Music Therapy Today, Vol. 6, No. 2

Music Therapy Today a quarterly journal of studies in music and music therapy

Volume VI, Issue 2 (April 2005)

David Aldridge & Jรถrg Fachner (eds.)

Published by MusicTherapyWorld.net UniversityWitten/Herdecke Witten, Germany ISSN 1610-191X

Editor in Chief/Publisher Prof. Dr. phil. David Aldridge Editor Dr. Jörg Fachner, joergf@uni-wh.de Managing editor Christina Wagner, cwagner@uni-wh.de Book review editor and dissertations archive Annemiek Vink, a.c.vink@capitolonline.nl “Odds and Ends, Themes and Trends” Tom Doch, t.doch@t-online.de International contacts Dr. Petra Kern, PETRAKERN@prodigy.net Scientific Advisory Board Prof. Dr. Jaakko Erkkilä, University of Jyväskylä, Finland Dr. Hanne Mette Ridder, University of Aalborg, Denmark Dr. Gudrun Aldridge, University Witten/Herdecke, Germany Marcos Vidret, University of Buenos Aires, Argentinia Dr. Cochavit Elefant, Bar-Ilan University, Israel Prof. Dr. Cheryl Dileo. Temple University in Philadelphia, USA Prof. Dr. Marlene Dobkin de Rios, University of California, Irvine, USA Dr. Alenka Barber-Kersovan University of Hamburg, Germany Prof. Dr. Tia DeNora, University of Exeter, UK Dr. Patricia L. Sabbatella, University of Cadiz, Spain

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Table of contents Music Therapy Today i a quarterly journal of studies in music and music therapy i Volume VI, Issue 2 (April 2005) i Table of contents vii Editorial 174 Jรถrg Fachner 174 It must be a sign of getting old 178 David Aldridge 178 Brain and Music 185 Winfried Pape 185 Is the Future of Music Generative? 215 Paul Brown 215 Music therapy in the Silesian centre of rehabilitation in Ustron 275 Zbigniew Eysymontt and Sebastian Mucha 275 Odds and ends, themes and trends 288 Tom Doch 288

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April, 11, 2005

Editorial Jörg Fachner Music Therapy Today Vol. VI (2) Online 11th April 2005

Welcome to the Spring issue of music therapy today! In this issue we keep our eyes on the past, present and future of music, therapy and its related research.

The first article comes from David Aldridge entitled “It must be a sign of getting old”. This article was written as a reflection on his participation on a research symposium in Germany he attended early this year. Every research question needs its own methodology , there is no reason to abandon certain methods when the topic requires them at last. We have to be aware of academic research questions, reflected in certain doctoral thesis ideas and those research questions need for the profession of music therapy. As there are not that many sound clinical trails in music therapy research, there is a need for a “staged strategy of research initiatives based on sound exploratory studies, small intervention studies, efficacy trails and then effectiveness studies”. As research is always connected to financial possibilities, a demand for cooperation in our little space inside

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the medical profession is existential and lobby work is needed. In times of economic repression we cannot afford traditional struggles any more.

Another perspective of a researcher reflecting long experience and practice knowledge may be read in the article “Music and the Brain - Comments on music-related brain research”. Winfried Pape, former head of the musicology and music education department of Giessen University, is one of the founders of popular music research in Germany. I attended the annual meeting of popular music reserchers. His reflections from the stance of more than 30 years professional work in music education and research appealed to me. You might see him smiling on some of the high-heeled neurophysiological research on music and the brain when you read his critical comments and referrals to studies which are discussed as important. The original german article can be downloaded as a Word-file as well.

Looking back, resuming and looking ahead; Paul Brown asks: “Is the future of music generative?” Generative music is a term coined by Brian Eno to describe the music he created using a computer music software program. Generative music can be created with algorhythms that vary selected components of sound generators in certain computer programs.

Such music in the tradtion of aleatoric composing will never be the same, the sounds produced will appear as unique events and can be influenced through live editing. But it is much more then this “just music made by computers”. The idea behind appeals to me like the punk’s ‘three-chordsare-enough’ ideology or ideas of free jazz, it opens up the creation process -again- for those who do not want to listen to the one perfect thing and style again and again. In 2005, as in 1977, there is no need to play an instrument with academic skills to create music. Go create! It may be

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interesting to see an analogy here to music therapy practice: “The generative composer has only indirect control the final musical result, and the creativity of the compositional process is found in the decisions about how the system will operate and the rules inside the system”. This is an article that will shake our foundations of music and its current form of production.

Back to practice, and here present the article “Music therapy in the Silesian centre of rehabilitation in Ustron” in Poland, sent to us by Zbigniew Eysymontt and Sebastian Mucha. This article portrays the music therapy work in a hospital setting specialised “in early rehabilitation of patients after heart attacks, coronary bypass operations, expansion of coronary vessels or heart valve implantations.” The authors made a short survey, with a self-developed questionaire, to estimate the effect of music therapy on their patients. “The most valued activities during the sessions were: singing together (31%), listening to music (30%) and accordion concerts (29%). Dancing was significantly less popular (10%). The results of the questionnaire will be taken into account in the process of therapy planning and elements of dancing will be offered only to those patients who express a willingness to take part in this kind of activities”.

Tom Doch in his column “Odds and ends, themes and trends” takes you on his web ride into Spring. All of you in the northern hemisphere: have a nice Spring; and for all of those heading to the upcoming World conference of music therapy in Australia, welcome to Autumn again;-) until we read again Joerg Fachner

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Music Therapy Today Vol. VI (2) April 2005

It must be a sign of getting old Reflections on a music therapy research symposium

David Aldridge Dear colleagues, another research day has successfully come and gone here in Germany. Research has always been an important factor in the development of music therapy world-wide, hence our insistence on the basic resource of a freely accessible database for the broad spectrum of music therapy publications. It is part of the research infrastructure that we all need on which we can base our future research studies. We simply need to know what has been done and from this basis design our forthcoming studies. But a database is not enough, we have begun to implement a series of commentary tools that provide not simply a list of research studies but, potentially, expert opinion on those studies, again so that others can design future research trials. Research trials will be one essential element in the acceptance of the music therapy in the future health care market. But only one of those elements, to which I will return later.

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Aldridge, D. (2005) It must be a sign of getting old - Reflections on a music therapy research symposium. Music Therapy Today (online) Vol. VI (2) 178-184. available at http://musictherapyworld.net

I was dismayed to hear the dismissal of qualitative research approaches on several grounds at the meeting I recently attended. First, because we still seem to be falling back into the now redundant argument of quantitative or qualitative research methods, as if we had such a richness of research that we can afford to be so choosy. The international music therapy research community has seen the folly of this separation at least ten years ago and those of us supporting doctoral studies have constantly pleaded for an openness in methodological considerations. In Germany, we are either so far advanced that the rest of the research community needs to catch up; or more likely, we are still missing the point. Talking about resarch is not doing research.

Second, we seem to be confounding the purposes of research. There are academic research purposes and professional research purposes. When a doctoral candidate comes to me, then I expect that he or she will design a research project that will answer his or her research question appropriately. The answers will be based upon a methodology that fits the question the candidate is asking. This appropriate methodology may be qualitative or it may be quantitative, or it may be a flexible design. It may be a natural science answer based upon physiological changes (Fachner 2002a; Fachner 2002b; Fachner 2002c), it may be a musicological dissertation based upon musical and clinical considerations (Hoffmann 2001), it may be a philosophical considering the nature of consciousness (Herkenrath 2004), it may be an existential discussion using clinical and qualitative research approaches (Schmid 2003; Schmid and Aldridge 2004), it may be and educational study (Kern 2003) it may be a practice audit (Kusatz 2003) or it may be a straightforward clinical study (Jungblut and Aldridge 2004). All are relevant and meet the needs of a rich European academic tradition where the natural sciences rest alongside

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Aldridge, D. (2005) It must be a sign of getting old - Reflections on a music therapy research symposium. Music Therapy Today (online) Vol. VI (2) 178-184. available at http://musictherapyworld.net

the social sciences and humanities. We cannot afford to impoverish our culture by focussing on one approach alone.

The wider profession, however, needs studies that support the implementation of music therapy in terms of health care delivery. Therefore, quantitative clinical studies are necessary to meet the demands of evidencebased medicine, but these are not necessarily covered by academic research. Academic research makes a valuable contribution to a wider debate but at a doctoral level it must serve the purposes of the candidate and his or her institution, not necessarily the profession.

Third, if there is a demand for clinical trials, which I too believe are necessary, then there must be a massive change in the political structure of the music therapy professional organisations such that they cooperate one with another. Research is expensive. To carry out a clinical trial demands massive resources. I heard people talking of multi-centre trials but had to ask where in the profession is the expertise based on experience to carry out these trials? I know from experience how to design a trial, and believe me dear colleagues, enough people have tried to tell me recently how to do that, but design is one thing - implementation is another. If we look at the international music therapy scene, where the same demands apply, we have to ask why there are so few trials if the demand is there?

We have had such a demand for years and this demand will not go away.

Meta-analysis will not satisfy this demand either because successful meta analyses will need the requisite trials. We cannot escape the need for clinical studies and the only way to achieve suitable sample sizes is to cooperate. But first we need a staged strategy of research initiatives based on sound exploratory studies, small intervention studies, efficacy trails and then effectiveness studies.

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Aldridge, D. (2005) It must be a sign of getting old - Reflections on a music therapy research symposium. Music Therapy Today (online) Vol. VI (2) 178-184. available at http://musictherapyworld.net

In a recent study, we were promised help in recruiting patients suffering with aphasia from an eminent neurologist who was sure that he could find enough patients (Jungblut and Aldridge 2004). We would be still waiting now if had waited for his support. Eventually, we recruited from local self-help groups. Once we did that, we had difficulties in randomising patients to the trial because we did not have enough money for more than one part-time therapist. Any extra money that we could raise from a sponsor was used for transport costs and the external assessors necessary for a single-blind study. That was only small scale. For a multi-centre trials we would need external, assessment and more than one therapist, simply on grounds of validity and reliability. In addition, we need to have a research administration for the collection of research data, to the entry of data, to make sure that subjects and clinicians are in the right place at the right time and that assessment is rigorously carried out. Even if you can get all this knowledge from books, have you tried it out first? If so, then why hasn’t more been published?

A recent multi-centre trail has been published (Cassileth, Vickers, and Magill 2003). This was part of a broad research strategy that has an extremely coordinated research infrastructure with a strong background of research experience, adequate financing and excellent management and administration at the Integrative medicine Service, memorial SloanKettering Cancer Center, New York. It didn’t fall out of the sky and was based on a long term research strategy. The music therapist involved has a long career of being involved in quantitative studies, as well as qualitative research. The other two researchers include a bio-statistician, who is also a leading researcher in complementary medicine and editor of a leading journal in the field, and a senior physician researcher who is director of the Institute. These are impressive personnel resources that can also call upon a substantial administrative infrastructure and the nec-

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essary financial underpinning within an established research culture. We may have many of these resources but they are scattered and piecemeal.

Our only way to is to bring them together.

Finally, from the conversations that I have had over the last few years in terms of music therapy delivery, which reflect a longer discussion about complementary therapy in Europe and the United States (Aldridge 1989; Aldridge 1990a; Aldridge 1990b; Aldridge 1990c; Aldridge 1990d; Aldridge 1990e; Aldridge and Pietroni 1987), research is only one element in solving the problem. We need a political lobby that is strong and that demands a unity within the profession. The health care budget is fixed and controlled by a powerful medical lobby. The insurance companies say that a few research trials alone will not make any difference whatsoever. Such trials, however, will support a political lobby and a combination of a reasoned research strategy combined with political lobbying will advance our cause establishing music therapy’s rightful place in health crae delivery. Successful research cannot be achieved overnight, the profession needs a research and political strategy that proceeds in stages.

References Aldridge, D. (1989) Europe looks at complementary medicine. British Medical Journal 299, 1121-1122.

Aldridge, D. (1990a) Complementary medicine in Europe: some national perspectives. Complementary Medical Research 4, 1-3.

Aldridge, D. (1990b) The delivery of health care alternatives. Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine 83, 179-182.

Aldridge, D. (1990c) Making and taking health care decisions. Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine 83, 720-723.

References

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Aldridge, D. (2005) It must be a sign of getting old - Reflections on a music therapy research symposium. Music Therapy Today (online) Vol. VI (2) 178-184. available at http://musictherapyworld.net

Aldridge, D. (1990d) Pluralism of practice in West Germany. Complementary Medical Research 4, 14-15.

Aldridge, D. (1990e) Unkonventionelle Medizin und Gesundheitsversorgung in Europa. Natura Med 5, 388-394.

Aldridge, D.. and Pietroni, P. (1987) Research trials in general practice: towards a focus on clinical practice. Family Practice 4, 311-315.

Cassileth, B.., Vickers, A.. and Magill, L. (2003) Music therapy for mood disturbance during hosptalization for autologous stem cell transplantation. Cancer Prevention International 98, 12, 2723-2729.

Fachner, J. (2002a) Cannabis-induced topographic changes in pre/post EEG activity during rest and music perception. Brain Topography 14, 4, 350.

Fachner, J. (2002b) The space between the notes – research on cannabis and music perception. In (eds) In: Kärki, K.; Leydon, R.; Terho, H. Looking back, looking ahead – Popular music studies 20 years later. Conference proceedings of the 20th anniversary conference of the International Society for the Study of Popular Music, Turku, Finland; 308-320.

Fachner, J. (2002c) Topographic EEG changes accompanying cannabisinduced alteration of music perception – cannabis as a hearing aid?

Journal of Cannabis Therapeutics 2, 2, 3-36.

Herkenrath, A. 2004. Begegnung mit dem Bewußt-Sein von Wachkomapatienten. University Witten Herdecke.

Hoffmann, P. (2001) „Vom Phrasen dreschen und Phrasieren". Ein Beitrag zur Untersuchung musiktherapeutischer Improvisationen. Nervenheilkunde 20, 442-449.

Jungblut, M.. and Aldridge, D. (2004) Musik als Brücke zur Sprache - die musiktherapeutische Behandlungsmethode SIPARI bei Langzeitaphasikern. Neurologie & Rehabilitation 10, 2, 69-78.

Kern, P. (2003) Using a music therapy collaborative consultative approach for the inclusion of young children with autism in a childcare program. Doctoral dissertation Witten: University Witten Herdecke.

References

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Aldridge, D. (2005) It must be a sign of getting old - Reflections on a music therapy research symposium. Music Therapy Today (online) Vol. VI (2) 178-184. available at http://musictherapyworld.net

Kusatz, M. (2003) Das Krefelder Modell (KM). Stellenwert der Musiktherapie in einem multimodalen Behandlungskonzept bei subakutem- und chronischem Tinnitus im ambulanten Setting. Lengerich: Pabst.

Schmid, W. (2003) Music therapy with people suffering from multiple sclerosis. In G. Trias (eds) Music therapy and art therapy in neurodegenrative diseases. Barcelona: Fundaci贸n "la Caixa".

Schmid, W.. and Aldridge, D. (2004) Active music therapy in the treatment of multiple sclerosis patients: a matched control study. Journal of Music Therapy 41, 3, 225-240.

This article can be cited as Aldridge, D. (2005) It must be a sign of getting old - Reflections on a music therapy research symposium. Music Therapy Today (online) Vol. VI (2) 178-184. available at http://musictherapyworld.net

This article can be cited as

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Music Therapy Today Vol. VI (2) April 2005

Brain and Music Comments on music-related brain research

Winfried Pape

Abstract This paper is located within the context of general assumptions and findings of neuroscientific research and attempts to review, categorize and analyse the scientific debate and research findings related to, or addressing, musical phenomena. Comments on particularly relevant partial aspects (listening to music – learning, practising, music-making – consciousness/the subconscious – emotions/feelings and mind) which obviously do not cover the entire discussion1 lead to the suggestion that

1. A core issue is the relation between genes and behaviour: numerous structures and functions of the human brain develop in self-organizing brain processes, mainly environment-independent, and on the other hand in processes affected strongly by environmental influences and autobiographical factors (the latter mostly refer to complex perceptive processes, that is, to brain activities related to cognitive functions). Both processes are of at least equal relevance to genetic determinants. Current brain research has increasing doubts about a clear and simple relation between genes and behaviour, as suggested or propagated by some behaviour geneticists, that neglected the idea of the mouldability of the self. It is based, among other things, on the understanding that increasing complexity of an organism results in an extended repertoire of behaviour.

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musicology and music pedagogics should take an intensive interest in the subject.

Listening to music In recent years neurosciences met with a tremendous interest far beyond their own and other disciplines. Media reports on latest neuroscientific findings are published almost every month. 2003, even music made cover stories in the magazines SPIEGEL (July 31, 2003) and GEO (November 11, 2003) under the titles “Mathematik der Gefühle” (mathematics of emotions) and “Klang der Sinne” (sound of senses); but the resonance so far of neuroscientific studies in musicology and music pedagogics has been limited at best.

Neuroscientific research addressing musical phenomena in the 80s and 90s had a focus on studies on listening to music2, whereby the predominant measurement tool was electroencephalography (EEG), in accordance with the technical state of the art at that time. Today, more sophisticated instruments are used to measure brain processes in musiclistening and other musical activities, i.e. to determine functional and structural changes in the brain in relation to music, and also additional measurement techniques or a combination of these that will only be mentioned in passing in this paper.

Methods applied to measure brain activity are:

2. When we listen to notes (sounds)/music, electrical surges are sent through the brain via neuronal networks. For better understanding, the auditory process occurs via the inner ear, the brain stem (with at least four switch stations, e.g. filter of signals or calculation of transmission time differences between ears) and the thalamus (with its function of data transmission or suppression) to the primary auditory cortex (on the temporal lobe) as well as to the secondary cortices (arranged in a half circle around the primary cortex). Increasingly complex data analyses and parallel data handling processes take place simultaneously. Different brain regions handle the same data, with a higher involvement of left or right hemisphere respectively.

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a) methods to determine magnetic and electrical fields produced by neuronal processes (MEG and EEG) b) techniques to register local blood flow stimulated by neuronal excitation states (PET and MRT or fMRT).

All four methods are called imaging techniques.

MEG (magnetoencephalography) and EEG (electroencephalography) are specifically suitable methods to make the representation of the body in the brain visible. This applies e.g. to those brain regions that are responsible for certain limbs. Properly combined, MEG and EEG complement each other (imaging of brain regions that are hard to detect with MEG, but showing a more exact distribution compared to EEG). Up-todate medical equipment is provided with both systems.

PET (positron emission tomography) is or was one of the most important methods to explore cognitive functions of the human brain and the (so far) only method to study the relation between cognitive processes and neurotransmission.

