In its onward march, science is always trampling over folk-wisdom. But sometimes a piece of research comes along which shows folk-wisdom might have a point after all. There’s been one in the past week, in a paper given at the European Society of Cardiology Annual Conference in Amsterdam. Professor Deljanin and her colleagues in Belgrade discovered a 19% improvement in a vital bit of heart tissue in patients with coronary artery disease, when they listened to their favourite music,

…We are not brains in vats, we are embodied creatures, and ‘mind’ – that is, the experience of being a living, feeling thing – is surely spread out through that body. In any case, the musical experience doesn’t stop at the boundary of the individual person. Music is a social thing, connected to dancing and singing. It becomes most vividly alive in those moments when we do it, rather than passively witness it, says Ivan Hewett

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Thanks to Alison Smith for bringing this to my attention