Thanks to @[email protected] for the links!
Here’s a link to Caltech’s press release: https://www.caltech.edu/about/news/thinking-slowly-the-paradoxical-slowness-of-human-behavior
Here’s a link to the actual paper (paywall): https://www.cell.com/neuron/abstract/S0896-6273(24)00808-0
Here’s a link to a preprint: https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.10234
Those people are probably lying. Try to count in your head from 1 to 100, and simultaneously count down from 100 to 1.
This is surprisingly hard despite the simplicity of the task. Of course I can’t know how it is for other people, but in my experience it is true that we can only “process” one conscious task at a time. I have tried to train myself to exceed this limitation, but frankly had to give up, I even suspect if you try to hard, you might risk going crazy.
We can however learn things so called “by heart”, in which case we don’t have to focus on them consciously, and do that at the same time as we focus on something else. Even things that can be pretty hard to learn, like driving a bicycle.
Musicians playing polyrhythms count at two or more rates simultaneously. Further, they operate their limbs and fingers accordingly.
True, but I wouldn’t call that conscious counting - you’re not literally counting out multiple simultaneous time signatures in your head, it’s done by feel.
It’s done by counting first. You can’t feel if you don’t count.
This is timely as I’m actually new to drumming and teaching myself some basic polyrhythms right now. I’m definitely not capable of actively counting both rhythms at the same time. I’ll count one, play it until I’m not really thinking about it anymore, then play the other one on top of it. After awhile, my arms and legs will just go, my brain isn’t actually counting the rhythms individually but it hears the combined rhythm, basically I just memorize until the point that the polyrhythm syncs up and repeats. I didn’t use them, but there’s also a lot of common “phases” for learning these basic polyrhythms, like “pass the bread and butter” for 3 and 4, again just a tool to let the mind think of one funky rhythm rather than two basic rhythms played at once. Technically, they’re the same rhythm, but the first is easier to conceptualize
Look up Pete Magadini on YouTube. He’ll explain how to do this. You really must start by being able to count 2 over 3 (or 4 over 6, same thing). Tap out 6 on one leg and 4 on the other, using the “cheat” that everyone learns (i.e., playing in one meter only). This is not yet a polyrhythm. Then COUNT OUT LOUD, 1-2-3-4, 1-2-3-4-5-6, alternating, several measures, while your hands continue to tap out both counts. This is how you internalize polyrhythms.
Also, learn Afro-Cuban rhythms. Those are claves of African origin and many are polyrhythmic. If you want to take it to the extreme, study Virgil Donati, man is sick.
Enough a proof that brains are more complex than a single processor calculating one thing at a time.
Furthermore, what about people who had lobotomy done to them? Weird things happen with two halves of the brain (now separate) “thinking” two different things at the same time!
That’s a corpus callosotomy, not a lobotomy.