MRT or fMRT (magneto resonance tomography or functional magneto resonance tomography) was mainly used to explore the visual system, motoricity of eyes and functional memory. Today the fMRT is used to explore all regions of the brain cortex and the structures below as well as all cognitive functions. fMRT also played a significant role in studies on brain plasticity (neuronal changes in learning processes).

The techniques described above require complex, computer-based mathematical analyses to decode the registered signals.

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In addition to the combination of MEG and EEG, researchers today try to combine all four methods.

The latest technical advance in fMRT is to use MRT for the entire body with considerably higher magnetic field strength (4 Tesla compared to 1,5 Tesla), which provides marked signals even when applied to one individual (location: research centre J端lich).

The purpose of studies into music-listening is to explore issues related to an existing or non-existent dominance of one side of the brain or localization of brain activities, effects on alert (vigilant) and attentive states, emotional reactions, differences between musicians and non-musicians, differentiation between specific partial aspects of music (e.g. melody, rhythm, sounds), musical learning processes as well as modalities of speech and music perception and processing. A few studies are quoted here as examples that attempt to identify differences between musicians and non-musicians, and topographical changes or lateralisation problems.

A study on differences between musicians and non-musicians, with 30 musicians and 13 non-musicians as test subjects, suggested that musical training caused an extension of that part of the cerebral cortex that is responsible for perception of sound (Pantev et al. 1998; measurement technique: MEG)3.

3. MEG (magnetoencephalography) registers via electrodes (in up-to-date equipment integrated in a hood or helmet) the magnetic signature of brain activities in real time (at the scalp; imaging with MEG signals of neuronal groups located deeper is almost impossible). All data on the conductivity and geometry of tissue are summarized in a three-dimensional framework structure. The spacial resolution is in centimeters (marginally better than in EEG), the temporal resolution is exact to milliseconds.

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If the soundness of such results is cast into doubt by sample size and composition in this study, then the same applies to studies of approximately the same empirical provenience that clearly go farther in their assumptions. They state that music-listening by musicians occurs more in the left part of the brain and is rather analytical, while music perception in non-musicians mainly occurs in the right part of the brain and is a more emotional or more holistic process (Bever/Chiarello 1974, Damasio/Damasio 1977; Hirshkowitz et al. 1978, Peretz/Babai 1992, Messerli et al. 1995, Vollmer-Haase et al. 1998). But one thing must be clear in this context: the reservation stated above does not refer to the relevance of the issues under discussion but to the dubiousness of conclusions that – apart from questionable sample sizes and/or compositions – are not sufficiently substantiated, not least because musical socialization phenomena were not considered. An attempt to associate „holistic listing“ to „right hemisphere“ and „analytical listening“ to „left hemisphere“ did not remain unchallenged because of research results indicating something different (Schuppert et al. 2000). Instead the suggestion was made that the raw structure of music is first processed in the right side of the brain, to be followed by a more detailed analysis in the left (Altenmüller 2002).

A team of researchers at the Leipzig Max Planck Institute for neurophysiological research4 performed a series of studies on “neurocognition of music”; ca. 200 adult test persons, including many who declared they had no ear for music, but also some professional musicians, listened to chord sequences (mainly on the piano, and equal in length and in volume;

4. For preliminary studies, for this research project and further projects by the group established by A. Friederici in 1998 see references, Kölsch (head of team). Also compare: „Jeder Mensch ist musikalisch“ (press release; www.mpg.de/pri00), „Harmonie im Hirn – jeder ist musikalisch“, „Spiegelbild der Sprache – Neurokognition von Musik“, „online ins Gehirn – EEG und MEG“ (www.cns.mpg.de/institut and www.stefan-koelsch.de/papers).

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repeated runs were varied with non-harmonic notes, a change in instruments and the addition of Neapolitan sixth chords).

According to the reports, the changes were perceived by all test persons, even those who thought of themselves as unmusical (measurement techniques: EEC and EKP; in additional studies MEG and fMRT)5. Increased brain activity was found whenever changes occurred within the respective chord sequences. Obviously these changes are registered earlier in the brain (first maximum activity after ca. 180 to 200 milliseconds).

Almost all brain regions that are in charge of speech production in the left hemisphere were found to become active on the right side – as in a mirror image – in music perception. This applies mainly to the area in the front right-hand side corresponding to the Broca area, and also to the right brain region in the temporal lobe opposite the Wernicke area. The Leipzig group of researchers demonstrated in further studies that in music perception those regions in the left hemisphere are involved that refer to speech – but not t the same degree as in the areas on the right.

This results in a statement corresponding to the results of other, also earlier studies, namely that the traditional localization of left hemisphere for

5. EEG (electroencephalography) registers the electric potential derived from the sum of all primary and secondary currents in real time (electrical signature is measured at the scalp). EEG permits to measure a relatively large amount of nerve cells. Similar to MEG, the temporal resolution is in the area of milliseconds (almost real-time).

Spacial localization, however, is even more difficult than in MEG. In this context it is pertinent to mention EKP (event-correlated potentials) that register the changes in EEG due to perception of external stimuli or internally produced events (images, memories). Not visible with the eye, such changes are extracted from EEG with averaging methods. On EEG studies in music listening see Fachner 2001: 204ff. fMRT (functional magneto resonance tomography) uses a main element of the human body: hydrogen. fMRT measures the behaviour of nuclear spins of hydrogen nuclei. An injection of radioactive substance is therefore not necessary. Repeated examinations are no problem (but one potential difficulty is that the test person has to enter a narrow and noisy tube). Similar to PET, fMRT has good spacial resolution (also in the millimeter region) but poor temporal resolution, like PET. fMRT is also called fNMR (functional nuclear spin tomography).

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speech and right hemisphere for music cannot be upheld any more and that speech and music may be processed similarly (see Konovalov/Otmakhova 1984, Petsche 1994 and others).

Without diminishing the significance of the Leipzig studies, a general conclusion must raise some doubt. It is an idle question whether Mozart „in a sense“ was hardly „more musical“ than „the baker next door“ – only „immensely more creative“; we may also remember that not Mozart but the baker next door went on with his modest pursuits. Brain research has gained significant insights into the way in which various brain regions work together, but nothing is known so far about the rules according to which the human brain works. The findings up to now do by no means substantiate the interpretation that „every human being“ is „musical, even highly musical“, or „every human being“ has „a musical knowledge“ that „his brain automatically applies, willingly or not“. Another assumption made in the study, worded far more carefully, that everybody has a „basic musical understanding“ as a congenital biological characteristic influenced by cultural background, appears as a sounder and more helpful point in favour of musicological and pedagogical theories6.

Generally speaking, the findings from neuroscientific studies into musiclistening are of limited evidence value since the techniques used impose narrow temporal restrictions on selected musical examples. In addition, they show a number of inconsistencies. Issues to explore are for example which brain regions in which temporal sequence are responsible for listening to more complex musical structures, and which specific brain activities form the basis of an assumed labour division between left and right upper temporal lobe.

6. Quotes from this section from „Harmonie im Hirn – jeder ist musikalisch“ and „Jeder Mensch ist musikalisch" (http://www. cns.mpg.de/institut/wissenschaft/ and http://www.mpg.de/pri00/; compare footnote on page 189).

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Learning, practising, music-making In the past, neuroscientific publications frequently underlined the importance of early imprinting phases, with periods from 1 to 3 and 1 to 5 (or 6) years of age. During those early imprinting phases, an individual reacts in a highly sensitive manner to environment stimuli that become imprinted in the central nervous system, due to genetic control mechanisms. After conclusion of early optimum learning phases, there are no further substantial changes in the brain architecture. This statement or theory, however, is now challenged by findings pointing to the opposite, demonstrating e.g. the variability of connections between neurons and a reproduction of nerve cells (required for learning processes that may occur only if nerve cells in certain brain regions are produced anew). Processes of adaptation to the experience of an organism were found in the central nerve system that may be summarized as neuroplasticity. By the way, neuroplasticity also applies to whole areas of the cerebral cortex whereby additional brain regions are available for specific tasks (compare Spitzer 2002: 174ff). In addition, studies on puberty have shown that a restructuring process takes place in parts of the cerebral cortex during that stage7. This applies mainly to a swelling and shrinking of grey cells in an area immediately behind the forehead at the age of eleven to twelve (gender differences). A shrinking of weaker nerve cells connected with decreased swelling is seen as significant evidence of personal maturation.

This refutes a doctrine proclaimed by neuroscientists for years according to which unchangeable and permanent fundaments of personality structure are only laid down in the first five or six years of life (or in childhood) and that everybody has to make do with his or her congenital supply of brain cells. The ability of the human brain to adapt and learn diminishes with advancing age but by no means as much as suspected.

7. Today the puberty phase is assumed to start at eleven to twelve years of age.

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A pertinent comment on the development of personality structure may be permitted: Those regions of the brain that govern important activities like personal relations, i.e. orientation in society, reflection of consequences of actions, or moral and ethical considerations, develop with the onset of, during, or after, puberty.

An early formation of basic traits of personality structure, however comprehensive this may be, has obvious consequences for learning in general and for an early start of learning in particular. Recommendations for early learning are common in musical education. However, many of these are not founded in theory; this may be due to the fact that musical education and musical psychology were (and in part still are) dominated by a unilateral orientation to Piaget’s developmental theory. But steadily expanding findings from brain research will provide opportunities for musical educationalists and psychologists to come to new understandings of musical learning, or early learning in this field. Consequently, I shall describe those few aspects published in neurosciences that refer to learning, practising and music-making.

In a study on activation of the human brain through playing of, listening to, and reading music (Sergent et al., 1992) with 10 professional pianists as test subjects, an activation of the left cerebellum was found to be caused by the playing of scales (measured with PET)8. This activation is accompanied by an activation of the left frontal region, overlapping with the premotorial area that is activated in writing words. Sergent et al. concluded that areas of the brain cortex become activated in listening to music and music-making that overlap with not identical areas which are involved in speech and speech perception. These findings show similarities with the Leipzig studies9.

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Results of a further study with professional pianists suggest the possibility of a close connection between the auditory cortex of the cerebrum and the motorial cortex, since listening to melody activates motorial brain centres, and on the other hand even a soundless pressing of keys stimulates metabolism in auditory areas. (Beginners on the piano show an increase in such effects with the number of piano lessons.) In addition, an activation of an auditory area in the right hemisphere was found in piano players that corresponds to the Broca area in the left side of the brain (Bangert/Altenm端ller 2003).

Associative systems, or spontaneous combinations of neurons, cover approximately 80 percent of nerve connections in the cerebral cortex.

Irrespective of characteristics, such connections are produced excessively. With nerve cell stimulation, those connections become stronger and are preserved that are stimulated at the same time, i.e. that react to characteristics that often coincide. Consequently, previous experience leads to structural changes. They are just as important as genetic struc-

8. PET (positron emission tomography) permits the imaging of changes of the local blood flow in the brain caused by neuronal activities (neuronal activities consume energy, the supply of which requires glucose and oxygen). The indicator with which blood flow may be measured externally is water, injected in a test subject in radioactively marked form (radioactive isotope or a molecule marked with it). PET (with a cylindric apparatus around the head) permits to register blood supply in the entire brain and to present it in a three-dimensional activity image. Spacial resolution is good (to millimeters) but temporal resolution is limited since quick neuronal processes cannot be registered by PET, nor is it possible to illustrate the anatomy of an analysed brain.

9. Two studies performed at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (Department of Psychology) that explore connections between instrumental play and/or musical training and linguistic memory reveal further concurrences. Children who began playing the piano, violin or recorder prior to their twelfth year have a particularly good memory for spoken language. Instrumental play is also assumed to support general physical changes in the brain that have a positive influence on other abilities (Chang et. al.

1998). Male students of 6 to 15 years, of whom 45 participants in the programme played in a band or orchestra, showed significantly improved verbal memory compared to students without musical training, measured after an observation period of one to five years (Ho et. al. 2003).

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tural changes. Transferred to instrumental play this means: early training of skills results in changes in the respective cortical region.

The idea was to find out how repeatedly required processes of extremely precise grips are reflected in the cerebral cortex; 9 professional violinists (and a professional guitar player) received a slight tactile stimulus to the fingers of the left hand and afterwards of the right hand, and in the right and left cortex the distance was determined between the cortical representation between thumb and small finger of the left hand, and between thumb and small finger of the right (MEG). The result is interesting for three reasons: a) the area in the cerebral cortex for the fingers of the left hand has a larger surface than that for the fingers of the right hand; b) the increase in the area for the left hand fingers is directly related to the onset of play on the violin (or guitar), that is, an increase in the area reflecting the left hand was found mainly in musicians who had started to play the violin (or guitar) before they reached their twelfth year10, c) for nonmusicians (right-handed) a clearly larger area was found for the fingers of the right hand compared to the fingers of the left (Elbert et al. 1995).

A detail from the study by Pantev et al. quoted earlier may serve to complement Elbert’s results: The issues under debate were a different representation of sounds in musicians and non-musicians, and also the question whether the musicians in this test revealed a connection between the increase in cortical representation of sounds and the respective start of instrumental play. The study indicated that those musicians who 10.Singer (1998: 50) points out that violinists who start playing the violin after their twentieth year show no enlarged reflection of the left hand in the cerebral cortex.

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started to learn an instrument before they had completed their eighth year showed an even stronger increase in the brain area reacting to sound than those who learned to play an instrument later in life.

A study last year addressed not the definition of specific brain activities in music-making but differences concerning the entire brain and found that professional musicians have more gray brain matter than amateur musicians and non-musicians (measurement technique: MRT, voxel based morphometry)11. A long-term study with American school children of five to seven years is intended to determine whether the differences found for musicians apply from birth on or are the result of continuous training (Gaser / Schlaug 2003).

Definition of consciousness and the subconscious The current discussion on consciousness and the subconscious, or a separation between the two, shows that a variety of classifications are used in this field. There is, for example, a differentiation between background consciousness (like experience of personal identity, control of one’s mental and physical action) and real consciousness (like sensory perceptions, thought, imagination, memory, wishes, intentions; compare Roth 2001: 193). Another classification principle involves an association with a cognitive (stress on intentional character), a phenomenal (stress on subjective and qualitative aspects), and an introspective or reflexive area (compare Pacherie 2004: 6ff). Independent of such differentiating classifications, however, there is a general consensus that the various types/ forms of consciousness originate from activities of the associative cortex.

However, the associative cortex is not seen as the only producer of consciousness, since – as may be heard frequently – without the influence of 11.Voxel based morphometry permits imaging of three-dimensional brain regions.

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neuromodulatory systems and the limbic system

(the hippocampus in

particular) that in themselves are located in the subconscious, there is no consciousness.

Conscious states are frequently defined by two characteristics: conscious experience, and the ability to find words for conscious states. In addition, what we find in the literature (compare e.g. Delacour 2004: 12ff) as criteria of consciousness are: alert state, so-called REM sleep (also called „paradoxical sleep“), and certain behaviours, e.g. the ability to register changes, to pursue a certain aim, to perform metacommunication.

All processes concerning the brain stem, the thalamus (control centre in the diencephalon) and the subcortical centres of the endbrain or telencephalon that occur without activities of the associative cerebral cortex are considered as subconscious. They also comprise phenomena like perception, learning, remembering, emotions and control of actions.

If, as described above, the general assumption is that consciousness and the subconscious are not just different states of the same cerebral system but two systems that differ from each other in brain anatomy and function, then we may differentiate between implicit (conscious) and explicit (subconscious) processes (further concept pairs are: procedural and declarative, automated and elaborated [or controlled] processes).

According to Roth (2001: 228ff) characteristics of implicit processes are that they occur quickly and without effort, are submitted to little deliberate control, require little attention and consciousness, are hardly susceptible to errors, and may be improved by practice.

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Explicit processes require cognitive reserves, are slow and laborious in many cases, demand consciousness and attention, as well as access to long-term memory.

Having defined two different systems, described their characteristics and in conclusion made the pertinent assumption, then we have to clarify how both systems work together. One possible answer is that more specific conscious states occur where the cognitive-emotional system has to handle phenomena that are not only relevant but also new. The precondition is a system working unconsciously that classifies all perceptions of the brain with quick access to various types of memory and according to the categories relevant/not relevant and new/known. Facts that are unconsciously categorized as not relevant do not reach the human brain, or only unclearly, while facts labeled as relevant and known lead to an activation of those processing areas that have dealt with these facts before (compare Roth 2001: 230). Similarly, in a two or three-step concept the level of the subconscious is associated with a central decision-making function for control of human activity.

The highly condensed description of the complex issue of consciousness versus the subconscious opens a wide field for debate (generally on the question in how far it may be assumed as reliable to focus on unconscious behaviour determinants rather than on conscious ones, and on details like memory, implicit and explicit learning, creativity) that are not the issue in this context. But a small excerpt on memory may serve to demonstrate how difficult the issues under consideration may really become if we try to relate them to music.

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Perception and storage of sensory stimuli occur first in the cerebral cortex. Memorizing of this perception occurs in human beings even if it is no conscious process. In this case we speak of implicit (or procedural) memory. It is seen as an important location of motorial learning, that is, the generation of abilities, and is far more heterogeneous than explicit (or declarative) memory. Apart from motorial skills (in neuroscientific literature you may often find the reference to piano playing) and cognitive abilities, the implicit or precedural memory is associated with the generation of habits, priming (reproduction of subconscious material), categorizing on the basis of prototypes, conditioning, and learning from habit.

Perceived stimuli that are to reach consciousness must be conducted from the cerebral cortex to the hippocampus to be processed there. The hippocampus is a kind of operation centre or switch-board and decides which information to return to the cerebral cortex to be stored there and made part of the explicit (conscious) memory. Explicit memory is subdivided into an episodic memory (personal experience, emotions associated with memories) and a memory for fact or knowledge.

Changes in the explicit memory are caused by experience(s); in the field of abilities it reacts mainly to practice, which requires much initial concentration for certain skills, for example in learning complex movement sequences (with a high activity of the involved cerebral cortex regions).

With increasing and successful absorption, however, due to transfer to the subconsciously acting motorial cortex and to deeper motorial areas (cerebellum, basal ganglia), practice requires less and less attention or control. Applied to instrumental play, this might for example mean that the frequent debate about „subconscious/conscious“ practising with a view to technique is more or less superfluous, since on the one hand a definite separation between „subconscious“ and „conscious“ is suggested, and on the other the fact is neglected that brain processes in preDefinition of consciousness and the subconscious

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paring movement and also difficult sensomotorial achievements often occur subconsciously. Moreover, this discussion ignores the inefficiency of a conscious, downward-directed control within the levels of the limbic system pointed out by brain researchers.

