18
Talon Talk (Science Inquiry) Assignment
Hey there! Welcome to my Talon Talk. My talk is about bugs, the brain, and music. A voiceover video of my presentation as well as an embedded slideshow with no audio is attached. Please enjoy!
A small warning: I’ll be talking about bugs (mostly ladybugs with no graphic details) so if you’re not comfy with that you can totally try another talk, I won’t be mad at all!
Without further ado, here it is!
No voice (If you’re just looking to find one slide or read the one I mentioned)
That’s all folks. Thanks for tuning in!
• November 3, 2020
Anita November 4, 2020 - 1:11 am
Hi Bana,
Your Talon Talk slide show is so cute!! Your talk in general is super interesting and fun and easy to follow. I learned that bugs and insects are different and how music can affect productivity. I also learned about bugs’ brains!
My question for you is what are aphids that ladybugs eat?
From Anita
Bana November 4, 2020 - 1:49 am
Thank you so so much! Your comment is super nice!! Wow, I can’t believe I forgot to mention – Aphids are super small bugs, usually considered pests. Thank you for asking! I can’t believe I overlooked that.
Anita November 9, 2020 - 1:54 am
That’s fine you didn’t really overlook it. Thanks! From Anita
Dylan November 6, 2020 - 2:30 am
Hey Bana! Wonderful presentation! As a person who often listens to music, I found your presentation quite interesting! The animations also make it look much more professional, you just have to tell me what application you used to make this! However, you may want to maybe cut down on the number of animations next time because I found them distracting at some points during the presentation.
My question for you is: what are some common trends of music genres that you see people listening to while studying? (basically what is the most common music genre that you notice people listening to while studying.)
Bana November 6, 2020 - 2:51 am
Hi! Thank you so much for the super thoughtful and encouraging comment. I will keep the criticism in mind, I didn’t consider that and I’m so glad you brought it up! I used a site called Canva for the presentation. It’s a mainly graphic design platform but the presentation feature is wonderful.
Anyway, to answer your question about the music; I’ve noticed that in recent years Lo-Fi hip-hop has always been associated with studying and work (likely due to the rise of the ever-popular Study Girl and 24/7 Lo-Fi livestream everything seems to study to) and I believe it’s a reasonable option due to the relaxing atmosphere and repetitive nature of the music. I personally listen to Cafe music (mainly in the slow jazz and Bossa Nova genres) because it’s easy to block out, which is another thing people tend to look for. I often find music distracting, but lots people find Lo-Fi to be beneficial. Classical is also often discussed as study music as it’s lack of vocal melodies and it’s smooth and predictable nature is also not very distracting. However, you should be careful; Classical can be a very deep genre and might just suck in your attention with it’s subtle storytelling if you choose the wrong song.
Thanks so much and sorry for the infinitely long explanation, I’m very passionate!
Dylan November 7, 2020 - 4:48 am
I’ll keep your findings in mind!
Henry November 6, 2020 - 2:42 am
Hi Bana, I loved the slide show animations and your presentation style, very unique! I found it pretty cool that bugs have a different nervous system from us.
A question I have, you didn’t go super into detail about bugs’ hearing systems. If you know, do they have a different system than us and if they do, what are the major differences?
Thanks,
Henry
Bana November 6, 2020 - 3:09 am
Hi Henry, thank you for the great comment!
