Sting helps Canadian scientists complete study on musicians' minds
Rocker Sting has teamed up with top cognitive psychologist Daniel Levitin to study how a musician's mind works.
The Roxanne singer met up with Levitin and his colleagues in Canada recently, and allowed them analyze images of his brain as part of a paper focused on how professional musicians think.
"The state-of-the-art techniques really allowed us to make maps of how Sting's brain organizes music," Levitin, the author of This Is Your Brain on Music, told Rolling Stone in a statement. "That's important because at the heart of great musicianship is the ability to manipulate in one's mind rich representation of the desired soundscape."
Sting reportedly reached out to Levitin and offered his services after reading his book. The scientist played several songs to the former The Police star and noted his the brain activity, revealing his subject picked up things that the average listener wouldn't 'hear'.
According to the newly-released study, Astor Piazzolla's Libertango and the Beatles' Girl were the most similar in Sting's mind due to their minor keys and "similar melodic motifs", while Sting also linked his song Moon Over Bourbon Street to Booker T. and the MG's classic instrumental Green Onions.
According to Rolling Stones, Levitin and his team are now hoping to use the same technology to discover how athletes organize their thoughts about body movements and how writers organize their thoughts about characters.
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