Emotions/feelings and reason Antonio R. Damasio and colleagues (mainly Hanna Damasio) explored the role of emotions/feelings in conscious processes. They concluded that emotions/feelings and reason cannot be separated from each other, and that emotions/feelings are the basic precondition for the emergence of consciousness (Damasio 1994, Damasio 2000)12. They based their assumption on the conspicuous behaviour of patients with disorders of the limbic system.

Current neuroscientific publications generally assume that reason and mind are embedded in the area of emotions/feelings. Their emergence and control is governed by the mainly subconsciously acting centres of the limbic system that are also responsible for the generation of memory organization, attention and consciousness control, as well as vegetative functions. These limbic centres are formed earlier than the consciously operating cortical centres. They also mark the limits within which the latter are active (compare Roth 2001: 451). According to brain researchers, emotions/ feelings are always involved whenever human beings make decisions or assessments, or control behaviour. They are the basis of rationality.

12.Damasio speaks of „emotion“ versus „feeling“ as two different kinds of phenomena.

In more recent psychological publications the terms emotion and feeling (also emotion and affect) are often used synonymously. According to Damasio emotions are „public“ events (like trembling, or blushing), while feelings reflect „inner, private“ processes. Feelings will only follow upon emotions when the brain has determined which changes have taken place in the body.

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Vingerhoets et al. (2003) in a recent study on differentiation between prosodic and semantic elements in emotional linguistic expression conclude that there is a clear division of labour between both brain hemispheres.

Both halves of the brain are activated when we listen to emotional sentences that express fear, anger, grief or joy (and also so-called neutral sentences); but they differ in the extent of lateralisation according to the respective task. When the 36 test persons were told to direct specific attention to the emotional expression of what was said, then the right half of the brain was more involved, while the instruction to focus on the content of a spoken sentence revealed a significantly stronger involvement of the left side. A conclusion of the study is that in assessing the emotional content of what we hear, there is always a simultaneous evaluation of the meaning; this corresponds to the general statements that levels of reason and emotion cannot be separated from each other.

In the context of emotions/feelings and learnings, it appears pertinent to underline the dependence of learning processes on evaluation systems, as underlined by brain researchers. These evaluation systems stemming from several core areas deep in the brain have to be activated so that learning processes can begin. Their activation occurs mainly when contents of perception are combined with emotions/feelings. Neither the experience-based changes of connections in early learning stages, nor learning processes in early adult phases are possible without such additional signals produced internally (compare Singer 1998: 51).

Specific studies on the difficult issue of music and emotions are still at an initial stage. First research efforts in this direction suggest that perception of consonant and dissonant sounds occurs prior to or separate from emotional assessment (Blood et al. 1999). Another study based on the gooseflesh effect indicates that music activates neuronal award systems and emotions that resemble significant stimuli like food or sex, or also artifiEmotions/feelings and reason

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cial drug-induced stimuli. In addition, music that is perceived as pleasant is assumed to reduce emotional reactions like fear or disgust (Blood/ Zatorre 2001). Findings from a third study that explored a possible dependence of cortical music processing on emotional reactions like fear or disgust seem to indicate that there is no generally definable, emotionindependent activation distribution, because emotional reactions determine the activation conditions in both hemispheres (SchĂźrmann et al.

2003)13.

If there is no separation between emotion and cognition, if emotions/feelings form the basis for rationality, that is, if without them there is no assessment nor behaviour control and learning processes are only successfully in combination with emotions/feelings, then a critical reassessment with regard to music and musical learning processes would require that not only traditional general textbook concepts (e.g. sensorics - cognition – motorics) but also the differentiation between cognitive, affective and psychomotorial regions prevailing in the literature (including curricula) be challenged or revised. With regard to instrumental play and practising, the question is whether and how emotional activations result in a consolidation of what was achieved through practice.

Critique of music-related neuroscientific studies Music psychological studies on the development of musical skills (partly including aspects of the musicality construct) that are frequently quoted in music-related neuroscientific literature for substantiation or complementation, mostly focus on elementary musical perception and elementary reproduction and production abilities, that is, on the exploration of

13.Common characteristic of all three studies is a sample size of a maximum of 16 participants.

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abilities that have not been generated through deliberate encouragement.

Studies of this type project a description of ability generation that is interesting in many respects but ultimately reveals an indistinct profile and biased perspective. As to research methodology, such poor definitions are due to the difficulty to correlate results that were gained on the basis of great differences in approach, research intention or methodology, even if the research questions were the same. Another problem is that results are frequently derived from samples of considerably varying sizes with widest ranges in age, or that sometimes there is no indication how samples were selected. As to contents, most studies do not consider structural aspects of socialization theory: musical, personal and social factors and developments in children/adolescents play a minor role only. The same applies to aspects of general and musical influences and interactions coming from the immediate local and social environment (persons, small groups, social networks) and from organized socialisation units and social organizations (compare Pape 2002). Moreover, it is hardly understandable that jazz and popular music, despite their social and individual relevance, are completely ignored in many studies.

In general, the two last points of critique (neglect of musical socialization aspects and exclusion of jazz and popular music) also apply to neuroscientific studies that explicitly involve music. Dimensions of musical socialisation are hardly taken into account, this means, aspects of personal development in the interaction of individuation and socialisation are not addressed at all in any of these publications. This is all the more astonishing since neuroscientists always underline the significance of environmental influence.

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A reason for the neglect of music socialisation might be that a relatively young discipline has to focus on certain research priorities at the beginning. But the above-mentioned considerations must not be lost in order to avoid bias; therefore, the discovered omissions should at least be a matter of debate.

There is an obvious focus on traditional art music as a subject of research: the majority of musical examples used in neuroscientific studies come from so-called classical music, but in most cases there are no indications of selection methods nor more details nor short musical analyses of the excerpts in question.

Popular music as the subject of research is the exception (Walker 1977, Mitkov et al. 1981, Behne/Lehmkuhl 1987, Behne et al. 1988, Field 1998). Moreover, examples from popular music are used for comparison with classical music in most cases. There are no deliberations on the music (with one exception see Behne).

Small sample size, also a characteristic of music-related neuroscientific studies, might be due to research costs or to the highly complex measurement tools that determine the scope of a study. Studies with small sample size are useful as preliminary studies. Researchers should, however, avoid overinterpretation, that is, a tendency to generalize results from such samples prematurely. Communications and reports in the media that tend to oversimplify anyway increase such trends considerably.

In most cases there is no debate on the significance of quality differences in musical examples used in neuroscientific research, or on the nature and extent of influences a laboratory setting may have on music-related studies. This applies not last to music listening where the laboratory setting alone is in direct contrast to all other situations in which persons who

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take part in such laboratory studies normally listen to music. Far more problematic are conditions in laboratory research if more complex musical elements are the subject under consideration. A strange example was a test with amateur and professional violinists who for measurements of brain activities were asked to enter a narrow tube and to simulate finger movements from passages of Mozart’s violin concerto in G major14.

First résumé A review of current neuroscientific research with a specific focus on music reveals that music-related issues are still of only marginal importance in the published literature, although music is mentioned with conspicuous frequency15.

The focus of music-related studies is mainly on music listening. This can only be a first step towards a research effort to define determinants of musical behaviour; but this is not necessarily negative. However, criteria for the selection of specific research questions appear to be rather random.

In contrast to studies on phenomena of musical perception, research into music-making, differentiation between consciousness and the subconscious or emotions/feelings is still in its initial stages. New research efforts have been announced for the German-speaking area in Leipzig (Max Planck Institute) and Hannover (Hochschule für Musik und The-

14.The study used fMRT with 8 professional and 8 amateur violinists and revealed that brain activities in professional violinists were not distributed over many brain regions but were concentrated on three regions: primary motorial centre, primary auditory cortex, and brain regions in the upper partial lobe (Lotze et al. 2003).

15.As in the „manifesto“ by leading German neuroscientists on present and future brain research where a Bach fugue is mentioned in the end (Elger, C.E et. al. 2004. 6, 37ff).

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ater). Obviously, research into emotional response to music is of particular importance to musical psychology and pedagogics.

From the specific perspective of musical pedagogics, some music-related neuroscientific studies suggest that everybody has basic musical perception. This is neither new nor surprising for musical educators. If inappropriate exaggerations are avoided then this stance may serve as an additional argument in favour of conceptual explanations in musical pedagogics, since obviously difficult questions, like the problem of musicality or talent, cannot be comprehensively illustrated to a wider public and are in danger of being reduced to catch-phrases.

Relevant for musical learning – and specifically for learning to play an instrument – is an early start, as frequently underlined by brain researchers; this is a point in musical pedagogics that must be widely advertised (need for consistent funding for early musical education, musical education in elementary schools and early instrumental play). In stressing the importance of early support we must not forget, however, that the development of social abilities that sets in during or after puberty and where music may play a significant part, is a decisive process in the development of personality structure.

Current findings in brain research (changeability of connections between neurons, new growth of nerve cells, neuroplasticity) also suggest that life-long learning, a core point in musical education for adults, is beyond question. Recently published results of a long-term study indicate that even in advanced age cognitive activities at least twice per week – with specific mention of instrumental play - may help to mobilize cognitive reserves and prevent or delay dementia.

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An early start of learning in the field of music normally means practice, and practice mostly equals procedural learning (learning of abilities). The significance and irrevocability of practising, a well-known fact in musical pedagogics, is confirmed by neuroscientific research. But there is still a need to discuss a series of controversial points where brain research, for technical reasons, cannot provide much support: they concern e.g. the success of practising in relation to daily duration, and duration over years (from onset of instrumental play) and also the motivation for practising, which is a core problem in music-making. An attempt to determine aptitude criteria for learning specific instruments on the basis of physiological phenomena would complicate the issue further.

In view of the complex matter, difficult methodology and the unaffordable costs of technical equipment it appears impossible that systematic musicology and musical pedagogics could pursue neuroscientific research and instigate studies from their end. Research requires interdisciplinary efforts. What can be done is to register, assess and comment findings and results gained from neuroscience that refer to music and therefore are relevant to musicology and musical pedagogics.

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Altenmüller, E. (2001): How many Music Centers are in the Brain?

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Großhirnaktivierungsmuster bei der Verarbeitung rhythmischer und melodischer Strukturen. In: Jahrb. der Dt. Gesellschaft für Musikpsychologie, 12. Wilhelmshaven: Noetzel. 89-109.

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Auzou, P. et al. (1995): Topographic EEG activations during timbre and pitch discrimination tasks using musical sounds. Neuropsychologia 33, 25-37.

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Chritchley, M. / Henson, R. A. (1977): Music and the Brain. Springfield, Ill.: Thomas.

David, E. (1989): Musikwahrnehmung und Hirnstrombild. In: Petsche, H. (Hg. 1989): Musik – Gehirn – Spiel. Basel: Birkhäuser. 91-102.

Gab, N. / Schlaug, G. (2003): The effect of musicianship on pitch memory performance matched groups. Neuroreport 14, 2291-2295.

Grossbach, M. /Altenmüller, E. (2002): Neurophysiologische Forschungsansätze zur Zeitverarbeitung in der Musik. In: Gruhn, W. (Hg. 2002): Hochschuldokumentationen zur Musikwissenschaft und Musikpädagogik. Musikhochschule Freiburg. Kassel: Bosse. 109125.

Jäncke, L. et al. (2000): Cortical activations in primary and secondary motor areas for complex bimanual movements in professional pianists. Cognitive Brain Research 10, 177-183.

Jäncke, L. (2001): Was ist so Besonderes an den Gehirnen von professionellen Musikern? Zeitschrift für Medizinische Psychologie 10, 107-114.

Jäncke, L. (2002): The case of a left-handed pianist playing a reversed keyboard: A challenge fort he neuroscience of music. Neuroreport 13, 1579-1583.

Jourdain, R. (2001): Das wohltemperierte Gehirn. Wie Musik im Kopf entsteht und wirkt. Heidelberg-Berlin :Spektrum Akademischer Verlag.

Krause, C.M. et al. (1999): Relative alpha desynchronisation and synchronisation during perception of music. Scand. Journal of Psychology 40, 209-215.

Münte, T. F. et al. (2002: The musician's brain as a model for neuroplasticity. Nature Neuroscience Reviews 3, 473-478.

Pape, W. (2004): Musikalische Wahrnehmungs- und Lernprozesse.

Bemerkungen zu neurowissenschaftlichen Ergebnissen und Annahmen. Diskussion Musikpädagogik 21, 42-50.

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Petsche, H. (1987): Gehirnvorgänge beim Musikhören und deren Objektivierung durch das EEG. In: Jahrb. der Dt. Gesellschaft f.

Musikpsychologie. 4. Wilhemshaven: Noetzel. 7-28.

Rauscher, F. H. et al. (1997): Music training causes longterm enhacement of preschool children's spatial-temporal reasoning. Neurological Research 19, 2-8.

Robertson, I. (2002): Das Universum in unserem Gehirn. Wie wir ungenützte Potentiale ausschöpfen können. München: Piper.

Roth, G. (1997): Das Gehirn und seine Wirklichkeit. Kognitive Neurobiologie und ihre philosophischen Konsequenzen. Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp tb. Wissenschaft.

Schlaug, G. et al. (1995): Increased corpus callosum size in musicians.

Neuropsychologia 33, 1047-1055.

Schlaug, G. et al. (1995): In vivo evidence of structural brain asymmetry in musicians. Science 267, 699-701.

Schlaug, G. et al (1995): Increased corpus callosum size in musicians, Neuropsychologia 33, 1047-1055.

Schlaug, G. et al. (1998): Macrostructural adaptions of the cerebellum in musicians. Society for Neuroscience 24, 842.7.

Singer, W. (2002): Der Beobachter im Gehirn. Essays zur Hirnforschung. Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp.

Verghese, J. et al. (2003): Leisure Activities and the Risk of Dementia in the Elderly. The New England Journal of Medicine. 25, 2508-2516.

Warrier, C. M. / Zatorre, R. (2002): Influence of tonal context and timbral variation on perception of pitch. Perception and Psychophysics 64, 198-207.

Zatorre, R. et al. (1994): Neural mechanisms underlying melodic perception and memory pitch. Journal of Neurosciences 14, 1908-1919.

Zatorre, R. et al. (2002): Structure and function of auditory cortex: music and speech. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 6, 37-46.

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Author information:

Prof. Dr. Winfried Pape studied musicology, pedagogics and german language in Hannover and Saarbrücken. After his doctoral thesis, work in an orchestra and chamber music (violincello) and professorship in Aachen he became head of the department of musicology and music education at University Giessen until 2002. He has been commitee member of the board of ‘Bundesfachgruppe Musikpädagogik’, ‘Association for the Study of Popular Music (ASPM)’ and now ‘Society for Contempory Music’ in Aachen. He has published several books (Instrumentenhandbuch, Köln 1971; Musikkonsum und Musikunterricht, Düsseldorf 1974; Studie zur Situation des Musikunterrichts und der Musiklehrer an allgemeinbildenden Schulen, Mainz 1982 [with Funk-Hennigs, Ott, Schaffrath]; Das Violoncello, Mainz 1996 [with W. Boettcher]; Amateurmusiker: Von der klassischen bis zur populären Musik. Perspektiven musikalischer Sozialisation, Frankfurt/M. 1999 [with D. Pickert]).

His published articles deal with youth and music, youth culture and popular music, music and socialisation, as well as several book chapters and dictionairies articles on music. His musical activities have covered several projects on free improvised music. winfried.pape@uni-giessen.de

This article can be cited as: Pape, W. (2005) Brain and Music - Comments on music-related brain research. Music Therapy Today (online) Vol. VI (2) 185-214. available at http://musictherapyworld.net

Author information:

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Music Therapy Today Vol. VI (2) April 2005

Is the Future of Music Generative?

Paul Brown jeddy3@tele2.fr

Executive Summary Generative music was a term coined by Brian Eno to describe the music he created using SSEYO’s computer music software program, Koan1.

Generative music is created by the composition of music within a system or process which means that musicians, artists, producers, and to some extent the composer, are absent from the creation process. The generative music composer, besides defining the musical parameters within the piece, essentially separates himself from the creation of the final piece of music. As musicians, artists and producers are superfluous to the generative music creation process the proliferation of generative music systems or processes to create music could have an affect on current music production processes and the people who work with them. Also, the intention of generative music is to produce a unique piece of music each time

1. Koan is examined in Section “Current Generative Music Related Applications” on page 248 of the article 215

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the generative music process or system producing it is reset and therefore means that generative music in its purest form is not recorded. As it is not recorded no copyright subsists in the music produced by the generative music system or process. Because no music copyright exists within pure generative music the role of traditional music companies in relation to generative music such as collection societies, record labels and publishers, which rely on copyright subsisting within music to allow them to carry out their day-to-day business, is brought into question.

The aim of this report is to address this question as best it can: “Is the future of music generative?” In other words does generative music have the potential to change the structure of the music industry and the way in which people create and listen to music in the future? The question may be bold but it is one that needs to be addressed in order to ascertain the extent to which generative music could go to change the current situation and then lay the foundations for a structure that will reach that position.

Recent history reminds us of the perils of ignoring the potential of technological advances in relation to music. The music industry largely failed to realise the potential of the Internet, dismissing it as merely a way for academics to offer and transfer information. As a consequence, the music industry has been struggling to cope with the Internet’s proliferation and the number of music-related applications and services that have appeared as increasing bandwidths have enabled music files to be exchanged over the internet with greater and greater ease. It would be unwise, therefore, to simply dismiss generative music as “just music made by computers”.

The report looks at the history of generative music, the validity of generative music as an art form, how generative music is produced and experienced and then looks at generative music releases. The next section of the report examines generative music and its relation to copyright then in the following section looks at its relationship with, and potential effects on, Executive Summary

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traditional music businesses such as PRS, MCPS, PPL, publishers and record labels. Current generative music creation applications such as Koan and MadPlayer are then considered followed by a look at other cultural industries in which generative applications are present, where generative music systems are being developed and where generative music systems could be applied.

In its conclusion the report recommends that generative music systems be initially developed for “on hold” music services and public places and then as generative music is accepted develop generative music systems for the domestic environment and health services where music is used for therapy. The report also recommends that a new business model be developed in tandem with generative music systems to accommodate generative music and its creation.

Introduction “Generative music is commonly agreed to describe music in which a system or process is composed to generate music rather than the composition of the direct musical event which will result from that system. The generative composer has only indirect control the final musical result, and the creativity of the compositional process is found in the decisions about how the system will operate and the rules inside the system”(Rich 2003, p 17).

