Learning the Violin
The children earn to play instruments, such as the violin, in ensembles and groups, and they practice up to seven hours a week.

The scientists are comparing the budding musicians with peers in two other groups: 11 children in a community soccer program, and 13 children who are not involved in any specific after-school programs.

The neuroscientists are using several tools to monitor changes in them as they grow: MRI to monitor changes through brain scans, EEG to track electrical activity in the brains, behavioral testing and other such techniques.

Within two years of the study, the neuroscientists found the auditory systems of children in the music program were maturing faster in them than in the other children. The fine-tuning of their auditory pathway could accelerate their development of language and reading, as well as other abilities – a potential effect which the scientists are continuing to study.

The enhanced maturity reflects an increase in neuroplasticity – a physiological change in the brain in response to its environment – in this case, exposure to music and music instruction.

“The auditory system is stimulated by music,” Habibi said. “This system is also engaged in general sound processing that is fundamental to language development, reading skills and successful communication.”

Ear to Brain
The auditory system connects our ear to our brain to process sound. When we hear something, our ears receive it in the form of vibrations that it converts into a neural signal. That signal is then sent to the brainstem, up to the thalamus at the center of the brain, and outward to its final destination, the primary auditory cortex, located near the sides of the brain.

The progress of a child’s developing auditory pathway can be measured by EEG, which tracks electrical signals, specifically those referred to as “auditory evoked potentials.”

In this study, the scientists focused on an evoked potential called P1. They tracked amplitude – the number of neurons firing – as well as latency – the speed that the signal is transmitted. Both measures infer the maturity of the brain’s auditory pathways.

As children develop, both amplitude and the latency of P1 tend to decrease. This means that that they are becoming more efficient at processing sound.

At the beginning of the study and again two years later, the children completed a task measuring their abilities to distinguish tone. As the EEG was recording their electrical signals, they listened to violin tones, piano tones and single-frequency (pure) tones played.

The children also competed a tonal and rhythm discrimination task in which they were asked to identify similar and different melodies. Twice, they heard 24 melodies in randomized order and were asked to identify which ones differed in tone and rhythm, and which were the same in tone and rhythm.

Children who were in the youth orchestra program were more accurate at detecting pitch changes in the melodies than the other two groups. All three groups were able to identify easily when the melodies were the same. However, children with music training had smaller P1 potential amplitude compared to the other children, indicating a faster rate of maturation.

“We observed a decrease in P1 amplitude and latency that was the largest in the music group compared to age-matched control groups after two years of training,” the scientists wrote. “In addition, focusing just on the (second) year data, the music group showed the smallest amplitude of P1 compared to both the control and sports group, in combination with the accelerated development of the N1 component.”

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Dreamers of the New Earth

JANE MEGGITT: “7 Ways Dolphins Are Smarter Than Humans”