Experiencing of Music as the Basis of the Effectiveness of Music Therapy

In transposing the discussion of L.S. Vygotsky’s ideas to the cross-cultural area of science, the authors summarize the contexts and positions regarding the contribution of the Russian psychological school to the substantiation of musical therapeutic theory and practice. The analysis by Dr. Mastnak of European and American academic periodicals in psychology and music therapy showed that Western science does not have access to all of the content and achievements of Russian and Russian-language psychology. Reading Vygotsky’s works from a musical therapeutic perspective and, in addition, in a cross-cultural interpretation, the authors discuss the abundance of the psychological scientist’s methodological ideas that could provide a theoretical substantiation of effective music therapy.     

Music and dance as a coalition signaling system

Evidence suggests that humans might have neurological specializations for music processing, but a compelling adaptationist account of music and dance is lacking. The sexual selection hypothesis cannot easily account for the widespread performance of music and dance in groups (especially synchronized performances), and the social bonding hypothesis has severe theoretical difficulties. Humans are unique among the primates in their ability to form cooperative alliances between groups in the absence of consanguineal ties. We propose that this unique form of social organization is predicated on music and dance. Music and dance may have evolved as a coalition signaling system that could, among other things, credibly communicate coalition quality, thus permitting meaningful cooperative relationships between groups. This capability may have evolved from coordinated territorial defense signals that are common in many social species, including chimpanzees. We present a study in which manipulation of music synchrony significantly altered subjects’ perceptions of music quality, and in which subjects’ perceptions of music quality were correlated with their perceptions of coalition quality, supporting our hypothesis. Our hypothesis also has implications for the evolution of psychological mechanisms underlying cultural production in other domains such as food preparation, clothing and body decoration, storytelling and ritual, and tools and other artifacts. Edward Hagen is a research scientist at the Institute for Theoretical Biology, Humboldt University, Berlin. Gregory Bryant is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Psychology, University of California, Santa Cruz.     

Music as an auditory stimulus in stroke patients

Auditory stimulation increases mean blood flow velocity (MBFV) in the middle cerebral artery (MCA) in healthy individuals. Our aim was to monitor such changes in the affected MCA of patients with acute ischemic stroke (AIS). The study included 66 non-thrombolysed patients with AIS who were divided into groups according to National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale (NIHSS) score. Group I consisted of patients with NIHSS score 10 and group II with NIHSS score > or =11. Affected MCA was insonated with transcranial Doppler (TCD). MCA MBFVs were monitored during listening to music for 30 minutes. The first response of MBFV increase was measured as time (Tmax) and percentage of amplitude change (Amax). Pearson Chi-Square test was used. In 78.85% of patients there was a significant increase in MBFV compared to baseline values as a reaction to the music. There was no significant difference in Tmax or Amax between the two groups. However, a trend of longer Tmax was observed with every 2 NIHSS score increase. Music is an auditory stimulus in stroke patients and can be measured with TCD as MCA MBFV increase. Although our study showed no significant change of reaction time with the severity of stroke, a trend of prolonged Tmax was observed with NIHSS score increase.     

Music as knowledge in Shamanism and other healing traditions of Siberia

Several presenters made the point that one cannot look at narrative alone, without taking into account the music, dance, and drumming that, in many settings, go along with it. One of these presenters was Marilyn Walker, who has had the good fortune to work with healers in Siberia. Although academic in approach, Marilyn’s paper also recognizes the importance of experiential ways of knowing. In her Quebec City presentation, she shared some of this experiential dimension by showing and commenting on videotaped segments featuring three Siberian healers. Walker’s paper discusses healing at several levels. In addition to several healing dimensions that she lists at the end of her paper, she mentions the physiological effects of music, dance, and drumming. Current research is leading to a better understanding of how trauma affects the brain and the body, and ways that various therapies, including new therapies focusing on sensorimotor effects, can promote healing. Along with these developments has come a greater appreciation and understanding among some mental health practitioners of some of the neuropsychological processes by which traditional practices such as narrative, singing, drumming, and dancing, may bring about healing.     

音乐之旅

在这个物质文明发展，要求全球化的时代，精神文化的多样性退居到了第二位，甚至正在慢慢消亡。曾经以《血染的风采》风靡一时的词作家陈哲抱着这样的忧虑踏上了他去往西南的风采历程，这是一趟现代土风音乐的人文旅程。     

Re-Searching Black Music

Re-Searching Black Music. Jon Michael Spencer. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1996. 154 pp.     

Multi-Variate EEG Analysis as a Novel Tool to Examine Brain Responses to Naturalistic Music Stimuli

Note onsets in music are acoustic landmarks providing auditory cues that underlie the perception of more complex phenomena such as beat, rhythm, and meter. For naturalistic ongoing sounds a detailed view on the neural representation of onset structure is hard to obtain, since, typically, stimulus-related EEG signatures are derived by averaging a high number of identical stimulus presentations. Here, we propose a novel multivariate regression-based method extracting onset-related brain responses from the ongoing EEG. We analyse EEG recordings of nine subjects who passively listened to stimuli from various sound categories encompassing simple tone sequences, full-length romantic piano pieces and natural (non-music) soundscapes. The regression approach reduces the 61-channel EEG to one time course optimally reflecting note onsets. The neural signatures derived by this procedure indeed resemble canonical onset-related ERPs, such as the N1-P2 complex. This EEG projection was then utilized to determine the Cortico-Acoustic Correlation (CACor), a measure of synchronization between EEG signal and stimulus. We demonstrate that a significant CACor (i) can be detected in an individual listener''s EEG of a single presentation of a full-length complex naturalistic music stimulus, and (ii) it co-varies with the stimuli’s average magnitudes of sharpness, spectral centroid, and rhythmic complexity. In particular, the subset of stimuli eliciting a strong CACor also produces strongly coordinated tension ratings obtained from an independent listener group in a separate behavioral experiment. Thus musical features that lead to a marked physiological reflection of tone onsets also contribute to perceived tension in music.