The simplest example of generative music is the music produced by wind chimes. In this case the wind chime is the generative music system or process and craftsperson constructing and positioning1 the chime is the generative music composer. The craftsperson decides what the overall characteristics of the sound produced by the chime should be by the

1. It is more likely that the positioning of the wind chime will be carried out by the subsequent owner Introduction

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materials that he uses to make it. Materials generally used to produce wind chimes are bells and metal rods with larger bells or longer metal rods producing lower notes and smaller bells or shorter metal rods producing higher notes. The craftsperson decides the size of the bells, the length of the metal rods that should be used and where they should be positioned in relation to each other. When the wind chime has been constructed the craftsperson (or owner) then decides where the chime should be positioned so that the wind can pass through it to produce music. This could be in a sheltered place where the wind is gentle or a more exposed position where the wind is stronger. At this stage the craftsperson’s influence on the music that the wind chime produces ends and nature takes over to produce the final piece of music.

The music produced by the wind chime is random. Computers have enabled generative music systems or processes to be created where the generative music composer has more control over musical parameters within the system or process and therefore the final music produced.

Generative music software programmes such as Koan Pro, for example, enable the composer to have control over more than 200 musical parameters. In the wind chime example the musical parameters over which the craftsperson has control are the size and position of the bells, the length and position of the metal rods and the final location of the wind chime itself. Like other generative music systems or processes the wind chime produces music without the intervention of musicians, artists or producers. The fact that musicians, artists, producers and to a large extent the composers are absent from the creation process means that a proliferation of sophisticated generative music systems or processes could have a significant effect on traditional production methods and the people who currently work with them.

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Another important aspect of generative music is that when a generative music process or system is reset whilst the overall characteristics of the music are similar to the previous piece of music produced by the system or process the actual music itself is different. Using the wind chime as an example again, if the wind chime was taken down and positioned somewhere else the characteristics of the music produced would be similar to the music produced in the original location but the actual notation of the music produced by the wind in the new position would be different.

Because the intention of generative music production is to produce a unique piece of music each time the process or system producing it is reset this means that generative music in its purest form is not recorded.

As it is not recorded, like the music produced by the wind chime, no copyright subsists in the music produced by the generative music system or process.

At the Cybersonica festival in 2002 John Eacott and Mark d'Inverno, from the University of Westminster, presented their ideas for iHiFi1 as part of the festival’s symposium. Returning to Cybersonica the following year I naively expected to see a further presentation giving updates on the progress of the development of the iHiFi project. Alas, the project was absent from the festival programme and had been assigned to the ‘interesting idea at the time’ bin, its instigators having moved onto other projects. This, to me, seemed a terrible shame. Here was an idea that with appropriate funding and development could be realised as a commercial product. To me the development of generative music-related applications such as iHiFi would offer the individual greater empower-

1. iHiFi is a generative music system that is an extension of the domestic HiFi system. It’s aim is “provide music according to taste, mood and activity” ” (Eacott and d'Inverno 2002, p 2) and is discussed in more detail in Section “Generative Music Releases” on page 230) Introduction

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ment to satisfy his or her specific tastes and choose exactly what he or she wanted to hear, when and where he or she wanted to hear it. Generative music would at last, I thought, free individuals from the tastes and clutches of record company executives ensconced in ivory towers and give them the freedom to make choices about what they wanted to listen to themselves.

This report sets out to explore the nature of generative music and its possible effects on traditional music business practices and the way that we create and experience music in the future.

The report looks at the history of generative music, the validity of generative music as an art form, how generative music is produced and experienced and then looks at generative music releases. In the next section the report examines generative music and its relation to copyright and then looks at its relationship with, and potential effects on, traditional music businesses such as PRS, MCPS, PPL, publishers and record labels. Current generative music creation applications such as Koan and MadPlayer are then considered followed by a look at other cultural industries in which generative applications are present, where generative music systems are being developed and where generative music systems could be applied.

There are many ways in which generative music can be produced. These include the use of random numbers to represent and change parameters within the generative system, by using Markov Chains and Neural Nets which are networks based on both randomness and choice. Generative music can also be created using Iteration systems such as Chaos, Fractural and Automata systems that carry out the same procedure continually taking the final output of the last stage of the composition as input for the next stage. Generative music is also created using data mapping tech-

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niques by using inputs from external sources to influence the creation of the music within the generative music system.

This report, however, will concentrate mainly on generative music created using software programming environments such as MAX/Msp, Pure Data, Supercollider and C++ where stochastic procedures, in which there are both pre-programmed and random elements, are used in the creation process and those which use data mapping techniques in conjunction with these environments to create music.

The term ‘pure’ generative music is used in the report to describe music that has been produced by a generative music system or process. The term ‘fixed’ generative music is used to describe generative music that has been produced by a generative music system or process and subsequently recorded. Where neither term is specified it should be assumed that reference is being made to ‘pure’ generative music.

Generative music is an emerging field. While the Internet is populated with articles about Brian Eno and Koan there is little academic study dedicated specifically to generative music. Academic institutions that do devote time to the subject include Tod Machover’s team at Massachusetts’ Institute of Technology, John Eacott and Mark d’Inverno at the University of Westminster, Andrew Gartland-Jones and Alice Eldridge at Sussex University and Eduardo Reck Miranda at Plymouth University.

Of these institutions Westminster is alone in its interest in the development of generative music applications that offer alternatives to conventional commercial music applications and products.

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History of Generative Music “I’ve always been lazy I guess. So I’ve always wanted to set things in motion that would produce far more than I had predicted” (Eno 1996) The earliest example of a generative system in music can be found in wind chimes of prehistoric times. The Aeolian Harp, first used by the ancient Greeks, was a more advanced generative system based on the wind chime where gut strings of different thickness are tuned to resonate in unison with each other. Rising and falling harmonies are then produced when air blows over them. W.A Mozart’s dice game, Musikalisches Würfelspiel, was the first generative system to involve notation.

Within the game a series of short phrases are selected based on the roles of a dice and combined to form a two part waltz.

The composer John Cage was also interested in aleatoric or “chance music” compositions. His 1952 piece, “Four Minutes And Thirty Three Seconds”, was first performed by pianist David Tudor at Woodstock in the States. The score for the piece consisted of three movements in conventional notation with blank measures. Tudor lifted the piano lid to signal the beginning of the piece and lowered the lid after 4” 33’ to signal the end. The content of the piece was formed from the random background ambience throughout the duration of its performance.

Not all generative systems are completely aleatoric. Serialist composers such as Anton von Webern used extreme mathematical precision to create their compositions. Steve Riech’s 1965 piece “It’s Gonna Rain” was created using six tape loops of varying lengths that were played to form a complex set of overlap points where combinations of the same ambient textures are rarely heard. In Terry Riley’s “In C”, the performer moves along at his own speed through 53 recurring figures creating a piece of varying length with a non-stop pulse, repetitive themes and interlocking History of Generative Music

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modal melodies. Reich’s tape works led Brian Eno to establish the compositional features and principles of ambient music. He then subsequently became interested in creating musical systems that produced music of infinite length that never repeated itself rather than linear works that had a fixed structure and time frame. His aspiration was realised when he received a copy of SSEYO’s Koan music software in 1995. Eno subsequently coined the phrase “generative music” to describe the music produced by the software.

Inevitably, and more recently, the algorithmic processes used to create generative music have been carried out using computers. A number of music programming environments such as MAX/MSP, Supercollider, and PureData exist to achieve this: MAX/MSP is a graphical programming environment that was developed by IRCAM (Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique) in Paris in the early 90s where users can create their own software using a visual toolkit of objects that are connected together using virtual patch cords (rand()% 2004).

The Supercollider programming environment was developed by James McCartney in the mid 90s. Now a free program since McCartney’s move to Apple, it uses “a text based object orientated language running inside a SmallTalk core with a graphic user interface creation tool and a simple help facility” (Rich 2003, p 22). The user is able to process audio in real time and create music applications, compositions, interactive performances and installations.

PureData is similar to MAX/Msp and was developed by Miller Puckette, one of the original team that developed MAX at IRCAM. It is another free software system with ongoing developments and releases. Slightly less user friendly than MAX it is a more open system that allows users to customise their software (rand()% 2004).

Director and its cousin Flash are commonly used to produce visual content for CD-ROMs and websites although they can also be used to create simple generative pieces.

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C++, Java and Perl are powerful programming languages and can achieve a wide range of conceptually abstract possibilities. They are, however, difficult to learn and require high levels of skill.

Experiencing Generative Music GENERATIVE MUSIC PRODUCTION

“It’s not hard to create ok generative music that gets 95% of the way to sounding good. The difficult part is to go the last 5% by making the algorithm clever” (Machover 1997; cited by Bunn 1997) One of the questions often asked is whether the product of modern generative systems or processes can be described as music because they often rely heavily on computers to produce the music. Conventional music notation is a mathematical representation of music in the same way that generative music algorithms are a mathematical representation of music.

The difference is that conventional notation is interpreted and performed by musicians and generative music algorithms are interpreted and performed by the computer with certain parameters within the software environment that creates the music being influenced by both the user or external environmental fluctuations converted into digital data.

Another question asked in relation to generative music, also because of its heavy reliance on computers, is whether the methods employed to produce generative music are merely technical and cannot be described as artistic. It can be argued that a programmer is engaged in a creative act when he is developing a generative system and that “programming is no less an art form than painting is a technical process” (Cox & Ward 1999).

Claims that generative music, therefore, lacks artistic credibility because of the absence of many aesthetic decisions made by the composer are becoming less and less relevant. So too are claims that generative music compositions are the merely activities performed by programmers and Experiencing Generative Music

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technicians. The convergence of technology with art-based disciplines means that computers are becoming an integral component in the production of many forms of art. The technician and the programmer are the new artists in this age of technology.

Until the development of friendlier user interfaces for generative music systems current programming environments such as MAX/MSP, Supercollider and PureData will require advanced levels of skill and knowledge of programming to produce generative music. Koan, examined later in the report, is a simpler system to use but its output is seen to be limited to manipulating pieces pre-programmed by its development team (Eacott 2000). An accomplished generative music composer who uses programming environments like MAX/MSP, Supercollider and PureData is able to compose in “terms of gestures and middle level musical structures” (Pope 2004) enabling high level notations to be built without the need to write each individual notes enabling the program to “fill in the gaps”.

In comparison musicians who use linear music software programmes such as Acid, Logic, Cubase and Protools tend to get bogged down with infinitesimal details and consequently often find themselves ignoring or missing the bigger picture. For example, too much time and attention spent on achieving the right sound on, say, a rhythm track of a linear recording may affect the overall sound of the recording so much that original ideas or intentions for the overall recording are lost. Also unlike recorded music, generative music is non-linear but not necessarily always aleatoric or random music. In the case of the MAX/MSP, Supercollider and PureData programming environments stochastic procedures are often used to “integrate random choice into the decision making process” (Roads 1996). Current generative music systems, therefore, offer the tools and framework to sow “compositional seeds” (Eno, 1996) to produce music.

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LISTENING TO GENERATIVE MUSIC

“I think it's possible that our grandchildren will look at us in wonder and say: ‘You mean you used to listen to exactly the same thing over and over again?’” (Eno 1996) Listening to recorded music is a modern phenomenon. Before the arrival of the gramophone record in order to experience music most people had to attend a live performance to do so. The same piece of music was never exactly the same with each performance creating a different and unique experience for the audience. Modern linear recording of music lacks the variability of live music however much the sound technician attempts to create a “live sound” in studio recordings. Generative music contains elements of both modern linear recordings and live music. Although generative music is unlikely to substitute modern linear recordings and live music completely in the future it could become a viable third alternative when people consider how they are going to experience music (Eno 1996).

But can generative music compositions be enjoyed in the same way that we enjoy our favourite CDs? Although a generative music system produces a unique piece of music, each time the system is reset certain elements in the piece such as melodic or rhythmic elements that the system produces may appear in later incarnations and evoke the same feelings of pleasure and appreciation that the elements did the first time they were heard.

The common test of the validity of any linear piece of music is whether it passes the “humming test” (Eacott 2001). Melody is the component of a composition that listeners retain in people’s memory. Would the music produced by a generative music system stay in our consciousness and reappear as we find ourselves humming a piece later on? As equally important as the melody are the arrangement and sonic qualities of the piece that enable the listener to experience the energy and emotion of the

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piece. Experiencing generative music is more akin to listening to a radio station where the listener tunes into different stations to find music that he likes. He also has a certain amount of other interaction with other controls at his disposal such as volume, treble and bass. These basic controls by themselves can have significant affects on the listening experience.

The reoccurrence of elements that evoke memories of previous experiences of the music may not in fact be important. The real importance may lie in the skill of the generative music composer to consistently produce music that evokes feelings of pleasure on hearing the piece the first time round. The generative music composer should also aim to produce music that is accessible. Additionally, there needs to be an element of repetition and predictability in the generative composition together with variation to maintain the interest of the listener.

LIVE PERFORMANCES OF GENERATIVE MUSIC

Gesture and spectacle disappear into the micro-movements of the laptop performer’s wrists and fingers. From the audience’s view the performer sits motionless, staring into the luminous glow of the laptop screen while sound fills the space by an unseen process”. (Cascone c 2002) Conventional music is generally performed in a live environment to an audience by musicians playing conventional instruments. This could be anything from an orchestra playing in a large concert hall, a rock band playing in live venue to a solo acoustic artist playing in the back room of a local public house. In these live settings the interaction between the audience and performers together with the audience’s appreciation of the craftsmanship employed by the musicians are integral to the enjoyment and quality of the live music experience.

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The appreciation of performances of generative music in a live environment is difficult. The main difficulties are the barrier that the position of the laptop in relation to audience makes together with the complexity of the programs that run on the machines to produce the music and people’s perception of lap top music in general. The audience may understand that some software programme is producing music but may not be aware that it is not simply a ready made sequencer (Collins 2003) that is performing this operation but a composer that is manipulating parameters within custom made systems or processes constructed using software such as Supercollider, MAX/Msp of Pure Data. To the uninitiated or disinterested there is nothing particularly dynamic or exciting about watching someone clicking a mouse or some other desktop input device attached to a lap top computer. To the initiated and interested the swift changes and manipulation of code real time may be as powerful as experiencing a live rock or classical concert. The generative music performer therefore can employ just as much skill in his craft as a lead guitarist in a band or solo violinist in an orchestra do in theirs in order to evoke a reaction from the audience, albeit to a minority section of the audience.

So how could the sense of excitement that the lap top performer feels as he programmes live be conveyed to the wider audience? One suggestion is to project the performer’s manual manipulations on a screen behind the stage to enable the audience to understand or at least appreciate what is going on behind the lap top lid to produce the music (McLean 2003; cited by Collins 2003). It is unlikely, however, that members of a lay audience will be even aware of many of the programs used by the performer particularly where live coding is used let alone understand them.

Another more practical solution may be if the lap top performance were combined with a visual element such as live manipulation of graphics or video using programmes such as Jitter, GEM or Visual Jockey caused by

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the music that the generative music performer produces. This will enable the audience to understand that the generative music performer is actually producing music behind the laptop screen because the projected graphics or video streams are being affected in real time by the music that they hear.

The interactive capabilities of computers also mean that control devices other than mice, which limit the performer to altering one slider or parameter within the programme at one time, could be used. Such control devices could also bring a human element to the performance. Gestural nuances could bring interesting dynamics and subtleties of phrasing and articulation to the performance. The performer may not only affect the electronic musical events but also the electronics could also affect the performance of the performer creating a human-machine symbiosis live on stage. By adding sensors the sounds of traditional instruments can be manipulated. Entirely new instruments can be also be built to interact directly with the computer.

A dancer, for example, could bring a more dynamic and engaging performance that is interesting enough to sustain the attention of the audience using control devices such as the Very Nervous System (Rokeby 1999; cited by Kieslar 2001) which detects movement with a defined performance space or the Control Suit (NOTHAM 2000; cited by Kieslar 2001) which is equipped with sensors allowing the performer to create sounds by tapping the body. Other control devices include the BodySynth (Van Raalte 1999; cited by Kieslar 2001) in which sensors detect muscle changes and the Midi Dancer system (Coniglio 2000; cited by Kieslar 2001) which uses flex sensors and a transmitter to send joint angle variations to a computer.

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The addition of other elements in a live performance of generative music may create an unnecessary detraction of attention away from the expertise that the laptop performer not only has employed in creating the custom made programs that he or she uses but also the skill in which he manipulates the programs during a live performance. After all should the laptop composer even need to fall in line with convention and create a “memorable” experience for his audience? Maybe it is just a matter of education and the audience needs to adjust to experiencing a live performance aurally rather than visually in the same way that audiences had to adjust to new ways of experiencing music when the radio and gramophone arrived.

GENERATIVE MUSIC RELEASES

”Contents may vary” (Cover of Morpheus CD Rom 2001) Morpheus is a Mac only CD-Rom of fluid dance music (Eacott 2001).

Rather than an audio CD where the performance of each track is linear and fixed all the 16 tracks dance music tracks were programmed in Supercollider to enable a unique performance each tracks to be played when they were either selected or reset. Although the characteristics such as melody, instrument sounds, rhythms and arrangements are changed there is a recognisable thread running through the track each time a new version is played, rather like a remix (Eacott 2001).

Part of the brief for the Morpheus project was to produce tracks of a limited duration of between 3 and 8 minutes. It is unusual for a generative work to be time limited. It may have been more appropriate to either move on to the next track or another track randomly chosen every 3 to 8 minutes with some form of cadence to give a sense of separation between tracks. Morpheus is also non-interactive and has no graphic interface whatsoever. Again this is unusual as the one would expect the user to

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have some control over the output of music such as the tempo, instrumentation or rhythm of the piece.

But is a physical release in the form of a CD-Rom in fact relevant to generative music? The music industry is finding that more and more consumers are turning to the Internet and buying mp3s through downloads rather than audio CDs which are quickly becoming an outmoded concept.

The Internet is also an ideal medium for the delivery of generative music as the storage requirements are small and transfer of generative algorithms can be carried out over the slowest connections. Koan files for example are generally smaller than midi files and between 10k and 20k.

Nevertheless, whereas “soft” players such as Realplayer and Winamp exist to play mp3s on PCs and Macs, neither a universal algorithm format nor soft player exist for generative music. If creators of generative music hope to utilise the Internet to distribute and profit from their work then both of these issues need to be resolved. The iHiFi project (Eacott and d'Inverno 2002) goes some way to laying the foundations for addressing these issues.

The iHiFi project proposes a generative music system that is both interactive and autonomous. The aim of iHiFi is “to provide music according to taste, mood and activity” (Eacott and d'Inverno 2002, p 2) in the domestic environment and be an extension of the conventional HiFi system. Through the use of sensors the iHiFi system would be able to detect and, based on information that has either been pre-programmed or gathered, even predict an activity or situation within the domestic environment and play appropriate music to suit that activity or situation. For example the system would detect that dinner was about to be served and play appropriate music for that activity. It could also detect the presence of a particular person within the environment and, based on information

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that it held on that person’s preferences, play appropriate music for that person.

