The musical heart.
http://www.brown.edu/Administration/George.../heartside.html

Turning heartbeats into piano melodies
Don't expect to hear heartbeats on "Heartsongs." What you hear is music - lovely, lilting melodies on piano. But how it gets from an EKG to a CD is a complex four-stage process. Dr. Goldberger and his collaborators at Beth Israel Hospital obtained digital tape recordings of patients' heartbeats using a Holter monitor, a pocket-size electrocardiogram recorder that can store thousands of consecutive heartbeats over an entire day. Next, using a computer, the researchers measured the precise intervals between the heartbeats, creating a graph of the instant-to-instant changes in heart rate. While your pulse may feel perfectly regular, you actually have a great deal of subtle variability from one beat to the next. These fluctuations are produced by the normal functioning of the involuntary nervous system, which can cause your heart to slow down or speed up. The normal heartbeat, therefore, "is more a dance than a march," says Dr. Goldberger.
The third step in creating these songs is to convert the time intervals between heartbeats into integers. Using a computer program, the intervals are converted into roughly 330 integers per data set. (The team started with 100,000 recorded heartbeats, then calculated the average of every 300 beats, to remove short-term fluctuations caused by movement or breathing.)
The fourth and final step is to take the resulting series of numbers and "map" or translate them into musical notes. Each integer, ranging from 1 to 18, corresponds to a particular note on the diatonic musical scale. The sequence of integers created by the averaged heartbeats generates the melody and the changes in pitch are proportional to the changes in heart rate. Zach Goldberger then chooses the key signature, rhythm and the harmonic accompaniment for each melody. However, the underlying melodic line for each piece remained true to the original heartbeat time series.
According to Dr. Goldberger, the product of these musical mappings raises a fundamental question. Why does the heartbeat, more often than not, create musically pleasing or interesting note sequences, not jarring noise or boring repetition? The answer may lie in the origin of heart rate variability. Dr. Goldberger and others have shown that the resulting complex pattern of heartbeat variations have the mathematical structure of a fractal. The term "fractal" describes objects such as trees and coral formations, which are composed of smaller units resembling the larger scale form - a property called self-similarity.
The musicality of "Heartsongs" raises a further question, says Dr. Goldberger: could the composition of music involve, at least in part, the recreation by the mind of the body's own naturally complex rhythms and frequencies? Perhaps what the ear and brain perceive as pleasing or interesting are variations in pitch that resonate with or replicate the body's own complex (fractal) variability and scaling. "Restoring harmony in the body may be more than a metaphor," says Dr. Goldberger. "It may be that we can learn from music."


http://www.nyu.edu/classes/neimark/FRACT1.HTM

A young composer and his father, a cardiologist who believes that a healthy heart must "dance" rather than "march", have combined their ideas about art and biological complexity to produce a collection of songs based on heartbeats.
The results, recorded on piano by the composer, Zach Davids, a student at Brown University, are part of an exhibition that opened last month at the Boston Museum of Science, called "The Dance of Chance." The melodies were derived from cardiograms of patients at at Beth Israel Hospital in Boston, where Mr. David’s father, Dr. Ary L. Goldberger, is director of electrocardiography. Dr. Goldberger's son, who uses the name Davids professionally, added harmony and tempo to the cardiogram melodies...
"The fact that a beating heart can be the basis of pleasing sequences of notes leads to a deeper question," said [Dr. Goldberger.] "Is an act of creativity an externalization of basic biological dynamics?" Dr. Goldberger and his collaborators...have published a series of papers in recent years elaborating on the idea that healthy biological functioning is dependent on a certain kind of irregularity. Their papers...have reported the discovery of "fractal" mathematical patterns that influence the rhythms of heartbeats and walking strides, the structures of nerve networks, circulatory systems, lungs, DNA, and even the biological changes that accompany aging.
In all of these manifestations of fractal patterns, he believes, a high degree of complexity is linked to healthy functioning, and when complexity is smoothed out, illness, aging and death seem to follow.
Dr. Goldberger surprised cardiologists six years ago with the conclusion he and his colleagues reached--and reported last year in the journal Physica A--that a healthy heart exhibits variations in beats that disappear from a diseased heart on the verge of failure.
Dr. Goldberger says the discovery does not imply that arrhythmias and gross irregularities in heartbeat are healthy. "What we measure is the precise time between beats" he said. "The time interval between one beat and the next varies slightly in the healthy heart."
The mathematics of fractals was developed by Dr. Benoit B. Mandelbaum of IBM in the 1960s and 1970s. Fractal structures are defined as having self-similarity at all scales; for example, a jagged coastline is perceived as having roughly the same irregular shape, whether all of it is seen from a satellite, or a small part from an airplane, or smaller parts still be a sunbather or a microorganism. Each vantage point offers a different scale of view, but at each scale, the same general pattern persists.




