Moment Musicaux

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[The following is an exact transcript of this podcast.]

So this week I’m taking it back to a study published in Nature in 1976 to tell you about a freaky auditory illusion called the McGurk effect. However, it also requires some visual input, so I’ll have to send you to a video at http://snipurl.com/sciam-illusion (or simply click to play the video posted below this transcript.)
 
If we watch a video of a person mouthing the word "ga," but have a synced voice-over of that person saying "ba," what we end up hearing, is a third variation that’s never been said! That word is "da".
 
And even though you now know it’s an illusion—you will still, when you see the video, think you are hearing "da". But if you close your eyes, and do not see the person’s lips forming the word "ga," you’ll hear what they are actually saying, which is "ba".
 
We think of speech as dependent on auditory perception. But this study eerily shows just how important visual input is.
 
From this, it’s clear that our senses did not develop in isolation, but rather, they work in tandem to form an accurate perception of our world. Here we learn that the position of the lips is key in accurately hearing what someone is saying.

To experience the McGurk effect, please go to: http://snipurl.com/sciam-illusion

Aaron was blogging about his dream, so I thought I’d share some of mine.

The Boy gripes that I always have very interesting dreams and he doesn’t. Do feel tired or find it hard waking up when you dream? I do. And my dreams are pretty clear, but I’m not sure if they can be considered ‘lucid dreams‘ — I’m not conscious of my physical surroundings when I’m dreaming — yet I am aware that I’m dreaming. 

I’m also able to induce sleep by thinking of a fictional or non-fictional scenario. (Whether I continue dreaming about it or not, I don’t really know.) I can also wake up from a dream, go back to sleep in a short span of time and continue the dream. Which is probably this:

"Mnemonic induction of lucid dreams (MILD)

The MILD technique is a common technique developed by Dr Stephen LaBerge, used to induce a lucid dream at will by setting an intention, while falling asleep, to remember to recognize that one is dreaming, or to remember to look for dream signs when one is in a dream." - Dreams, Wikipedia.org 

I don’t really look out for ‘dream signs’ because (as mentioned earlier) I’m aware when I dream. Which is also why I can recall the clearest ones (probably in a state of R.E.M.).

Brief examples of my dreams:

• Meeting all kinds of random people from my past and present, then going into a huge mansion owned by a couple and realising that they’ve captured my comrades. I become a Superhero and the next thing I know I’m escaping from the their firing spells. Their backyard is my primary school.I’m going to have lunch with a churchmate’s dad (I somehow called him my uncle) at a restaurant, and somehow we were walking around the Bedok market where a lot of papayas were on sale. My mom insists on buying some.

• ____’s family leaves him. He then pours out his sorrows to me. Well, the whole city/world’ is divided into 3 divisions: Intelligent, Strong, Agile, and one more I don’t recall.

  We (__ and I) are under the same division (Intel) and stay in this big warehouse thing. A war ensues between the 4 divisions, and his wife leaves him to join another division.

  So the battle begins. The Strength group bombards us. Apparently, the way to trick them is to praise them and make them stop in their tracks (Strength = low intel). E.g. "Hey, you’re really strong and powerful!" and they’ll stop, a la a dumbass, and scratch their heads and say "d’oh, really?"… Then we close in. You get the drift.

• The latest (last night’s): I’m the bridesmaid for a group local celebrity wedding. I can remember 3 out of 6 celebs, one couple which is a real-life dating couple. I was in a mad rush most of the time, being invited at the last minute to be the bridesmaid, but things keep going wrong.

  I’m wearing the same white dress I that wore in one of the pictures in my recent blog posts, then I stain the sleeves with my lipgloss. -_- The wedding is held in a Theme Park, and I see many of my NH juniors working there. Crystal, my band junior, is there too, and she’s a pool shark. Wearing gloves to play pool and all…

  The wedding dinner was delayed because dinner was a DIY one, and it’s already 11pm when my mom and I are frantically taping pieces of paper together with cut-outs of newspaper recipes for the guests. I remember being flustered.

Or they’d (quite usually) be running either from bad guys/to save people, trying to run (from things like but not seeming to move — think treadmill), some adventure, or some scene that I’ve never been in reality but recurs in my dreams etc. Thomas the Train even cameos as a real train in a recent adventure-dream.

This year, my dreams have been relatively less evil — I used to dream of the apocalypse quite often. Not that I read much into them, but I sleep deep because of dreams yet wake up feeling not as refreshed after.