Through the development of a number of intelligent agents the system would be autonomous and be able to act without intervention, able to learn from its mistakes, respond to changes in its environment however small, be able to achieve long term goals through planning, be able to prioritise its operations, develop a social awareness or relationship with its users and those that they socialise with, communicate with other systems and be mobile. Agents would convert information about the environment and the user into mathematical data that would in turn affect the construction of the music produced by the system (Eacott and d'Inverno 2002).

Such parameters affected would include the instrument types, style, tempo, tonality and arrangements of the composition. Algorithms for compositions could be stored on a web based server ready for instantaneous download when requested by the iHiFi system as the environment around it changes (Eacott and d'Inverno 2002).

The development of a prototype for the iHiFi is a momentous task requiring the input of specialists from a number of different disciplines to achieve its aims. As an interim development and to pave the way towards the iHiFi system attention could be turned once again to the Mopheus project.

Instead of installing algorithms for generative compositions on CD-Rom algorithms could be installed on a web based server. In this way a database of generative algorithms could be built and developed on a central server enabling both composers to upload and users to download algorithms.

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The addition of a software and graphical interface would enable the users to influence the type and order of compositions and also alter certain parameters within the composition. Additional inputs could also be added via an additional hardware interface that monitors fluctuations in the immediate external environment in much the same way that WeatherPlayer, an online audio installation designed by Owain Rich, does.

WeatherPlayer uses data mapping techniques and interprets atmospheric conditions such as light, temperature, wind and humidity as sound. The development of such a system may be more manageable, requiring fewer resources and be an important precursor to the iHiFi.

Generative Music and Copyright Copyright and the ownership of copyright are the essential building blocks of the music industry. Without them many organisations within the music industry would find it difficult, if not impossible to function.

This section of the report looks at the issues of copyright and copyright ownership in relation to generative music.

The production of generative music poses interesting questions in relation to copyright ownership. Is the composer, and therefore copyright owner, the person who decides how the system will operate or is it the person who creates the system or process that creates the music based on those decisions? Also if the intention of generative music is to produce a unique composition each time the system or process is initiated or decisions changed within the system or process then there is no need for a hard copy of recording of the work produced. Along with the question of ownership this poses another question: when does the copyright in the work commence and also how long does it or should it subsist for. If the intention is to produce a unique title each time the system or process is

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reset then would there really be any need for a term of copyright for that work to last any longer than its performance.

Section 9 (3) of the Copyright Designs and Patents of 1988 states that “the author of a computer generated work is the person by whom the arrangements necessary for the creation of the work are undertaken”.

Section 11(1) goes onto say that author will be the first owner of the copyright work and Section 12 (7) reveals that the life of copyright of a computer generated work is 50 years from the end of the calendar year in which it was made. In the case of a generative work the author will usually be the owner of the software that produced the music.

This, of course, assumes that the work generated is recorded, however, the intention of generative music is to produce a unique work each time the generative music system or process is reset. The only exception would be if the work is synchronised to a film or television programme.

Section 3 (2) of the Act tells us that copyright will not subsist in a work “unless or until it is recorded in writing or otherwise”. This includes making a video, tape, CD or digital recording of the work as well as a musical score. Therefore in order for copyright and therefore copyright ownership to exist, the generative work needs to be recorded. If it is recorded copyright will subsist from the time when the work is recorded, again Section 3(2) of the Act. Copyright will expire at the end of the period of 50 years from the end of the calendar year in which it is made, Section 12(7) of the Act as amended by the Copyright and Related Rights Regulations 2003. A separate copyright will exist in the recording of the generative work and will be last for a period of 50 years from the end of the calendar in which it was made. If the recording is released or broadcast within the 50 year period then copyright will be extended for a further 50 years.

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Nevertheless, even if the generative work is recorded there could still potentially be a question about copyright subsisting in the work (Harris 2004). The “sweat of the brow” method used in the UK determines whether somebody has expended enough effort in creating a particular work and whether they deserve copyright. If it were proven that there was insufficient musical merit in the production of the generative work then the existence of copyright may not be justified. It could easily be argued that there is little music merit in producing a generative title. For example, the owner of the generative music system that produces the generative work has little influence on the musical output of the generative system or process save for decisions regarding the initial settings of parameters such as tempo, tonality, type of instruments and style. Therefore, despite the law indicating that copyright subsists in a generative work, if challenged, the courts could prove otherwise.

The implications of the absence of copyright and therefore copyright ownership in generative music in relation to the music industry are discussed in more detail in the next section.

Generative Music and the Music Industry The authenticity of the “GM Manifesto”1 of 2001 is debatable. It asserts that “generative music is a spectre that is haunting the music industry” with the established “old guard” of the industry forming an alliance to quash its existence. The Manifesto sees auto-generative systems as a threat to traditional music production, record companies and distribution.

It also sees a time when advances in science and technology will also allow music to become self regulating, self generating and even self con1. Included in an article entitled “Mediaspace: Part 2” edited Mike Phillips in Digital Creativity. The author of the GM Manifesto is unknown.

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suming with the consumer being “freed from the tyranny of the rewind/ play button”. The previous section of this report revealed that the way in which generative music is produced raises interesting copyright issues.

Whilst the generative world, predicted by the authors of the GM Manifesto, may be a long way off this section looks at how copyright issues and developments in auto-generative processes, or rather generative music systems, could affect some of the businesses in the music industry.

COLLECTION SOCIETIES

PRS. The Performing Right Society Ltd (PRS) is a non-profit making body that administers the “performing right” of some 38,000 members which include composers, songwriters, lyric authors, arrangers, music publishers, and successors to estates of deceased members. The “performing right” means the right to either perform a work in public or “communicating” the work to the public which includes broadcasting, broadcasting on demand, use of music on the Internet, interactive services and the inclusion of a work in a cable or satellite programme service. Film synchronisation right in any musical work specially written by a member for a film is also controlled by PRS. Writers (composers, lyric authors, songwriters and arrangers) may join PRS provided one of their works is either performed live in public or broadcast and proof of the performance or broadcast has been submitted.

Proof of a broadcast within a programme in a television or radio broadcast, cable or satellite transmission should be presented in the form of a letter from the programme producer. Proof of a live performance can either be in the form of a concert programme detailing the performance or a set list signed by the venue promoter or owner where the performance took place.

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Clearly, although a generative work may have been performed in public, because copyright does not subsist in a pure generative work then the generative music composer has no rights to assign to PRS. If the work was performed in public and simultaneously recorded then copyright could exist provided that no-one undertook to prove that there was insufficient musical merit in the production of the generative work in the first place to justify the existence of copyright. As mentioned in the previous section, a question might be raised as to how much “sweat of the brow� had been employed by the generative composer in order to create the new generative work. To a large extent this would be dependent on the generative music system or process used to create the work. It might be argued that a composer who had created a work using a system or process where only a few parameters such as rhythm, instrumentation, volume or tonality could be manipulated had employed little sweat of the brow and so copyright in the work could not be justified. Conversely, the copyright in a generative work that had been created using a more complex system or process such a Supercollider could be justified. The generative music composer would then be eligible to join PRS and allow it to collect outstanding royalties on his behalf for the performance of the work. If the same generative piece is performed again the newly performed work may be considered as an arrangement of the original recorded work and therefore the generative music composer would be entitled to receive further royalties for that performance. Similarly copyright may exist in a generative work that has been included in a programme that has been broadcast, provided that it does not undergo the same aforementioned scrutiny with regard to the validity of copyright, and royalties would again be payable to the generative music composer.

The owner of a copyright work is entitled, by law, to receive payment from the music user when the work is played in public. PRS licenses both

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“communicators” (which includes Internet sites and television and radio broadcasters) and the public places that play its members music in return for a royalty which it then distributes to its members after deducting an administration fee. Public places include pubs, bars, hotels, shops, restaurants, cafes, offices, factories, leisure and fitness facilities, health practices and clubs. Any public place that has a jukebox, CD or video player, radio, TV or puts on live bands or discos and plays copyright music is required to have a PRS licence. Of the £265 million revenue collected by PRS for the year 2002, £98 million and $84.6 million were attributed to UK Public Performance and Broadcasting respectively.

The immediate benefits to owners of users of “on hold” music1 for telephones and public places2 that normally use music in the background to create an ambience in their premises by installing a generative music system to play music are that they would be exempt from having to obtain a PRS license because the music played through the “on hold” music service or in the venue is non-copyright and also the owner would also have more far-reaching control over the music played. The adoption of a sophisticated generative music system by companies that normally use music for “on hold” services and in public places such as pubs, bars, hotels, shops, restaurants, cafes, offices, factories, leisure and fitness facilities, health practices and clubs could therefore have a significant affect on the revenue collected by PRS for Public Performance.

The immediate benefits to both radio and television broadcasters are not clear. It is true that a radio station would benefit financially by being exempt from paying a PRS license fee if it played only pure generative music. A commercial radio station needs to generate income by attracting 1. See also Section “On-Hold Music” on page 254 2. See also Section “Film” on page 258 Generative Music and the Music Industry

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advertisers. Advertisers look closely at audience figures when determining how to allocate their budget for an advertising campaign and it is unlikely that large audiences will be attracted to radio stations that played only generative music in the short term as audiences would be more inclined, for the moment, to gravitate towards radio stations that play music that is familiar to them. Additionally, the PRS license fee payable is also based on the amount of advertising revenue that a commercial radio station receives and therefore if the revenue decreases so will the benefit to the radio station for using a generative music system.

A television broadcaster could be exempt from paying a PRS licensing fee provided it included only generative music in the programmes and films that it broadcast and provided that it could also successfully prove that although the work had been recorded there was little merit in the work to justify copyright. This is an extremely unlikely scenario certainly in the short term. Firstly, the broadcaster may not have any control over the musical content within the programmes and films it broadcasts because they are either imported or produced by external television and film production companies. Secondly, the broadcaster may be wary of using such as system because it may feel that the quality of the music within its programmes and films may be impaired and therefore have an effect on its audience ratings which in turn will have an effect on income received from advertisers. The benefits of being exempt from a PRS licensing fee may be outweighed by these considerations particularly when the licensing fee charged by PRS is proportional to the amount of advertising revenue that the broadcaster receives so if the advertising revenue decreases so will the benefit to the broadcaster for utilising a generative music system to create music for its programming. Until such time as a sophisticated generative film and music system is developed it is

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unlikely that generative music will have a significant effect on PRS broadcasting revenue.

FIGURE 1. Table 1 - PRS Revenue 1999 – 2002

PRS REVENUE 1999 - 2002 300,000

£ 000's

250,000 200,000

International

150,000

UK Public Performance

100,000

UK Broadcasting

50,000 0 1999

2000

2001

2002

YEAR

In relation to PRS, therefore, the generative music composer would be entitled to receive income as a member of PRS from the live performance of works if the works were simultaneously performed and recorded in public or income derived from the inclusion in a programme that was “communicated” to the public. Conversely, the owner of a public place that owned a system that only played pure generative music would be exempt from obtaining a PRS license. Benefits, other than financial, for owners of public places from adopting a generative music creation system are discussed further on in Section 8 d) of the report.

MCPS. The Mechanical Copyright Protection Society (MCPS) is given the exclusive authority to act as an agent on behalf of its members and license their works where they are copied, issued to the public or rented or lent to the public and synchronised to a television or radio programme and broadcast to the public. Its membership currently stands at around

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16, 000 members of which 11, 000 are writers and 5, 000 publishers. Like PRS, MCPS licenses its member’s works in return for a royalty which it distributes to its members after the deduction of a commission fee.

Of the £221 million distributed to its members in 2002 some £166 million was attributable to audio products. Another £7 million was attributable to new media.

FIGURE 2. MCPS Revenue 1998 to 2002 MCPS REVENUE 1998 - 2002

250,000 Other

£ 000's

200,000

Broadcasting

150,000

Audio products – continental Europe

100,000

Audio products – domestic

50,000 0 1998

1999

2000

2001

2002

YEAR

A generative music release such as the CD-Rom version of Morpheus would not fall under any of the Society’s normal audio product licensing schemes or indeed under any of its media licensing schemes. The music for Morpheus is produced by a software program and because the music is not recorded no copyright subsists in it. If conventional composers migrated from traditional linear music production techniques to generative music production techniques a proliferation of releases like Morpheus would have a significant impact on the mechanical income received by MCPS under its audio product licensing and media licensing Generative Music and the Music Industry

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schemes. Whilst MCPS would no longer benefit from the commission it normally takes for licensing works on behalf of its membership the main impact of the potential loss of this income would be incurred by the composers.

The algorithms created to produce the generative music, however, are fixed and as such copyright exists in them as a “literary work” (Hardingham 2004). The generative music composer can therefore assign rights in the algorithms created. This means, for example, that a generative music composer who supplies algorithms for use within a generative music release such as Morpheus would be able to conclude an agreement with the producer of the physical product in order to receive a royalty each time a copy of the CD-Rom was sold. As previously discussed it is more likely that generative music will be distributed via an Internet based generative music system rather than a physical product. The same principle would apply whereby the generative music composer would be able to conclude an agreement with the owner of the generative music system and receive a royalty payment each time the owner of the generative music system received income from the exploitation of the algorithms supplied through that system.

Ringtones are becoming an increasingly important source of revenue for MCPS and is included under new media income. Generative ringtones1 are copyright free and therefore exempt from the licensing schemes that MCPS operates and indeed PRS operates. Just as algorithms can be assigned to the operator of a web-based generative music system algorithms created specifically for a mobile generative system can be assigned to a mobile operator and thereby ensure that royalties are paid to

1. See also Section “Mobile Devices” on page 253 Generative Music and the Music Industry

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the generative music composer each time the algorithm was selected by a mobile device user.

If a generative work were synchronised in a feature film or television film or programme then royalties could be payable to the generative music composer under its media licensing schemes for feature films or blanket broadcasting licenses and if the programme or film was subsequently released on video or DVD the generative music composer would expect further royalties from sales or pressings of those releases. That is provided, of course and as previously discussed in the previous section, the question of musical merit to justify the existence of copyright had not been raised.

If the question of musical merit was raised by a broadcaster or film producer that used a generative music system to created music for its films or programmes then they may find themselves being exempt from payment of a licensing fee because no copyright subsisted within the works used. Again, as previously discussed, it is unlikely that a broadcaster would adopt a generative music system to produce music for its programmes in the near future. The same scenario may not necessarily apply to film producers. Jon Pettigrew uses Koan Pro1 to create music for his films and generative music systems offer an ideal source of music for amateur film makers or other film producers making experimental films.

In the short term and until the development of a sophisticated generative music system is produced, it is doubtful whether there will be a significant reduction in the broadcasting, video and DVD reproduction revenue streams that MCPS receives.

1. Both the films of Jon Pettigrew and Koan generative music software are discussed later in the report Generative Music and the Music Industry

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PPL. Phonographic Performance Limited represents both independent and major record companies. On behalf of its 3000 members it collects license fees from broadcasters which include both analogue and digital radio and television cable, satellite and Internet simulcasts and public places which include suppliers of music to businesses such as jukeboxes and background music systems or services and also businesses that play recorded music on their premises which include night-clubs, pubs, hotels, restaurants, shops and the work place. The revenue received is then distributed to both its record company members and to performers. In 2002 PPL distributed a total £61.1 million.

A company that uses “on hold” music services or an owner of a public place that had only a generative music system to play music would be exempt from paying a licensing fee to PPL as no master recording would be played. As with PRS, the adoption of advanced generative music systems by users of “on hold” music and owners of public places where recorded music is normally played could have a significant affect on revenue collected by PPL for public performance.

If, however, a television broadcaster included a generative music piece in a programme and even if it was argued that that generative work included in the programme lacked enough artistic merit to warrant copyright ownership in the composition a master recording of that generative work would still exist and therefore a license fee would be payable to PPL.

PUBLISHING COMPANIES

The role of music publishers is varied. It can include finding and supporting new and talented songwriters and composers whilst developing their writing skills. It can also include registering titles with MCPS and PRS, ensuring that money flows through correctly, at appropriate times and making payments to its songwriters and composers. It can mean promot-

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ing and licensing its catalogue to broadcasters, record companies and others who use music on a commercial basis and producing demos to promote its songwriter’s songs to performing artists.

In order for a publisher to function it needs a strong copyright structure in place that enables it to be remunerated financially for the efforts it takes in promoting its songwriters’ and composers’ works and also the financial support it gives them. Without a flow of royalties the music publisher would find it extremely difficult to function.

The services of the publisher are unlikely to extend to the generative music composer. Firstly, copyright will not subsist in the majority of works that generative music composer creates. Secondly, for those compositions which may have been recorded and in which copyright does exist they may be susceptible to scrutinisation as to the validity of the copyright status and therefore the publisher may find itself without copyrights with which to trawl back the investment made in its generative music composer. The publisher may also find that because the intention of generative music is to produce a unique composition each time the system or process creating it is reset then the works that it does retain that have been recorded and have copyright subsisting in them may be worthless anyway. This is because the generative music composer may not think that the exploitation of what he or she might term ‘outdated works’ fit in with his or her ideas about ‘creativity’ and ‘art’ and may therefore use his or her ‘moral right’ to oppose any exploitation that the publisher proposes.

RECORD LABELS

Traditionally, of course, labels have made money by selling records.

More recently the widespread use of the Internet has lead record labels to offer digital downloads to consumers. It is difficult to imagine how the

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generative music composer would fit into the traditional record company business model. Pure generative music composers do not make records and therefore there would be no master recordings for the record company to own. As there is no recording there is no artist as such for the A&R department to develop. With no physical product there is nothing for the marketing department to market.

Generative systems are used, in particular by electronica artists, either to offer suggestions during the composition process or to add textures or layers to their recordings. Warp Record artists Autechre and the Aphex Twin use generative systems to compose complex drum patterns and Lo Recordings artist Cursor Miner writes generative music tools in C++.1

A New Business Model for Generative Music?

While the generative music composer has a number of possible royalty income streams no one traditional music business is equipped to accommodate the needs and interests of the generative music composer.

Although the generative music composer could collect royalties directly himself, the collection of performance and mechanical income from the exploitation of fixed generative music works could, in theory, also be undertaken by a publisher if the generative music composer agreed to such exploitation considering that fundamental principle of generative music is to produce music that is different each time the system producing the music is reset. The publisher would need to understand the principles behind the production of generative music and establish the

1. It is worth mentioning that in the course of research for this report no instances have been found where the use of generative music techniques within compositions created by artists have led to validity of copyright in the piece being brought into question.

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generative music composer’s feelings on fixed generative music before embarking on a relationship with the generative music composer particularly where the publisher needs to recoup any advances it has made to the generative music composer.