http://polymer.bu.edu/music/

The Music of the Heart is derived from electrocardiogram (ECG) data, actual digital recordings of the electrical signals of the human heart. These HeartSongs began as musical notes mapped from the heartbeat data. The composer then added harmonies and rhythm to make pleasant sounding music.
How can your heart make music?

In the first of four stages, we obtained digital tape recordings of the heartbeat using a Holter monitor, a pocket-sized ECG recorder that can store thousands of consecutive heartbeats (as shown in the figure) over an entire day.

Next, using a computer, we measured the precise intervals between the heartbeats, creating a graph of the instant-to-instant changes in heart rate as a function of time.

While your pulse may feel perfectly regular, you actually have a great deal of subtle variability from one beat to the next. These fluctuations are produced by the normal functioning of the involuntary nervous system, which can cause your heart to slow down or speed up. The normal heartbeat, therefore, does not follow a metronomic or march-like beat---surprisingly, it has a dance-like plasticity and variability.

The third step in creating these heartsongs was to convert the time intervals between heartbeats into integers. We used a simple computer program to generate roughly 330 integers per data set. (We started with 10,000 recorded heartbeats, then calculated the average of every 300 beats. We averaged the beats to remove very short-term fluctuations caused by movement or breathing.)

The product of these musical mappings raises fundamental question. Why does the healthy heart create musically pleasing or interesting note sequences, whereas the diseased heart create boring repitition?

The answer may lie in the origin of heart rate variability regulated by our nervous systems. The result is a complex pattern of variations present in normal heartbeats but absent in sick heartbeats that have been shown to have the mathematical structure of a fractal.

The term fractal describes objects such as trees and coral formations, which are composed of smaller units resembling the larger scale form---a property called self-similarity. Fractals have been shown to be relevant to a wide range of natural phenomena. This term also applies to complex processes that are made up of different frequency components with a special type of scaling relationship to each other. Work by Richard Voss and John Clarke have shown that some classical music has this type of scaling pattern. Dr. Voss and others have also used computer-generated fractals to create musical sequences. These recordings are, to our knowledge, the first effort to use actual rhythms of the heart as the template for musical composition.

The musicality of these recordings raises a further question: could the composition of music involve, at least in part, the re-creation by the mind of the body's own naturally complex rhythms and frequencies? Perhaps what the ear and the brain perceive as pleasing or interesting are variations in pitch that resonate with or replicate the body's own complex (fractal) variability and scaling. The musical pieces recorded here cannot resolve this question, but may challenge the imagination and delight the ear.


NOTE: All sound, noise, sonics, vibrations, frequencies, harmonics, resonances, etc. and so on, including the electromagnetic spectrum (including light and color), can be mathematically plotted on a musical scale.

While introducing all the data it really seems very simple to me as well, Warren.

The four lower centers are much like the triangles of the pyramid, and with perfection, not beholding to any masonis idea of the eye imagine, but rather the elevation of what the heart means in all our thinking processes, once it is move into the mind for consideration?

It's sort of like the Law of Octaves finding the necessary injection point(heart) to raise the necessary vibrations to the eye in the head, if you know what I mean. People all talk about chakras and such, and how would any of us see these things if there was not some spiritual connection to what happens inside the egg around us?


Yes it can seem a liitle bit farfetched and extreme, but it's always in that data that we might wonder, what does this all mean? Endocronology and pineal glands? We would have to ask for further information on the stream of consciousness might dictate the forces within our bodies? Where does the emotional center reside besides the heart? Where does the higher emotional center rest? How would one instigate such a connection to the higher centers? Inspiration and creativity, perhaps?

I couldn't help think of the leaf's osmosis process (sunight to....)and "phase changes?" Polarities, determined in the heart. Pearsell's book is a good one too. Of course I would like to be realistic too, but I also think very much in all the ways you describe in your varying posts.