I didn’t go into it for the sake of time, but I’m also very interested in bugs and their hearing systems. A lot of bugs hear with what’s called a Tympanal organ. It’s named like the percussion instrument Tympani. A Tympani is like a drum with an extremely thin membrane pulled over an enormous, hollow space. If I remember correctly from my band days, it could be tuned to produce a certain note based on how the membrane is stretched. It produced a sound when struck by a mallet. The Tympanal organ works in much the same way: if the mallet was a sound wave (vibration) and the Tympani was the organ (it was often a hole in the bug near the wing with a membrane stretched over it) the movement of the sound around the bug would make the organ vibrate and in turn be carried by the nerves to be processed as sound. Humans also have a Tympanal membrane in our ears; the eardrum. There are three other kinds of hearing-type organs observed in bugs: Johnston’s organs, Setae and, most uncommonly, Labral Pilifers. Setae are like little hairs that pick up sound vibrations (mostly to detect predators). Johnston’s organs are groups of cells found at the base of the antennae of mosquitoes, fruit flies and other bugs. They also pick up vibrations, but in a unique way. Labral Pilifers are super rare: they’re only found in the mouths of certain hawkmoths and they can pick up ultrasonic sounds. Hope that helps, sorry for all of the rambling. For a more detailed explanation, consult the following article: https://www.thoughtco.com/how-do-insects-hear-1968479 . If you would like additional resources (which I doubt you do at this point but oh well) I can get those for you too!
Have a great day and thank you for the thought-provoking question!
Natalie November 7, 2020 - 2:59 am
Hi Bana! I loved your presentation! You spoke very clearly, and your slides were so pretty. Your topic as well was really interesting and engaging. I have a question for you. What inspired you to choose this topic and how are you planning to conduct your experiment? Also, I find that for me, listening to either slower songs or acoustic music with very little or no words helps me be very productive. Looking forward to hearing your answer! Thanks.
– Natalie
Bana November 7, 2020 - 4:54 am
Hi Natalie!! Thank you so so much for your kind words 🥺!!
I honestly can’t quite be sure why I chose my topic, but I’m interested in all three topics and my brain must’ve mushed them all together somehow. I thought bugs would be cute and sorta in-character, I love music and I’ve always been fascinated by the brain. I felt a bit restricted by the fact that I couldn’t research productivity on people, which could be a contributing factor. Thank you for the super thoughtful question! I’m sorry I couldn’t give you a definitive answer, I often forget about how things started.
Also, thank you so much for contributing your thoughts! The additional data will be super helpful next year.
Again, thanks so much and thank you for watching my presentation!
Colin November 8, 2020 - 2:44 am
Hi Bana,
I like how you used Canva instead of PowerPoint for your Talon Talk. The animations in the background and the transitions were appealing but not so flashy that they were distracting. I think including these made your presentation appear more professional than most PowerPoint presentations would. I think your use of space in the slide show was a bit substandard. Many of the slides were mostly blank space, and you could have used the space more effectively to support your ideas (e.g. the diagram of the organs of insects was so small that the text was hard to read).
My question for you is: How would you be able accurately measure the “productivity” of insects?
Best,
Colin
Bana November 9, 2020 - 7:54 am
Hi Colin! Thank you so much for the compliments on my slideshow, I worked super hard on the design aspect and I’m glad you found it professional.
To cut to the chase and answer your question: It isn’t totally clear-cut, since every insect has a different “job” or “jobs”, and some don’t directly involve the insect, it isn’t easy to tell, but since I’ll be focusing on ladybugs, it’s a lot simpler. If you think of eating aphids as their “job”, you can measure productivity neatly by amount: whether they eat a standard, substandard or excessive amount of the tiny critters. You can also measure this by the health of their home plant- if they don’t take care of the aphids, they’ll harm the plant and it’ll be very clear.
Hope this helps! I apologize for it being so unclear in the talk.
Thanks again for the awesome comment, Colin!!
Draedon November 8, 2020 - 9:33 pm
Your presentation was so engaging! The slides were so fluid and dynamic I couldn’t keep my eyes off of them. Here is my question for you; you mentioned in your slideshow that bugs don’t have an emotional response to music unlike humans, how, and why, do humans have an emotional response to music, and what bugs lack that means they do not have this response?
Bana November 9, 2020 - 7:46 am
Hey Draedon!! Thank you much for the feedback, I’m glad you found my presentation engaging.