The collection of royalties accrued from the exploitation of the algorithms that the generative music composer creates could also be undertaken by the publisher. The collection could equally be carried out by a record company or, indeed, any company that has an accounting system capable of distributing royalties on a regular basis. The distribution of the generative music composer’s algorithms is likely to be made via a webbased generative music system in the future. It is therefore likely that any agreement concluded between the generative music composer and the owner of the generative music system will make a provision for royalty distribution directly to the generative music composer and therefore there will be no need for the services of a publisher, record company or other third party to collect on behalf of the generative music composer. The generative music composer would simply have to employ the services of a lawyer to negotiate any agreement on his behalf to assure that fair, regular and accurate accounting is made to him or her.

The generative music algorithm is an important consideration when laying the foundations for a generative music system. Both PPL and PRS have been lacklustre in their efforts to embrace advances in technology in order to create a system that can identify individual public performances of works by their members preferring instead to refer to other data such as chart information to help them allocate license revenue. The consequence of this attitude is that many members of PPL and PRS fail to receive royalties to which they are entitled. The development of a generative music system would incorporate a watermarking system that would

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enable the passage of algorithms to be tracked allowing a more accurate and reliable distribution of royalties.

The way in which generative music is produced and likely to be distributed may call for new business model to be created to accommodate it.

The relationships that the generative music composers build very much depend on whether the music produced is entirely pure generative music or whether there is also the intention to produce fixed generative music.

The development and proliferation of generative music will depend on the development of a generative music system and where that system might be used and by whom. In the meantime the generative music composer would be well advised to seek the services of a manager who not only understands current music industry practices and the processes involved in creating generative music but also has the ability to seek opportunities on behalf of the generative music composer and also the adaptability and foresight to navigate the generative music composer through the inevitably difficult times ahead during the development of generative music and generative music related applications.

Current Generative Music Related Applications KOAN

“Ordinary music is like engineering, where everything's built according to a plan, and it's the same every time you play it. Generative music is more like gardening; you plant a seed, and it grows different every time you plant� (Eno 2001; cited by Shachtman 2001).

Of the ready made user friendly generative music packages on the market the Koan Pro is the most popular. The development of Koan started in 1986 when SSEYO founders Tim and Peter Cole decided that they “wanted to create a computer system which could affect you on an emotional level, by enhancing or filtering your perceptions, and provide everCurrent Generative Music Related Applications

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changing, eventually interactive, music� (Garton 1996) The Koan Music Engine (SKME) was launched in 1990 which according to parameters set by the composer allowed composition and harmonisation of music in real-time.

When Brian Eno received a copy of Koan in 1995 and heard the results he was so impressed that he started working with Koan Pro and released Generative Music 1 on floppy disc in the following year.

Koan Pro produces music that constantly evolves and never repeats itself.

The outcome of each piece of music is affected by the value of over 200 user-defined parameters which include these include timbre, sound envelope, scale, harmony, rhythm, tempo, vibrato and pitch range. Although users are encouraged to interact with the parameters to create a unique piece of music what is achieved has been described by some users as simply a remix of pieces pre-programmed by the Koan development team (Eacott 2000).

The free Koan Plug allows playback of Koan Pro music files automatically via a webpage or browser. It also allows web animations, such as Flash, to be driven by Koan music and MIDI files. When it was released in 1999 the small file sizes, typically 1k to 20k, enabled a better experience for users using Internet connections with low bandwidths. With the increasing availability of higher band widths the issue of file size is not quite so pressing when browsing using an ADSL 1.2Mb bandwidth connection.

Development of Koan ceased after the release of Koan Pro 2 and following the acquisition of SSEYO in 2002 by the mobile technology Tao which is owned by Motorola, Sony, NEC and other Japanese consumer goods companies. Tao’s focus has been generating revenues from mobile

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phone applications. The Koan music engine became incorporated within Tao’s intent Sound System (iSS) that will be examined later in the report.

There are plans to release Koan Pro 3 but this will primarily be a tool to produce generative content for mobile device applications (Cole 2004).

MADPLAYER

MadPlayer was launched in the UK at the Ministry Of Sound in May 2002. It is described as a “Generactive hand held music player/recorder”.

The word Generactive was created to capture the essence of MadPlayer: “copyright-free music you can create (generate) and then play with (interact with)” (Madwaves c 2004). Its initial retail price of £250 has dropped and it is now available from Madwaves’ website for a price of £99. MadPlayer has a soundbank of 550 instruments and sounds and uses its ‘Generative Music Algorithm’ software to create a limitless stream of unique music. By means of a simple graphical interface users can choose between, mainly, dance-based genres such as techno, house, garage, hip hop, RnB and ragga and then change aspects of the music on drum, lead lines, bass, riffs, samples and voice tracks. Pitch and tempo can also be altered by using a joystick and effects added using effects buttons. It does, however, lack the ability to enable cross pollination of genre types, something that would be expected from a generative music device.

Madwave rightly describes the music produced by MadPlayer as being as copyright free. What it does not explain is that copyright would subsist in the music produced if it was subsequently recorded and the copyright owner of both the composition and master recording would be the owner of the MadPlayer, assuming that it was the owner that recorded the composition.

MadPlayer clearly illustrates the lack of creativity actually needed by the user in order to create music. The user simply selects music that is appro-

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priate for his listening tastes and preferences by a process of elimination in much the same way as someone tunes a radio to find a frequency that plays music he enjoys. The creative talent is to be found in the programmers that create the algorithms used in MadPlayer.

MadPlayer is seen primarily as a toy among serious creators of music aimed at people who would normally listen to CDs or the radio rather than create music from scratch. It could also easily provide background music for low budget film or television programmes.

GARAGEBAND

“GarageBand is snoozeware for the iPod generation who think that music comes in a small white-and-chrome can and only needs to be served lukewarm for public consumption” (Casone 2004; cited by Kahney 2004) GarageBand is the baby brother of Emagic’s (now Apple) Logic Audio, a professional music creation and audio production application, and Soundtrack, an audio for video application that was the first to support Apple Loops. It is not a generative music system but is included here to illustrate, again, that a user without musical aptitude can create music using a simple graphic interface. In fact what sets it apart from previous loop based music creation applications is its ease of use. GarageBand comes as part of Apple’s $49, i-Life package which includes iMovie, a video editing suite, iTunes, a music management application, iPhoto a photo management and editing suite and iDVD, a DVD creation suite.

Unlike generative music systems, Apple’s GarageBand is loop based.

Over 1000 copyright free Apple Loops from a number of different genres are included with the package and another 2000 are available in a separate Jam Pack for $99. Selected loops are placed in a time line and any of the 200 effects available added to individual loops or whole tracks.

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Although users are able to adjust the tempo and key of the loops GarageBand can do it automatically.

Audio files are output as AIF files only which can then be converted in iTunes to MP3 files. Music produced can also be easily imported into the iMovie and iPhoto applications. Again, no mention is made of the implications on copyright if music created were subsequently recorded. This is probably because Apple wants to avoid a deluge of requests for licensing agreements from GarageBand artists wishing to sell their creations via its iTunes Music Store.

Clearly with a price tag of $49 Apple’s intention is not to profit from sales of iLife but be a loss leader to drive the sales of its computers, iPods and other hardware and software that both it produces and by third party manufacturers that it sells via its store. It’s a strategy Apple has employed with success before. By selling songs with tight margins on the Internet via its iTunes Music Store for 99c, Apple’s intention was to sell more iPods.

Both the interfaces for GarageBand and MadPlayer are simple to use and allow someone without any musical ability to effortlessly create music. It must be only a matter of time before the novelty of making music on both GarageBand and MadPlayer wears off. When users realise that they are not really creating music but either simply playing it or remixing a generic version of music already in existence, they may turn their attention once again to more passive forms of music entertainment. They may also find that they want more control over the music that they listen to and look for play back devices and systems that offer similar control that they experience with GarageBand and MadPlayer, systems such as the iHiFi project proposes for example.

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Generative Music and Other Cultural Industries TELECOMS

Mobile Devices. Generative ringtones do not immediately spring to mind when thinking of ringtones for mobile devices. Tao’s Tim Coles, who was a founding member of the SSEYO the company that developed Koan, believes that “customers are becoming increasingly sophisticated in their demand for personalised audio on their mobile phones” (Cole 2003; cited by Business Wire 2003). Generative ringtone engines give the user the ability to produce a unique ringtone or “Live Tone” for their mobile devices on the fly.

Tao’s Advanced Polyphonic Ringtone System, intent Sound System (iSS), uses Koan’s generative music engine enabling the generation of ringtones in real time and has been employed in Microsoft’s Windows Smartphone. Tao have also developed Koan Interactive Audio, for Pocket PC software developers for low bandwidth mobile applications. The advantage of using Koan’s technology is that music can be produced with relatively few controls and small file sizes, file size being a major consideration for mobile devices. Another clear advantage of using a generative music engine to produce ringtones in general is that neither an MCPS nor PRS licence is needed by the mobile companies because the ringtones produced are copyright free.

Since SSEYO was acquired by Tao their attention has been to focus on the mobile sector and the completion of iSS. With work now complete Tao is developing further mobile audio applications for Smartphone and Pocket PC that will include Koan’s generative music engine. They also intend overhauling Koan Pro 2 and releasing a new version that will create generative content for mobile device applications. There are no plans at the moment to develop mobile generative music authoring tools but if the market demands such an application they will do so (Cole 2004).

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MadWaves is currently Tao’s only competitor in the mobile generative ringtone applications market. Its Madmixer gained second place in the Ericsson Mobile Application Awards for 2003. It uses the same principles as MadPlayer to produce customised polyphonic ringtones by allowing the user to change various settings such as style and components such as drums, bass, lead, riff instruments. Its MadTone Generator also enables an infinite number of ringtones to be generated at the touch of a button.

There have been no further press releases since MadWaves announced the Ericsson award. Naturally one would assume that Madwaves would be keen to publicise efforts it has made establish relationships with mobile device manufacturers to deploy its generative ringtone applications in the same way that Tao has.

If efforts to deploy a standalone generative ringtone engine by MadWaves with mobile device manufacturers have in fact been unsuccessful this may indicate that Coles’ belief that people are becoming more sophisticated in their demand for personalised audio and looking towards generative ringtones may not completely be justified. Indeed, the success of deployment of Koan’s generative music engine in mobile devices may merely be on the back of other applications within iSS and be considered as an add-on that people simply ignore.

On-Hold Music. On-Hold music is an important tool in keeping customers on the line while waiting for an operator or customer services assistant. Studies have found that callers are likely to think that they have been forgotten if there is no music on the line and that music reduces the perceived waiting time (Areni 2003) with callers staying on the line up to 20% longer if they heard music that they liked (PRS 1997). Studies have also shown that callers tended to hold on longer if jazz, country or classical music was playing rather than pop or relaxation music (Ramos 1993)

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and that the choice of music played influenced the callers’ image of the company (Areni 2003).

PRS recommends that companies that use on-hold music change the music regularly, match music to customer profile and choose music to represent the desired company image. They also recommend that companies be unique in their choice of music and to focus on the value to the company by using the music and not the cost (PRS 2004).

While a system has yet to be developed, the immediate advantage to companies using a generative music system to produce on-hold music is that there is neither a PRS or PPL license fee payable as the music played is copyright free. The second advantage is the adaptability and variability of generative music. At its simplest a generative music system could play an endless stream of continually evolving jazz music to encourage the caller to hold or play music that is tailored to the caller’s individual tastes. This could be triggered by the telephone number used to contact the company and based on information about the caller that the company keeps on its customer profile database. Whatever genre of music is played there should also be an air of familiarity about it as “familiar music produces more discrete events in the memory than unfamiliar music thus increasing a person’s estimate of time” (Areni 2003). In other words music that is familiar to the listener makes time seem to pass quicker than when unfamiliar is played.

GAMES

“Good songs that repeat themselves over and over are a kind of psychological torture that only our modern culture could produce” (Harland 2000) Until recently music in games had taken a back seat to its graphical content. As technology has advanced more game producers have been look-

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ing towards interactive music to enhance the game player’s gaming experience.

Early attempts at creating interactive music for games were cumbersome.

Digitally recorded songs were simply played in the background of the game and were interchanged when game play changed. This often resulted in unsubtle gaps between tracks when they changed and rather than enhancing game play made game play unpleasant. Creating music for games in this way was also both memory and storage heavy, important considerations when producing video games where disk space and processing power resource allocation are critical. Later attempts at interactive gaming faired better in games such as Rez where the gamer’s game play influences the composition of the game’s soundtrack.

For games producers the advantages of having interactive music in games are adaptability and variation. Non linear music within the game can change according to changes within the interactive media. Rather than creating a general atmosphere or mood as a bed, interactive music makes the interactive gaming experience even more immersive. Non linear music is also able to vary itself and be different each time the interactive media is experienced. With linear music the same audio file is played over and over again. Repetitiveness drives the gamer to turn down or turn off the music. Interactive music, however, has a disadvantage: it can produce random, inappropriate music if not programmed or managed properly.

Microsoft’s DirectMusic Producer (DMP) is free application that allows interactive audio content to be developed for games, for the web or, indeed, any interactive medium. DirectMusic allows the games composer to vary the game soundtrack by creating multiple paths that it can follow, varying chords, having alternative melodies or sound effects, enabling

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the rhythm to be changed and increasing or decreasing the intensity of the music. It also enables soundtracks to be linked to specific events or states within a game (Microsoft 2004).

Generative music, too, satisfies the criteria needed for interactive music in games: adaptability and variability. The main flaw with DirectMusic is that it only supports general Midi information unless DLS (Downloadable Sounds) Instruments are used. DLS Instruments, however, are very memory intensive within interactive applications (Bridgett 2002). Generative music is not memory intensive at all and file sizes are minuscule in comparison to audio files.

But are memory and disc space important enough considerations to drive a groundswell of interest in producing a generative audio application for interactive media when DirectMusic seems to satisfy all the other criteria for interactive games audio and technological advances continue to produce faster and faster processors and higher and higher density disc storage? The answer, certainly in the short term, is no. Even though a generative audio engine would bring financial benefits to games producers because they would have to spend less money on commissioning fees for games composers, even the most innovative games producer would need a great deal of convincing before taking up the challenge of developing a generative audio system specifically for games. Furthermore, games composers are recognised as the principle drivers of new technology not games producers. Games composers continually need to keep up to date with technologies for their profession and communicate their needs to manufacturers so that they can guide technological developments in the direction that suits them (Bridgett 2002).

A particularly large section of interactive music composers dissatisfied with DirectMusic would be needed in order for a games producer or soft-

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ware development company to take up the challenge and build a generative audio engine for video games. And besides DirectMusic has one advantage that any company developing such a product would struggle to compete with certainly in the short term due to the inevitable costs of developing the product and establishing that product in a market already dominated by another: DirectMusic is free.

FILM

Generative film is an emerging area of generative art and two possible models for generative film have been identified (Lobb 2003). The first is the ‘database movie’ (Manovich 1998) where pre-recorded film clips from a database are automatically sequenced to produce a film in real time. The crucial element of this approach in order to produce a generative film is the way in which the editing algorithm is created to define how the clips brought down from the database are meaningfully connected. The aim of generative film is not to produce a linear piece and does not require the author to place material in any particular order. The second model is ‘microworld’ which is produced using computer simulated characters. Algorithms and autonomous agents dictate the way in which the characters should interact. The audience then constructs a narrative themselves through the characters’ interactions.

Examples of the database movie can be found in the works of Lev Manovich and Stan Douglas. The nearest example of a mircoworld type film can be found in the video game “The Sims” (Lobb 2003).

Sam Woolf’s Googlegogglebox (2003), programmed in Macromedia’s Director, is a basic example of a database movie that can produce some surprising results. The user inputs text and then the program carries out a search of the Internet for images and audio files containing that text using both Google and Lycos search engines. When a specified number of files

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have been retrieved Googlegogglebox renders the images and audio to produce a film.

There are examples of generative films that do not fit comfortably into either of the models identified by Lobb. “Reflections in the Water” (2002) by Jon Pettigrew, who was involved in development of Koan, and Russell Blakeborough, uses a traditional film narrative but intersperses the film with a “variety of different sequences in the water and other images from the life of Debussy” (Pettigrew 2002). Sequences of the film are previewed in VJamm, a real-time audiovisual sample player, to check for continuity, edited in Director and then exported to QuickTime. The soundtrack for the film was created using Koan Pro. Pettigrew also employed a similar technique to produce his generative film of a dance piece choreographed by Danielle Clarkson which she performed together with Karen McBride. There are plans to develop an audio visual engine which automates the current manual process that is employed to produce the films using the technology implemented by SSEYO in Koan and by Cambridge Art in VJamm to produce films with a multitude of results (Pettigrew 2004).

Alex Evan’s generative films use traditional pre-rendered animation together with generative animation. In Tom Thumb (2002) only certain details in the animation and elements of the music are randomised during each rendering of the film. A statistical technique known as ‘Markov Chains’ is used to rearrange the narrative of Tom Thumb which results in a text “which sounds vaguely English but makes little sense” (Evans 2002). The first half of Evans’ next film “Staying Pictures” (2003) is a film of traditional pre-rendered animation. In the second half of the film the animation changes with each render and the soundtrack is a linear recording.

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Jon Pettigrew is about to test a film which is a cross between the database movie and microworld film. The film uses a personality engine to define interactions between the two main characters and then appropriate video clips are pulled down from a database to create alternative narratives (Pettigrew 2004).

Undoubtedly, until a generative audiovisual generative film engine that Pettigrew proposes to develop materialises music used within generative films will continue to be linear even if it is created using a generative music software program such as Koan or a generative music software programming environment such as SuperCollider or MAX/Msp and therefore be fixed.

PUBLIC PLACES

Many studies have been made to examine the effects of music and their characteristics on consumers in retail environments, restaurants and bars.

The style of music played, for example, creates an image of the establishment in the mind of the consumer. While classical music creates an up market image for an establishment it is thought that jazz music attracts a more affluent customer (Areni 2003). In another study customers in a cafeteria were found to be more willing to pay a higher price for food when classical music was playing in the background than other types of music (North & Hargreaves 1998). In the same study it was found that both classical and pop music may have increased the sales in the cafeteria as compared with easy listening and silence. Classical music was also found to appease rowdy or aggressive behaviour in customers whereas heavy metal was found to have the reverse effect (Areni 2003).

The tempo of music also has an effect on consumers. In one study fast music was found to significantly increase the time spent drinking a can of pop (McElrea & Standing 1992). Managers of restaurants also tend to Generative Music and Other Cultural Industries

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play faster music at lunchtime and in the evening to clear tables more quickly as diners tend to eat quicker when faster music is played (Areni 2003). Additionally, fast music was found to increase both productivity and morale of employees occupied with monotonous work. In a study at a voucher processing centre for a bank, fast music lead to 22.3% more vouchers being processed than when slow music was played (North & MacKenzie 2000).

