A large number of studies have been made about the relation between the effect of music on the human brain in an article about the biology of music William J Crommie wrote :

Some brain circuits respond specifically to music; but, as you would expect, parts of these circuits participate in other forms of sound processing. For example, the region of the brain dedicated to perfect pitch is also involved in speech perception.

Music and other sounds entering the ears go to the auditory cortex, assemblages of cells just above both ears. The right side of the cortex is crucial for perceiving pitch as well as certain aspects of melody, harmony, timbre, and rhythm. (All the people tested were right-handed, so brain preferences may differ in lefties.)

The left side of the brain in most people excels at processing rapid changes in frequency and intensity, both in music and words. Such rapid changes occur when someone plucks a violin string versus running a bow across it.

Both left and right sides are necessary for complete perception of rhythm. For example, both hemispheres need to be working to tell the difference between three-quarter and four-quarter time.
The front part of your brain (frontal cortex), where working memories are stored, also plays a role in rhythm and melody perception.

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In a 500 pages about computer programming not all information are relevants , I remember when I was at a day job as programmer I often had to absord such big books to make it painlessly I used two methodsPhotoreading and Freenoting, taking free notes is really a method to write between the lines and only keep the relevant information eventually you will be able to go fish for more based on your notes , freenoters usually have better memory retention of what they learn.

Freenoting is an excellent method to help you to absorb knowledge from technical materials, medicine, psychology, computer, laws all these fields can be used with freenoting.

There is a small of overview of the method at Helium.com
The project Renaissance webpage has also interesting information about freenoting.

Technorati Tags: freenoting

I have a list of the stuffs I’m supposed to do each day, I have about 19 essential tasks to do.
I know that completing them make me move forward. Each time I complete one task I mark a cross for that day, this help me to pressure myself to keep going, I have to write those crosses.

Today, I read about an easier and similar system to pressure yourself to stay on track and keep motivated.

Thats the Calendar System from Jerry Seinfeld:

He told me to get a big wall calendar that has a whole year on one page and hang it on a prominent wall. The next step was to get a big red magic marker.

“Don’t break the chain.” He said again for emphasis.

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Obviously, you can use this technique in many different areas. So if you feel lazy about your tasks consider that system, other than that I read about another well developed system by Brian Tracy in his book Eat That Frog! 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time.

Technorati Tags: calendar system, time, management, jerry, seinfeld, brian tracy

On his blog, Joseph Plazo describe a trick to memorize list, the rhyme technique where you makes rhyme with the list of the words you want to memorize, check out his blog for the full technique.

The pegging system is a technique you can use to memorize information, it is a mnemonic technique described as follows on BuildYourMemory: (more…)

I remember back in 1998 after several months of autogenic training, meditations and the help of a simple Steven Halpern CD (Spectrum Suite) I was able to have the benefit of brain hemispheres synchronization. I was more intuitive and creative, calmer and I witnessed a high degree of synchronicities in my life. The effect lasted even after I gave up autogenic training however it didn’t last forever. (more…)