Blogs / Discoblog

For those of us with no discernible artistic talent, it may seem impossible to produce a recognizable sketch, sculpture, or painting.  For Alan Brown, a 49-year-old father of three, however, all it took was a stroke and 16 hours of brain surgery to give him the artistic prowess to get a degree in fine arts and open his own gallery.

The U.K. Daily Mail reports that Brown was still recovering from his surgery when he realized that his doodles, once limited to stick men, had become strikingly more realistic.  Brain surgery can cause significant changes in behavior and abilities. Luckily for Brown, his change was for the better. He began painting (examples of his work can be seen here) and eventually quit his day job to open a gallery, where he displays and sells his art.

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It’s bad enough that loud music can potentially harm your hearing. But now it turns out that head-banging, a violent and rapid form of dancing, can put you at risk for brain injury, whiplash, and even stroke.

There have been isolated reports of head-banging injuries in the past: When guitarist Terry Balsamo of Evanescence had a stroke, his doctors attributed it to his on-stage thrashing. But until now, scientists really haven’t studied the effects of head-banging since it first started back in 1968 with Led Zeppelin.

According to Australian risk and safety researchers Declan Patton and Andrew McIntosh from the University of New South Wales in Sydney, head-banging is pretty much guaranteed to give you brain damage if you’re not careful. To test their theory, the researchers went to a variety of metal and hard rock concerts (the best way to test any scientific theory) and observed the head-thrashing techniques used by artists.

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