The style and tempo of the music played in an establishment, however, is less important than the volume of the music played when considering the consumption of drinks in an establishment; for example, music played at low volume tends to increase expenditure on the product (Sullivan 2002).

In fact music tends to be most effective when it is quiet enough to be discrete but loud enough to suppress background noise (Areni 2003). In general music reduces perceived waiting time, can facilitate conversation and alleviate uncomfortable silences (Areni 2003).

The use of music in the workplace to increase staff productivity, morale and communication is not a recent phenomenon. In the 1940s, an American company, Muzak, developed Stimulus Progression programming, an "elaborate system that arranges songs according to tempo and time of day, taking into account the typical lulls that hit workers mid-morning and mid-afternoon" (Davies 1996; cited by Garton 1996).

The development of a generative music system could also bring significant benefits to retail environments, restaurants and bars. The immediate benefit is, of course, that the music produced by a generative music system is copyright free and therefore no license fee is payable to either PRS or PPL. A generative music system would also enable more far-reaching control over the characteristics of the music played. Besides the ability to play a continually evolving stream of, say, classical or jazz music, data

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mapping techniques could be employed to automate changes in both style and other characteristics of the music. For example, the system could be automatically set to play faster music at lunchtimes and in the evening in restaurants. Additionally, if a visual mapping device were used and detected that the restaurant was not full it could over rule the instruction to play faster music and play music at a more moderate tempo encouraging diners to remain longer at their tables so the restaurant didn’t empty too quickly and deter other customers from entering. Light sensors could also enable the system to offset the effects of low natural light on dull days by playing brighter summery music. Temperature or humidity sensors could also be used to produce similar changes enabling the music played to be fine tuned even further. By measuring the level of noise in a bar or restaurant the system could adjust the volume of the music so that it remains discreet and does not drown out conversation yet still offsets the effects of background noise. Additionally, by having sensors at entrances to shops the system could be programmed to play loud high energy music when the shop was full and more ambient relaxing music when the shop was empty. A generative music system with inputs from an array of sensors could tailor make music to suit any environment where music is normally used in the background.

Conclusion “From now on there are three alternatives: live music, recorded music and generative music. Generative music enjoys some of the benefits of both its ancestors. Like live music, it is always different. Like recorded music, it is free of time-and-place limitations you can hear it when you want and where you want” (Eno 1996) This report set out to answer the question: “Is the future of music generative?” The answer to this question is no. Sadly, the image of redundant record company executives warming themselves around dustbin fires

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under the M40 overpass lamenting about the “good old days” before “that generative music came along” is likely to remain a fantasy rather than a reality for the foreseeable future.

This does not mean to say that there is not a place for generative music within the current music industry or other cultural industries that use music. As Eno says there will be simply be three options for music in the future: live, recorded and generative music. Generative music will be increasingly adopted as people begin to understand why they need it and as they learn to adjust to listening it.

In fact, the process of adoption and adjustment has already begun through the commercial generative music applications that are currently available. Creation tools such as MadPlayer and Koan Pro allow users to create constantly evolving music and Tao’s iSS and Madwave’s Madmixer enable generative ringtones to be created for mobile devices such as phones and pocket PCs. In films the development of an audiovisual generative engine by Jon Pettigrew, who was involved in the development of Koan, will raise the profile of generative music further.

Microsoft’s DirectMusic Producer

seems to satisfy the same characteristics in the music it creates that generative music could offer for interactive audio for games and therefore it is unlikely that a generative audio engine will be developed in this area for the moment.

The areas in which the applications of generative music have so far been unexplored are telephone “on hold” music services and music systems for public places such as retail environments, restaurants and bars. The benefits of developing a generative music system for these areas are that there are no license fees to pay to either PRS or PPL because pure gener-

Conclusion

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ative music is free of copyright and also an autonomous generative music system would allow greater control over the characteristics of the music played. As awareness and acceptance of generative music through such systems increases generative music systems could then be developed for the domestic environment, as was the original intention of iHiFi, and also developed for the health sector where greater control over the characteristics of music could benefit those working in music therapy.

As the generative music systems are developed so will a new music business model to accommodate generative music and its production. The generative music composer will effectively become the ‘artist’ and the algorithm will become the ‘master recording’. Rather than receiving royalties through traditional royalties distribution channels such as PRS, MCPS, PPL and through the sales of physical and digital audio products, royalties will likely be accrued by the generative music composer each time the algorithm is selected by the user of a generative music system.

The future of music, then, may not be generative but there is a future for generative music.

Bibliography BOOKS

Cope, David (1997) Techniques of the Contemporary Composer, London: Schirmer Books Reck Miranda, Eduardo (2001) Composing Music with Computers, Oxford: Focal Press Selfridge Field, Eleanor (1997) Beyond MIDI, Cambridge: MIT Press

JOURNAL ARTICLES

Areni, Charles (2003) “Exploring Managers’ Implicit Theories of Atmospheric Music: Comparing Academic Analysis to Industry Insight”, Journal of Services Marketing, Vol 17 No 2 pp 161-184 Bibliography

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Boyd, E (1985) “Now Hear This: Just Don’t Listen” San Antonia Today, 2, pp 30-36.

Business Wire (2003) “Tao's Advanced Polyphonic Ringtone Engine Available First on Windows Mobile-based Smartphone” Business Wire, 21 October Business Wire (2003) “Windows Mobile Smartphone Powered With Intent Rocks Electronic Music Festival” Business Wire, 10 September Collins, N (2003) "Generative Music and Laptop Performance" Contemporary Music Review, 22:4 pp 67-80 Edwards, Mark (1996) “Key Changes” Sunday Times, London 11 February p 10 Eno, Brian (1996) “The Works I Have Made With KOAN Symbolise the Beginning of A New Era” The Independent, London 1 March p 10 Kieslar, Douglas (2001) “SICIB: An Interactive Music Composition System Using Body Movements” Computer Music Journal; Volume 25 n° 2, Summer Johnson, R (2003) “Harnesses Artificial Life to Evolve Original Music -Composer Scores Advance In High-Tech Tunes” Electronic Engineering Times, 6 January p 43 Lau, Paul (1997) “Generative Music Composition” Canadian Musician, v.19(4) p 32 Llewellyn Smith, C “Pretentious? It's a Compliment If There Is Such a Thing as a Pop-culture Intellectual, Then Composer and Artist Brian Eno Is It. He Talks to Caspar Llewellyn Smith about Music, Theoretical Physics and Women's Bottoms” The Daily Telegraph, London 28 April p 8 M2 Presswire (1998) “SSEYO - World’s 1st Collaborative Virtual Generative Composition” M2 Presswire, 16 April McElrea, H & Standing, L (1992). “Fast Music Causes Fast Drinking” Perceptual and Motor Skills, 75, p 362.

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Miller, D (2003) “Game of Chance” Electronic Musician, 01 November p 12 Miranda, E R (2002) “Grain Streams: The Generative Music of Digital Life” Creativity And Cognition, 4th pp 25-26 Mirando, Eduardo (2003) “On the Evolution of a Music in a Society of Self Taught Digital Creatures” Digital Creativity, Vol 14 No 1 pp 29-42 New Media Creative (2001) “Mix Masters” New Media Creative, 3 July p 20 North, A C & Hargreaves, D J (1998) “The Effect of Music on Atmosphere and Purchasing Intentions in a Cafeteria” Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 28(24), pp 2254-2273.

North, A C & MacKenzie, LC (2000) “Musical tempo, productivity and morale” Performing Right Society, London Phillips, Mike (2001) “Mediaspace: Part 2 (GM Manifesto)” Digital Creativity March, Vol. 12 Issue 1, p58 Porter, Hayden (2004) “Phone It In!” Electronic Musician February, pg 3 Ramos, L.V. (1993). The Effects of On-Hold Telephone Music on the Number of Premature Disconnections To a State-wide Protective Services Abuse Hot Line, Journal of Music Therapy, XXX (2), 119129 Sullivan, Malcolm (2002) “The Impact of Pitch, Volume and Tempo On the Atmospheric Effects of Music”, International Journal of Retail And Distribution Management, Volume 30, Number 6, pp 323-330 GOVERNMENT PUBLICATIONS

Great Britain (1988) Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, HMSO, London Great Britain (2003) The Copyright and Related Rights Regulations 2003, HMSO, London

ARTICLES

Bridgett, Rob (2002) “Interactive Music” [online] (Accessed 25 May 2004) Available from http://web.archive.org/web/ 20021203015700/http://www.sound-design.org.uk/interactive.htm

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Brown, Mike (nd) “Muzak” [online] (Accessed 28th May 2004) Available from http://media.hyperreal.org/zines/est/articles/muzak.html Bunn, A (1997) “Can Generative Music Carry the Net’s Tunes” [online] (Accessed 20 February 2004) Available from http:// www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,7700,00.html Carmical, Kent (2003) “MadPlayer” [online] (Accessed 6th May 2004) Available from http://www.macaddict.com/issues/0303/rev.madplayer.html Cascone, Kim (c 2002) “Laptop Music – Counterfeiting Aura in the Age of Infinite Reproduction” [online] (Accessed 6th May 2004) Available from http://www.anechoicmedia.com/twiki/pub/Main/RandomSystemWorkshop/LaptopMusic2.pdf Collins, N (2002) “Impossible Music” [online] (Accessed 20 February 2004) Available from http://www.cus.cam.ac.uk/~nc272/papers/ pdfs/impossible.pdf Chong, Y (1996) “Computer Generated Music Composition” [online] (Accessed 20 February 2004) Available from http://www.oz.net/ ~cyu/Thesis.html Cox, G, McLean, M, Ward, A. (1999) “The Aesthetics of Generative Code” [online] (Accessed 25 May 2004) Available from http:// www.generative.net/papers/aesthetics/ Cox, G and Ward, A. (1999) “How I Drew One of My Pictures: or, The Authorship of Generative Art” [online] (Accessed 25 May 2004) Available from http:// www.generative.net/papers/authorship/ Davis, B (1996) “Hold the Elevator Muzak Gets Hip” [online] (Accessed 25th May 2004) Available from http://www.timecast.com/story/ muzak1.html Deitrich, Andy (2004) “GarageBand” [online] (Accessed 5th May 2004) Available from http://arstechnica.com/reviews/004/software/mac/ garageband/garageband-1.html

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Dreier, Troy (2004) “Apple Adds Music Creation to Its Suite” [online] (Accessed 5 May 2004) Available from http://www.pcmag.com/ article2/0,4149,1523266,00.asp Eacott, John (2001) “Morpheus – Emergent Music” [online] (Accessed 20 February) Available from http://www.informal.org/ morpheus_emergent_music.htm Eacott, J and d'Inverno, M (2002) “Embedded Intelligent Music or iHiFI – The Intelligent HiFi” [online] (Accessed 20 February 2004) Available from http://www.informal.org/ 14_2_02EacottDInverno.pdf Garton, A (1996) “Lost Time Accidents – A Journey Towards SelfEvolving , Generative Music” [online] (Accessed 20 February 2004) Available from http://www.toysatellite.org/agarton/MA/ papers/map04.pdf Harland, Kurt (2000) “Composing for Interactive Music” [online] (Accessed 21 February 2004) Available from http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20000217/harland_01.htm In Motion Magazine (1996) “Generative Music” [online] (Accessed 20 February 2004) Available from http://www.inmotionmagazine.com/ eno1.html Kahney, Leander (2004) “GarageBand Kicks Out the Jams” [online] (Accessed 6 May 2004) Available from http://www.wired.com/ news/mac/0,2125,62204-2,00.html?tw=wn_story_page_next1 Lobb, Iain (2003) “Generative Cinema and Dialogue” [online] (Accessed 25 May 2004) Available from http://www.howwillitend.co.uk/documents/gc_&_d.pdf Magnusson, Thor (2002) “Processor Art” [online] Accessed 4 May 2004) Available from http://www.ixi-software.net/thor/pa_highres.pdf Manovich, Lev (1998) “Database as a Symbolic Form” [online] (Accessed 26 May 2004) Available from http://www.manovich.net/ DOCS/DATABASE.RTF McLennan, J (1996) “This Is the Future” [online] (Accessed 20 February 2004) Available from http://music.hyperreal.org/artists/brian_eno/ interviews/obser96b.html

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Microsoft 2004 “What Is Direct Music?” [online] (Accessed 27th May 2004) Available from http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/ default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dmusprod/htm/whatisdirectmusic.asp PRS (1997) “Music Proves a Valuable Asset to Business” [online] (Accessed 26 May 2004) Available from http://www.mcps-prs-alliance.co.uk/onlinetelephony/ PRS (2004) “Music on Hold. Is it Really Worth the Wait?” [online] (Accessed 26 May 2004) Available from www.prs.co.uk Ross, Rob (2001) “Interactive Music...er, Audio” [online] (Accessed 21 February 2004) Available from http://www.gamasutra.com/ resource_guide/20010515/ross_01.htm Salen, K (2002) “Quake! Doom! Sims! – Transforming Play: Family Albums and Monster Movies” (Accessed 20 February 2004) Available from http://www.walkerart.org/gallery9/qds/ Shachtman, N “New Eno Music Gets ‘Generative’” (2001) [online] (Accessed 20 February 2004) Available from http:// www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,47670,00.html Wilde, Martin (2003) “Audio for Mobile Devices” [online] (Accessed 21 February 2004) Available from http://www.gamasutra.com/ resource_guide/20030528/wilde_01.shtml WEBSITES

Apple [online] (accessed 21 February 2004) Available from http:// www.apple.com/ilife/garageband/ Cybersonica [online] (accessed 22 February 2004) Available from http:// www.cybersonica.org/ Generative [online] (accessed 20 February 2004) Available from http:// www.generative.net/ Generative Art [online] (accessed 20 February 2004) Available from http://www.generativeart.com/ MadWaves [online] (accessed 20 February) Available from http:// www.madwaves.com/flash/technologyGenerative.asp

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Brown, P. (2005) Is the Future of Music Generative? Music Therapy Today (online) Vol. VI (2) 215-274. available at http:/ /musictherapyworld.net

Mechanical Copyright Protection Society [online] (accessed 6 March 2004) Available from http://www.mcps.co.uk/ Microsoft [online] (accessed 26 May 2004) Available from http:// msdn.microsoft.com/ “Morpheus – Emergent Music” (2001) [online] (Accessed 20 February 2004) Available from http://www.mushimushi.net/morpheus/ index.htm Music Publishers Association [online] (accessed 6th March 2004) Available from http://www.mpaonline.org.uk/ Open-Ended [online] (accessed 20 February 2004) Available from http:// www.open-ended.com/ Performing Right Society [online] (accessed 2nd March 2004) Available from http://www.prs.co.uk/ Phonographic Performance Limited [online] (accessed 7th March 2004) Available from http://www.ppluk.com/ rand()% [online] (Accessed 29th March 2004) Available from http:// www.r4nd.org/help2.html Soundtoys [online] (accessed 20 February 2004) Available from http:// www.soundtoys.net/ SSEYO [online] (accessed 20 February 2004) Available from http:// www.sseyo.com/ Supercollider [online] (accessed 20 February 2004) Available from http:/ /www.audiosynth.com VJamm Pro [online] (accessed 5 June 2004) Available from http://vjammpro.com/vjammpro/ WeatherPlayer [online] (accessed 4th May 2004) Available from http:// www.weatherplayer.com/ PERSONAL EMAILS

Bergman, Aeron (2004) “Generative Music” (email to author) [online] Cole, Tim (2004) “Generative Music” (email to author) [online] Bibliography

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Device Recordings (2004) “Generative Music” (email to author) [online] English, Lawrence (2004) “Generative Music” (email to author) [online] Hardingham, Chris (2004) “Regenerative Music” (email to author) [online] Harris, A (2004) “Copyright Question” (email to author) [online] Lowe, Nick (2004) “Copyright Question” (email to author) [online] Olofsson, Fredrik (2004) “Generative Music” (email to author) [online] Pettigrew, Jon (2004) “Generative Dance” (email to author) [online] Pettigrew, Jon (2004) “Generative Film / Music” (email to author) [online] Pettigrew, Jon (2004) “Using Bifurcating Video to Create Generative Films” (email to author) [online] Pope, Steve (2004) “Generative Music” (email to author) [online] Parker, Phil (2004) “Generative Music” (email to author) [online] Rich, Owain (2003) “The Evolution of the Score and Generative Music: To What Extent Can Computer Code Ever Be Considered a Musical Language?” (email to author) [online] Ross, Alexander (2004) “Copyright Question” (email to author) [online] OTHER SOURCES

Creamware “Generative Music Tutorial” (Accessed 20 February 2004) Available from http://www.creamware.de/en/download/modular/ mod_tutorials/tut1.asp Evans, Alex (2003) “Staying Pictures” [online] (Accessed 25 May 2004) Available from http://www.bluespoon.com/?r=tomthumb Evans, Alex (2002) “Tom Thumb – A Short Generative Film” [online] (Accessed 25 May 2004) Available from http://www.bluespoon.com/?r=tomthumb

Bibliography

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Brown, P. (2005) Is the Future of Music Generative? Music Therapy Today (online) Vol. VI (2) 215-274. available at http:/ /musictherapyworld.net

Woolf, Sam (2003) “Generative Soundtracker” [online] (Accessed 25 May 2004) Available from http://www.cogs.susx.ac.uk/users/samw/ tracker.php Woolf, Sam (2003) “The Googlepoweredgogglebox” [online] (Accessed 25 May 2004) Available from http://www.blip.alturl.com/googlepoweredgogglebox.html MUSIC EXAMPLES

Various examples of generative music can be found at: Madplayer http://www.madplayer.com/flash/productsMadDemo.asp Supercollider http://www.audiosynth.com/audio/ http://www.mushimushi.net/morpheus/ http://www.weatherplayer.com/pages/perform/samples.html Koan Pro http://www.sseyo.com/products/koancontent/index.html Other http://www.r4nd.org/rand_home.html

Bibliography

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Author information FIGURE 3. Paul Brown

Paul Brown worked in the music industry in the UK for 15 years during which time he worked at PRS Ltd and then in music publishing looking after and promoting the publishing interests of various songwriters including David Bowie and Brian Eno. In the course of studying for his MA in Music Business Management at the University of Westminster in Author information

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London he became interested in generative music and in his final project investigated the possible effects that generative music might have on the music industry. Paul is hoping to continue his interests in generative music by exploring and developing the idea of the use of generative music systems as tools to assist both music therapists and patient carers in health settings through a research degree.