To answer your question (perhaps the most difficult so far); I’m only really hypothesizing that bugs don’t have an emotional response to music, based on the information I have. They very well could have one, but according to all available research they seem to react to it more instinctually. Given the right resources (scientists can measure brain signals using certain devices) I could either support or refute this hypothesis. I’m mostly going off of the way bugs have reacted in certain studies and the fact that the scientists who claimed that they have consciousness admit they might have emotions that are far less complex than ours (maybe anger, but no frustration or anything that humans would generally also find a bit confusing, if that makes any sense). To move on to the tougher part: humans and music! There are a number of contributing factors to why we have an emotional response to music. It’s definitely there: emotional memories are a thing and emotions have been shown to be stored as emotional memories due to the fact that individuals with neurological conditions that result in some kind of memory loss or brain deterioration can still enjoy and remember their favourite songs from growing up. Going back to scientists and their brain-signal measuring, music has been shown to affect the mesolimbic pathway (a part of the brain that deals with happiness), amygdala (a part that has involvement in emotional responses) and the hippocampus (which is responsible in some capacity for attachment). Your question of why is so intriguing though- scientists have really had trouble defining why we have emotional responses, and some debate whether we do at all. There are also lots of logical associations we make with certain aspects like tempo, dissonance and the like. As we’ve discussed a bit in our conversations about music, it’s a very individual experience – music really forces me to look within myself and face certain feelings, and some things just hit, yannow? It’s all a lot to think about. If you want to read some more, I found an article (although I haven’t vetted it for credibility). https://www.bustle.com/p/why-do-we-get-emotional-when-we-listen-to-music-44460
Thank you for such a thought-provoking and interesting question. It pushed me to really think and even do some additional research, and I think it’ll really help me next year. Thanks again, let’s discuss soon!
Adrian November 10, 2020 - 12:57 am
Hi Bana, I see you have a lot of comments, so I’m going to make this short. First off, I really like the use of images and animations, however, any more could get a little bit distracting. That being said, I’ll make sure to use Canva in the near future for one of my online presentations! Based on this information, I gather that bugs don’t have much of a response to our music because they lack a part of their brain that we have, and they just don’t understand it? I was wondering if it was possible to create something to further boost insects’ work; sort of like the bug equivalent of soothing music to calm or relax them while working because I think that would be really cool!
-AJ
Bana November 10, 2020 - 6:54 am
Hi AJ!
Sorry for responding a bit late, but thanks so much for your thoughtful and observant comment! I’m also super flattered that you’re going to use the site I used. Thanks for the great compliments as well. I’m glad you liked the animations and I agree, I was bordering on being too distracting (although some would disagree and say it goes either way).
Anyway, wow, your question has even me a bit stumped! That’s actually the sweetest idea ever and the thought of bug-calming music makes me super happy inside. Bugs, from the information I have, prefer quieter and more natural music, so perhaps a very quiet but not unsettlingly quiet environment with some rustling leaves and minimal predator noises would soothe them. I think a good balance would be important. You’ve really got me thinking and maybe next year, I’ll test an artificial “bug music” natural environment trial against an absolutely silent trial to see what works the best. Thank you for the incredibly wholesome and heartwarming idea as well as the super kind comment. Hope you enjoyed my rambly answer!
Kira November 10, 2020 - 7:18 pm
Hey Bana! You’ve gotten a lot of comments so you don’t have to answer if you don’t want, but your presentation was incredible! It was really interesting how you used all different graphics. You spoke very clearly and calmly and it was super fun to listen to. The one question I have is, why did you decide to experiment and research on such an obscure topic?
Thanks!
-Kira
Bana November 11, 2020 - 8:56 pm
Hi Kira!!
Noo, of course I want to respond to your super-sweet comment! Thank you so much, you’re so sweet! I was a bit worried about the audio and I’m glad you found my presentation fun to listen to.
Hmm… That’s a pretty good question, actually. I guess I wanted to be quirky or something? I discussed a bit of my motivation for choosing the subject earlier, but I guess it was an accident that I ended up with something that people don’t exactly think about on a regular basis. There are a lot of factors, including personal interests and a few limitations (I can’t exactly experiment on people, Ms. Mulder is totally right about that part). I’m glad, however, that some other people were interested in this fairly obscure topic, otherwise this would be a lot harder and a lot less cool.
Thanks again for your sweet comment Kira!!
– Bana