I’ve been having rampant weird dreams. Dreams full of adventure (I was a female Rambo in a certain tertiary institution that was having Resident Evil symptoms) and like a messy jigsaw puzzle (I was enrolled into a foreign university, King’s Uni, which had many Nan Hua people in it. All still wearing the dratted white uniform). And random people in my life appear in them…

And yesterday, I fell asleep on the bus to jamming. It was supposed to be a 15-20 minute ride; I woke up at 20 minutes, only to find the bus back at the office area. I freaked out a little, alighted immediately, and took a cab even though I had an hour to spare.

The bus does loops, but this time the loop was a bit too… Quick?

"Live Earth is a 24-hour, 7-continent concert series taking place on 7/7/07 that will bring together more than 100 music artists and 2 billion people to trigger a global movement to solve the climate crisis. Live Earth will reach this worldwide audience through an unprecedented global media architecture covering all media platforms - TV, radio, Internet and wireless channels.

Live Earth marks the beginning of a multi-year campaign led by the Alliance for Climate Protection, The Climate Group and other international organizations to drive individuals, corporations and governments to take action to solve global warming. Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore is the Chair of the Alliance and Partner of Live Earth." […]

Well, here’s a simple point to ponder:
Just how much electricity and fuel will they (read: concerts, television audiences etc.) be consuming for the event itself?

Talk about saving the earth.

This time, I was at Auntie Ching Ching’s (a church member) house. It was a condo (she does stay in one) with 3 lifts going to different floors. I remember going up and down the lift in order to avoid someone, but I remember know why. After that, we left to get to Uncle Jimmy’s (her husband) car. But the car was parked the other side of a mountain, and to get to the mountain, we had to climb a really tall overhead bridge. I remember having a bit of acrophobia - height phobia - (in reality, I don’t) then, but managed to reach the mountain anyway. On the bridge, a sprightly old lady joined me.

We walked along a path at the edge of the mountain which got narrower till it ended. What was left was the steep surface of the mountain, and the old lady told me that climbing up was the only way. The surface was surprisingly soft; I dug my hands into it and started up. It was quite tough though, and I had to overcome some inner fears to really climb. A few metres later, the old lady lost her footing - I caught her, but she slipped out of my grasp after a while and fell into the deep ravine. I didn’t fall, but felt the somersaulting and falling sensation too.

I continued up the mountain, only to be ambushed by natives — I had to play a piggy-back game and piggy-back 5 people in order to get across. The game’s actually a bit more complicated, but I shall spare the details.

With much difficulty, I got across. And I woke up. 

I had strange dreams last night. The weird stuff I saw probably provoked them. I think. My dreams are usually recurring ones, or have a similar theme to it. This time, they were unique.

I first dreamt of an extremely crazy rollercoaster ride that has 5 high consecutive loops and many twists - exactly the kind that I’ve always wanted to ride on. Then there were a few of us from Mass Comm riding on the single-seater carriages.

After hitting the first few loops, a friend’s (whom I dearly love but lost the friendship) carriage FELL OFF. Everyone looked on in horror as it plunged rapidly into the darkness. I recall myself almost hysterical and praying real hard. I was aware that I was dreaming but I refused to allow him to die. The next thing I knew, I saw him jump out. And from him, a parachute emerged. It didn’t catch the wind properly until 20 feet from the ground. I didn’t breathe till he survived the fall.

When that ordeal was over, we boarded an MRT train - which hit the railings. The rear carriages got damaged, and we decided to break off our section from the rest of the train in order to repair it. The next train was fast approaching, but we couldn’t find the root of the problem. At the last second, two 1-cent coins were found stuck in the rivets of the wheels.

We sped off safely - and were brought to another location - where I was supposed to be part of a singing competition. I didn’t know that I was involved until the contestant before my turn, and Terence Yeo was supposed to be doing a duet with me. The boy’s travelling right now (that is a real fact), so I told them I had no partner. Retro was the theme, and I browsed through my memory’s library, thinking of songs by Duran Duran to Simply Red and finally Whitney Houston, whose ‘I wanna dance with somebody’ I settled upon. But I couldn’t do all of the lyrics and didn’t have a costume - I refused to go up and embarrass myself.

So I told myself to wake up. It was 1045. 

I found some weird stuff strewn on the floor beside the stone tables at my lift landing tonight. Really, really, really, strange. I have a slightly dysfunctional neighbourhood, and I’m not joking. As far as I’ve heard from the pipeline, there are 3 mentally unsound people currently living in my block. Two of them  (a mother and her daughter) would start screaming at each other in the middle of the night if the mother (whose condition is worse) doesn’t take her medicine. I always feel very disturbed when the screamings start. The 3rd guy goes in and out of mental hospital. So much for living in a ‘prestigious’ HDB neighbourhood.