As regards chakras, if you ignore the "right old frauds" and do some research into the human bio-field, there's more scientific substance there than at first meets the eye. ;O)

There is sufficient evidence for me to say that the human heart has more to do with consciousness than most of today's scientists are willing to accept.

To respond to another point: The Law of Octaves is a very real, mathematically testable and scientific phenomena. If it weren't for the Law of Octaves, there wouldn't be a Periodic Table of the Elements, just for one example. You can't have a Periodic Table of the Elements without it, actually. Without the Law of Octaves, there wouldn't be music...or any way to measure the electromagnetic spectrum... It's a mathematical law and that Law is ubiquitous. It's everywhere you look.


< rant on >

There's more going on in this ol' universe than the mind of man can know. ;O)

When we rely upon intellect and education alone, we have only limited ourselves. (ref: Gödel's Law.) When we teach others to rely only upon intellect and education, we have only taught others to become limited. I do rely upon prior knowledge, experience and logic, myself. ...While I also keep in mind that prior knowledge is subject to correction and that experience is often subjective. I have learned that logic also has numerous points of failure. (ref: Logical Fallacies. - the listing is surprisingly long.) So other methods must be taken into account. A multi-disciplinary approach to knowledge and understanding is absolutely necessary.

The scientific method has been long ago abandoned. When theories are propped up by ever growing bodies of ad hoc assumptions, and contrary evidences and proofs are ignored, something's seriously wrong. Generally speaking, reasoned and rational thought are currently unknown in the world. Most do not know the definitions of the words they use. Most people don't even know the definitions of the words: evidence, fact, proof, integrity, honor or honesty, nor would they recognize common courtesy or respect.

I have come to rely more upon empirical evidence than anything else. ...and if the theories that I've been taught do not match the evidence, I abandon the theory (see: scientific method) and rely upon the rules of good scholarship. A hearty well-done to Newton, Einstein, Luther and Jerome, but it's time to move on. You all blazed a trail, but in quite the wrong direction. ;O) Because of what we've all been taught, the truth is greater than the mind of man can presently conceive. (refer: brain entrainment as regards in utero development and plasticity after the age of twenty.)

My own background revolved primarily around Western Religion and counseling. However, after more than twenty years in the 'field' I stumbled across empirical evidence that totally refuted almost everything that I had ever been taught or learned. The underlying theory(s) was wrong. So - after twenty years of being wrong - I accepted the evidence and abandoned the theory. (Those epicycles will get ya, so watch out.) Admittedly it wasn't easy, but it was necessary; especially to a man who considers himself to have a smidgen of intellectual honesty. Learning that Planck and Heisenberg were also irrefutably wrong wasn't much easier. ...and when Hawkings says that even physics must be rebuilt from the ground up, you know without doubt that something's seriously amiss in the wide, wide world of sports...er...science. In such case, the evidences of what we know about everything must be laid out and objectively re-examined - sans ideologies, agendas, assumptions and preconceptions - for nothing that we've ever been taught is true. If you're more worried about tenure, grants, publications, and speaking at seminars in the south of France, you'll never attain to anything resembling the truth. At present, you're just building more epicycles... (ref: Feynman's Noble Prize for being wrong. He was more than a little personally embarrassed, actually.)

Most men and women in every field and discipline among mankind lack intellectual honesty. In fact, they are often quite worse than fundamentalist and political extremists in defending their failed theories. The terminologies are different (including some of the ad hom attacks), but the arguments are always the same (including most of the ad hom attacks). (The New Agers are just as bad.) ref also: posts on this board that don't acknowledge the math required to write music as well as the post as regards the pineal gland not being an integral - and necessary - part of the human brain.

When we think that we know anything at all is quite probably when we've completely stopped learning and growing. The other thing that happens is that when we do finally achieve some small success within our specialized disciplines, we tend to think that we know all there is to know...about all that there is to know...and that no one else's input matters. (Metaphorically, we've started believing our own press. ref: pride and arrogance.)

...not to mention that if what you think you know (about anything) is more than five years old, your knowledge base is almost completely obsolete...

It's time to step out of Plato's Cave, people.

Follow the evidence wherever it leads or you shall learn nothing.

Although I can provide multiple hundreds of references for why I "believe" what I do, no one has to blindly accept what I say. I do expect you to do your own research and to think for yourself, however.

It's time to wake up and smell the coffee, folks.

<rant off >

Not as well written as I would have liked, but it will do for my present purposes.