I hope all is well and you are enjoying the start of October! Time flies here, that’s for certain. I can’t believe I’ve been here for only three weeks – it seems like I have been here forever. I absolutely love it! It’s feeling more and more like home every day!
Last Saturday was an eventful day for me! Kofi and I took a long (and extremely bumpy) tro-tro ride out to a remote village to look at opportunities for building a school. I was in my glory out in the bush. We are talking about the most primitive way of life out there. I was told I am the only white person to visit the village, and my white skin and blond hair scared some of the children away. I did manage to get a few high fives from the little ones however, and that of course made my day. A couple of the villagers even asked if I could take them back to Canada with me!
I am just in awe of these people and how efficiently they use the land to live. Resources we take for granted every day are the staples for sheltering their families. I have posted some pictures of the village for you to enjoy! You will be wondering why there are no people in the photos – I elected not to snap away at the villagers because I did not want to scare the little ones even further. Plus, my camera might have looked too interesting to the village elder and I would have had to bargain to keep it!
I will be posting pictures of Accra in the next week. I know many of you have been asking to see the streets and the markets, so I will be sure to post those! It just takes so long to load pictures here in Ghana, so I have to spread the blogs out!
Take Care
Love Heather
5 comments:
Yes,pics of Accra, etc....but I want to see YOU!!! Still want to know if you are tanned yet!!!!
Aunt J.
Hey! I sent your parents that package a while back, but it came back, because I didn't fill out a declaration form (I had no idea I needed to declare STRING--sorry!). So, I resent it WITH the declaration form yesterday, so they should get it in 5-10 days. Sorry for the trouble!
Also, do you still have my CDs? If yes, a girl from California is supposed to get them at the end of this month. Is that cool? I hope so. You can also send me bracelets and I will sell them and send you the money! :)
<3.
-Tatiana.
I somehow lost your e-mail address. :( Sorry. Can I have it again?
Also: I thought this was some pretty awesome (and applicable) research done by my University. Plus, it provides a bit of news for you which is ohsoscarce in Ghana!
Music Training Linked to Enhanced Verbal Skills
EVANSTON, Ill. --- Music training, with its pervasive effects on the nervous system's ability to process sight and sound, may be more important for enhancing verbal communication skills than learning phonics, according to a new Northwestern University study.
Musicians use all of their senses to practice and perform a musical piece. They watch other musicians, read lips, and feel, hear and perform music, thus, engaging multi-sensory skills. As it turns out, the brain's alteration from the multi-sensory process of music training enhances the same communication skills needed for speaking and reading, the study concludes.
“Audiovisual processing was much enhanced in musicians' brains compared to non-musician counterparts, and musicians also were more sensitive to subtle changes in both speech and music sounds,” said Nina Kraus, Hugh Knowles Professor of Communication Sciences and Neurobiology and director of Northwestern's Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory, where the work was performed. “Our study indicates that the high-level cognitive processing of music affects automatic processing that occurs early in the processing stream and fundamentally shapes sensory circuitry.”
The nervous system's multi-sensory processing begins in the brainstem, an evolutionarily ancient part of the brain previously thought to be relatively unmalleable.
“Musicians have a specialized neural system for processing sight and sound in the brainstem, the neural gateway to the brain,” said Northwestern doctoral student Gabriella Musacchia, lead author of the study.
For many years, scientists believed that the brainstem simply relayed sensory information from the ear to the cortex, a part of the brain known for cognitive processing.
Because the brainstem offers a common pathway that processes music and speech, the study suggests that musical training conceivably could help children develop literacy skills and combat literacy disorders.
The study, “Musicians Have Enhanced Subcortical Auditory and Audiovisual Processing of Speech and Music,” will be published online the week of Sept. 24 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). The co-investigators are Gabriella Musacchia, Mikko Sams, Erika Skoe and Nina Kraus.
Study participants, who had varying amounts of musical training or none at all, wore scalp electrodes that measured their multi-sensory brain responses to audio and video of a cellist playing and a person speaking.
The data showed that the number of years that a person practiced music strongly correlated with enhanced basic sound encoding mechanisms that also are relevant for speech. Beyond revealing super-accurate pitch coding vital to recognizing a speaker's identity and emotional intent, the study showed enhanced transcription of timbre and timing cues common to speech and music.
“The study underscores the extreme malleability of auditory function by music training and the potential of music to tune our neural response to the world around us, ” Kraus said.
Previous research has shown brainstem transcription errors in some children with literacy disorders.
Since music is inherently more accessible to children than phonics, the new research suggests, music training may have considerable benefits for engendering literacy skills.
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Teach the kids some music! Those keyboards are only $4 in the Melcom at Dansoman (should cost 15,000-20,000 from our house). Haha. I still call it our house...
Oh, man, I miss Ghana!
<3
Tatiana.
Here is a link to the study about the music being better than phonics published in the Scientific American.
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=39568C58-E7F2-99DF-32A49429C2B356CD&chanID=sa003
Hey, It's been over 2 weeks since we had an update....where are you????
You can reply on the blog too or is that asking a bit much for your ammenities or power issues...being curious???
Aunt J.
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