To what extent is the popularity of a procedure related to its validity?
In the TOK Clip Applying Illusions, UC San Diego psychologist of music Diana Deutsch describes how the celebrated Octave Illusion she discovered has the potential to be directly applied to the world of clinical medicine by giving an accurate, non-invasive indicator of cerebral dominance as opposed to, for instance, the so-called Wada test.
The Wada test is sometimes given to patients who have epilepsy and need to undergo surgery to cope with this condition. Ahead of surgery it is necessary to figure out which is the dominant hemisphere of this patient’s brain to make sure that no permanent damage to the speech of the patient is caused by this surgery.
Prof. Diana Deutsch is a pioneer of harnessing computer-generated tones to carry out detailed aural experiments on music, memory, language and cognition. She uncovered a vast spectrum of musical illusions that are now standard in the scientific literature, including the Octave Illusion, the Scale Illusion, the Chromatic Illusion, the Glissando Illusion and many more.
Below is a screen shot of what the resource page for this Ideas Roadshow TOK clip looks like. The new PDF that comes with this clip highlights how this resource has been updated to be fully aligned with the new TOK curriculum: the related AOK and Optional Theme (Knowledge & Technology in this case), how it directly connects to the new Knowledge Framework – Scope, Perspectives, Methods and Tools and Ethics – in the form of a Knowledge Question, three additional sample Knowledge Questions, related IA prompts for the TOK exhibition and citing suggestions for the TOK exhibition and essay.

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All Ideas Roadshow’s TOK resources are digital – they can be seamlessly used for online or in-class teaching without the need to change your lesson plans!
