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Beatboxing on the brain

Carolyn McGettigan is a researcher at University College London who studies the neural mechanisms of speech and production. So it was only natural that she teamed up with UK Beatbox champion Reeps One to uncover the mysteries behind his skill at producing percussion sounds with his mouth.

This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American



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Carolyn McGettigan is a researcher at University College London who studies the neural mechanisms of speech and production. So it was only natural that she teamed up with UK Beatbox champion Reeps One to uncover the mysteries behind his skill at producing percussion sounds with his mouth. She created a short film for the "Brains on Film" contest that details the results of comparing the beatboxing brain scans of Reeps One to those of a novice. I thought the film was a great description of both the technique of fMRI and the results of the study. Check it out here, or above.

About Princess Ojiaku

Hey there! I'm a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin Madison in the Neuroscience and Public Policy program. I'm also a musician who played in two bands in North Carolina, one called Pink Flag and another called Deals. My personal passions are science, music, and cycling as transportation.

I got into science as a kid while tagging along and watching my mom do experiments in her lab. I found that while I loved science, I didn't want to be alone in an ivory tower, crunching data that few others would understand. I also noticed that many other people thought science was this scary and incomprehensible entity of obscurity. When I realized that there were people working to make science fun and accessible to everyone, I knew that this was exactly what I wanted to do. The two things I find the most immensely interesting and continually impressing are music and neuroscience, so these are the topics that I'll focus on in my blog. Philosophy and politics are my second loves, so I might pop in an occasional post on these topics as well. Ultimately I am here to share things that give me wonder. I hope that reading Science with Moxie gives you a bit of that wonder too.

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