Contact: Jeddy3@tele2.fr

This article can be cited as Brown, P. (2005) Is the Future of Music Generative? Music Therapy Today (online) Vol. VI (2) 215-274. available at http://musictherapyworld.net

This article can be cited as

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Music Therapy Today Vol. VI (2) April 2005

Music therapy in the Silesian centre of rehabilitation in Ustron Towards creating an international network of hospitals using music therapy

Zbigniew Eysymontt and Sebastian Mucha FIGURE 1. Piano and accordion

The Hospital’s Character The key element in the mission of the Silesian Centre of Rehabilitation in Ustron is best expressed by the statement: “… The Silesian Centre of 275

Eysymontt, Z. and Mucha, S. (2005) Music therapy in the Silesian centre of rehabilitation in Ustron Music Therapy Today (online) Vol .VI (2) 275-287. available at http://musictherapyworld.net

Rehabilitation is a hospital with a heart”. It is not only for the fact that our hospital specialises in early rehabilitation of patients after heart attack, coronary bypass operations, expansion of coronary vessels or heart valve implantations. It is the “heart” - the warm personal approach, the holistic treatment of patients’ problems rather than limiting ourselves to treatment of injuries and focusing only on the physical condition of our patients that make us stand out from among health care institutions.

FIGURE 2. Landscape around the hospital

The hospital has existed for 15 years, 10 years as a branch of the “Repty Centre” in Tarnowskie Góry and 5 years as an independent provider of health care. The hospital provides treatment for 136 patients at a time.

Moreover, the hospital provides ample opportunities for treatment of outpatients.

The professional staff consists of specialists in the fields of medical rehabilitation, orthopedics, rheumatology, internal diseases, and family medicine, as well as nurses, a diet expert and a psychologist.

The Hospital’s Character

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Each patient undergoes a highly individualised course of rehabilitation, which is a result of comprehensive and detailed examination of the patient, carried out by means of modern diagnostic equipment. The rehabilitation covers various forms of precisely applied physical activities such as bicycle trainings, physical workouts as well as a wide range of physical therapy methods. A vital element of rehabilitation is the psychological education, short-term psychotherapy and music therapy, which was brought back to the hospital treatment methods in July 2003 after a few years of interruption. The previous techniques of music therapy were mostly passive in nature, whereas the present therapy has been enriched by a number of elements involving active participation of the patients.

Music Therapy Framework The activities take place in the “Winter Garden” - a spacious room, which also houses lectures in health education (“The Health Academy”) and various cultural events organised for the patients. The room is equipped with a tape recorder, a CD player, 2 wireless microphones, a quality sound system, a multi-media projector, an overhead projector, a screen, a piano, an accordion and a set of comfortable chairs for the patients. A typical therapy cycle consists of 15 sessions, which take place in the afternoon from Monday to Friday for the period of three weeks spent in the hospital. The patients are divided into 3 groups of 12 to 20 people. A therapeutic session typically takes up to 35 minutes. Sessions of music therapy are ‘obligatory’. They are treated equally with other kinds of therapy such as physical workouts or physical therapy which are recorded on the card of therapy.

MAIN GOALS OF MUSIC THERAPY:

enhancing the mood and the general psycho-physical condition of patients • reduction of psycho-physical tensions •

Music Therapy Framework

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relaxation and rest • musical education and enhancing the appreciation of music • getting to know each other better •

THE PROGRAMME INCLUDES THE FOLLOWING ELEMENTS:

1. Schultz training 2. Visualization inspired by such topics as: ‘In the forest’, ‘On the seaside’, ‘A walk in the fields’ (with the use of spoken commentary, music and sounds of nature).

3. Activities developing musical imagination, the example topics include: ‘Animals’ ‘Seasons of the year’ ‘Human personalities’ In order to compensate for the relatively short periods of hospitalisation and frequent changes in the training groups, apart from traditional techniques of music therapy described above we have included elements, which have educational and recreational effects on the patients. These include: 4. Familiarising with various musical styles: classical music (instrumental, opera, operetta, musical, jazz, film music, electronic music, etc.)

5. “Feature talks” devoted to music therapy, history of music, composers, performers…

6. Live music, accordion concerts, piano concerts, not without active participation of musically gifted patients.

7. Joint singing of folk tunes and popular songs.

8. Elements of dance: Irish, Country, modern dance.

9. Musical quizzes about Polish and foreign music from the ‘60s and ‘70s as well as from the ‘80s up to contemporary times.

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10.Listening to other kinds of music after the therapeutic sessions, as requested by the patients: blues, country, disco-polo, ethnic, hip-hop, cabaret, folk, pop, rock, soul, swing, sung poetry and other kinds.

Patients are requested to follow a few basic rules for the common benefit of the therapeutic group. Punctuality is essential, as opening and closing doors after the session has started distract the participants of therapy and makes it less effective, especially in the Shultz method and the visualization techniques. Participants are also requested not to talk during therapy sessions.

FIGURE 3. Music therapy session

Choosing the repertoire for a given session we pay special attention to it that the musical pieces are varied in style, that the melodies are not excessively complicated or dissonant. We aim to keep the music perceptively accessible. We mostly make use of instrumental music – classical (both original and transcribed for other instruments) jazz, film music (particularly suitable for development of musical imagination), electronic and entertainment music arranged for such instruments as pan flute, Hawaiian guitar, flute, trumpet, saxophone and piano.

Music Therapy Framework

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Download video examples of group singing Group singing 1 (Windows AVI-Format 20.2 MB) ; (Quicktime small 1.9 MB) ; (Mpeg4 7.5 MB) Group singing 2 (Windows AVI-Format 14.8 MB) ; (Quicktime small 1.5 MB) ; (Mpeg4 5.7 MB) We make sure that every patient has their say during discussions about music. Some patients tend to become quite talkative under the influence of musical pieces from the beginnings of the second half of the 20th century, which bring back memories of their early years.

The effectiveness of music therapy is hard to be measured by means of scientific methods due to a high level of subjectivity of musical experience. In order to find out about patients’ experience of the therapeutic sessions, what they liked and what they did not like, their musical preferences and their expectations we have prepared a special questionnaire, which can bee seen below. Patients’ responses to the survey questions are of great value to us in therapy planning. It serves as an indication for us as to what should be kept, what should be changed, how to meet the patients’ expectations without neglecting the therapeutic value of the sessions. You can see the questionnaire below. Below the questionnaire we present the results of our initial research carried over 7 months, from February to August 2004.

Music Therapy Framework

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Questionnaire The questionnaire is anonymous, with the sole aim of collecting information concerning your attitude to music and music therapy. You are kindly requested to provide genuine answers. The questionnaire is handed back to the patients at the end of their stay in our hospital.

1. What are your favourite kinds of music? Please put a cross against the appropriate box (es).

• entertainment • classical • operetta • music of the ‘60s / ‘70s • other: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

2. Please write the names of your favourite composers, singers, musical groups: ..................................... ...................... ....................................... ....................

3. Did you like the sessions of music therapy? Grade the level of your satisfaction by circling the most appropriate number (1 – the lowest, 5 – the highest) 1-2-3-4-5

4. Was there anything that you particularly liked? Put a cross against the appropriate box (es). listening to music • singing together •

Questionnaire

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dance instruction • accordion concerts • other: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

•

5. Was there anything that you particularly did not like?

• • • • •

listening to music singing together dance instruction accordion concerts other: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

6. How did you benefit from the sessions of music therapy? Put a cross against the most appropriate box (es).

• • • • •

enhancing general psycho-physical condition better interactions with others upbringing my musical knowledge awakening of musical imagination other: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..........

Thank you for your time devoted to filling in this questionnaire.

Sebastian Mucha

Questionnaire

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Questionnaire covering the period of 1st Feb 2004 – 31st Aug 2004 - Presentation and analysis of the research results 1. SEX.

Sex Female Male

% 43 57

2. AGE.

Age 30 - 40 41 -50 51 – 60 61 – 70 71 – 80

Female (%) 2 16 34 32 16

M (%) 13 31 40 16

3. MOST FAVOURITE KINDS OF MUSIC

Kind of music Entertainment Music of the 60s and 70s Operetta Classical other

% 34 32 16 11 7

Level of satisfaction 1 (the lowest) 2

% 2 2

4. GENERAL LEVEL OF SATISFACTION WITH THE SESSIONS OF MUSIC THERAPY

Questionnaire covering the period of 1st Feb 2004 – 31st Aug 2004 - Presentation and

Eysymontt, Z. and Mucha, S. (2005) Music therapy in the Silesian centre of rehabilitation in Ustron Music Therapy Today (online) Vol .VI (2) 275-287. available at http://musictherapyworld.net

3 4 5 (the highest)

15 34 47

Activity singing together Listening to music Accordion concerts Dancing

% 31 30 29 10

5. WHAT DID YOU LIKE MOST ABOUT THE SESSIONS?

6. HOW DID YOU BENEFIT FROM MUSIC THERAPY?

Benefits enhancing general psycho-physical condition awakening of musical imagination upbringing of my musical knowledge better interactions with others

% 44 23 17 16

There were a few more men (57%) taking part in the survey than women (43%). The tables show that most women taking part in the survey are in the age group 50 – 60, while most men fall into the age group 60 – 70.

The patients’ favourite kinds of music are: entertainment music (34%) and the music of the 60s and 70s (32%). The operetta is less popular with the patients (16%) as well as classical music (11%). The respondents could also write in a separate rubric their favourite kinds of music which were not listed in the question options. Here the respondents frequently named merry-making music, ethnic music, opera, relaxing music, and other kinds such as blues, country, disco-polo, jazz, sung poetry and rock.

Questionnaire covering the period of 1st Feb 2004 – 31st Aug 2004 - Presentation and

Eysymontt, Z. and Mucha, S. (2005) Music therapy in the Silesian centre of rehabilitation in Ustron Music Therapy Today (online) Vol .VI (2) 275-287. available at http://musictherapyworld.net

In subsequent tables we can see patients’ level of satisfaction with the sessions of music therapy. Here the responses were divided in the following way: 5 – 47%, 4 – 34%, 3 – 15%, 2 – 2%, 1 – 2%. The most valued activities during the sessions were: singing together (31%), listening to music (30%) and accordion concerts (29%). Dancing was significantly less popular (10%). The results of the questionnaire will be taken into account in the process of therapy planning and elements of dancing will be offered only to those patients who express a willingness to take part in this kind of activities. Furthermore, the patients were asked to express their subjective opinion about the benefits from taking part in music therapy. A significant number of patients (44%) name the enhancing of their general psycho-physical condition, 23% of patients mention the awakening of musical imagination and 17% point to better interactions with other people as the benefits of the therapy.

In the last question the respondents were asked to comment on the sessions of music therapy that they have been attending. All the critical remarks expressed by the patients (mostly technical issues) were investigated and appropriate changes have been introduced to improve the situation. Patients were also asked to list their favourite composers. The list of composers mentioned by the patients contains the names of over 300 musicians, which provides material for further analysis and scope for improvement of our repertoire in the future.

Generally patients’ responses suggest that the main objectives of the music therapy sessions have been achieved: the therapy leads to relaxation and reduction of inner tensions, it brings about an improvement in the general psycho-physical condition, it helps to forget about the discomforts caused by the disease, it lifts up the spirit and deepens relationships between patients.

Questionnaire covering the period of 1st Feb 2004 – 31st Aug 2004 - Presentation and

Eysymontt, Z. and Mucha, S. (2005) Music therapy in the Silesian centre of rehabilitation in Ustron Music Therapy Today (online) Vol .VI (2) 275-287. available at http://musictherapyworld.net

Author information: FIGURE 4. S. Mucha plays accordion in a group therapy session

SEBASTIAN MUCHA, MUSIC THERAPIST

• • • • • • • • •

Music teacher and music therapist, lives in Cieszyn, 20 km away from Ustron.

Graduated from primary and secondary Music School and Silesian University in Cieszyn.

Music study at Music Academy in Wroclaw Master degree in music therapy 2003 Music therapist in a center for autistic children in Cieszyn At present music therapist in Silesian Center Rehabilitation in Ustron Accordionist, pianist, organist in church Workshops on music therapy on Cardiological Symposia Paper presentations on National Conferences on Music Therapy

sebmuzi@interia.pl ZBIGNIEW EYSYMONTT

I was born 28.03.1954. Since 15 years I AM head of Cardiac Rehabilitation Department of Silesian Rehabilitation Centre, Since 5 years I am also a director of this hospital. Most important trainings: • • • • •

Biopsies under ultrasound control (Gentofte Clinic Kopenhagen) Hospital Managements (Milwood VA USA) Specializations: Internal medicine, rehabilitation Abilities – echocardiography, ultrasonography Ph.D paper on Quality of life patients after CABG

Author information:

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Member of Polish Society of Cardiology, European Society of Cardiology (member of Cardiac Rehabilitation Working Group), Polish Society of Rehabilitation Scientific work: Several papers and presentations on cardiac rehabilitation, quality of life, health promotion Current scientific and professional interest: Cognitive decline after CABG, musictherapy in hospital International programs : WHO Pilot Health Promotion Hospitals Project, Hospital Internet CafĂŠ (EC project) Personal interests: singing (karaoke) , playing guitar, gardening, traveling, bicycle, photography Married, one daughter CONTACT

Zbigniew Eysymontt MD Silesian Rehabilitation Center ul.Zdrojowa 6 43-450 Ustron Poland tel/fax +48 33 8544177 zeys@iq.net.pl

This article can be cited as Eysymontt, Z. and Mucha, S. (2005) Music therapy in the Silesian centre of rehabilitation in Ustron - Towards creating an international network of hospitals using music therapy. Music Therapy Today (online) Vol .VI (2) 275-287. available at http://musictherapyworld.net

This article can be cited as

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Music Therapy Today Vol. VI (2) April 2005

Odds and ends, themes and trends Tom Doch

Proliferation of Functional Hair Cells in Vivo in the Absence of the Retinoblastoma Protein Cyrille Sage, Mingqian Huang, Kambiz Karimi, Gabriel Gutierrez, Melissa A. Vollrath, Duan-Sun Zhang, Jaime GarcĂŠa-AĂąoveros, Philip W. Hinds, Jeffrey T. Corwin, David P. Corey, Zheng-Yi Chen Source:

www.sciencemag.org/

13

January

2005

http://www.sci-

encemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/1106642v1 In mammals, hair cell loss causes irreversible hearing and balance impairment because hair cells are terminally differentiated and do not regenerate spontaneously.

Profiling gene expression in developing mouse vestibular organs, we identified the retinoblastoma protein (pRb) as a candidate regulator of cell-cycle exit in hair cells.

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Differentiated and functional mouse hair cells with a targeted deletion of Rb1 undergo mitosis, divide, and cycle, and yet continue to become highly differentiated and functional.

Moreover, acute loss of Rb1 in postnatal hair cells caused cell-cycle reentry. Manipulation of the pRb pathway may ultimately lead to mammalian hair cell regeneration.

To whom correspondence should be addressed.

Zheng-Yi Chen, E-mail: zhengyi@helix.mgh.harvard.edu OUTDOORLINKS:

Zheng-Yi Chen http://hearing.harvard.edu/affiliates/chen.htm

Emotions Color Your Sense of Smell Source: http://health.yahoo.com/January January> 10, 2005 http://health.yahoo.com/news/54272 Your emotions may influence whether you think your boss's perfume -or any other smell -- is heinous or heavenly.

Researchers at Brown University exposed people playing computer games to custom-made scents. If the people were having a good time while they played the game, they were more likely to report that they liked the scent. If they were having a bad game, they were more likely to say they disliked the scent.

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"As humans, we're not immediately predisposed to respond to a scent and believe that it is good or bad. When we like or don't like a smell, that is learned," lead researcher Rachel Herz, a visiting assistant professor of psychology, said in a prepared statement.

"Some people may smell a rose and be reminded of their father's funeral.

Others may like the smell of skunk because they have a positive attachment to it from childhood," Herz said.

She said the study findings support the link between emotions and odor perception. There is little scientific data to back the idea that genetics influence odor perception, she added.

There are a few exceptions to the emotions-odor perception theory. For example, people immediately dislike irritating odors such as ammonia.

The study appears in the current issue of the International Journal of Comparative Psychology.

OUTDOORLINKS:

Rachel Herz http://www.brainscience.brown.edu/departments/faculty/herz.html

Post-translational protein modification as the substrate for long-lasting memory

By Aryeh Routtenberg and Jerome L. Rekart Source: http://www.sciencedirect.com/ Trends in Neurosciences Volume 28, Issue 1, January 2005, Pages 12-1

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Prevailing models of memory identify mRNA translation as necessary for long-lasting information storage. However, there are enough instances of memory storage in the virtual absence of protein synthesis to prompt consideration of alternative models.

A comprehensive review of the protein synthesis literature leads us to conclude that the translational mechanism is exclusively a permissive, replenishment step. Therefore, we propose that post-translational modification (PTM) of proteins already at the synapse is the crucial instructive mechanism underlying long-lasting memory.

A novel feature of this model is that non-random spontaneous (or endogenous) brain activity operates as a regulated positive-feedback rehearsal mechanism, updating network configurations by fine-tuning the PTM state of previously modified proteins.

Synapses participating in memory storage are therefore supple, a feature required for networks to alter complexity and update continuously. In analogy with codons for amino acids, a long-lasting memory is represented by a ‘degenerate code’ – a set of pseudo-redundant networks that can ensure its longevity.

OUTDOORLINKS:

Aryeh Routtenberg http://www.northwestern.edu/neurobiology/faculty/routtenberg.html Fachmagazin Trends in Neuroscience http://www.sciencedirect.com/

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Doch, T. (2005) Odds and ends, themes and trends. Music Therapy Today (online) Vol. VI (2), 288-348. available at http:/ /musictherapyworld.net ADHD Brain Scan Children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)

ADHD Brain Scan Children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) have smaller brains than average Source: /www.sciencentral.com/20.01.2005 http://www.sciencentral.com/articles/view.php3?article_id=218392460 A new type of brain imaging could help zero in on what's different about the brain circuitry in children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, or ADHD PHYSICAL DIFFERENCES

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) affects three to five percent of all children, perhaps as many as two million American children, and two to three times more boys than girls.

The most common ADHD behaviors fall into three categories: inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity; people with ADHD can have trouble with things like sitting still and focusing on tasks.

In many cases, medications such as Ritalin are prescribed to children with ADHD. "They're kids who have difficulty at school, who have difficulty at home," explains Manzar Ashtari, professor of radiology and psychiatry at North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System, who has studied ADHD in children for twenty years.

"They're constantly fidgety, they lose things, they forget things, and they're very disruptive in their behavior and this will make them very lonely because they usually have no friends, and socially, basically, they are suffering, and that basically causes the parents to suffer as well."

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While ADHD is typically described as a chemical imbalance, Ashtari says she may have found a clue that helps explain physical differences in ADHD children's brains.

Building on previous research on brain abnormalities in ADHD kids, Ashtari chose a new MRI-based technique called diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) to look at the white matter (which is composed of nerve fibers) in children's brains in more detail. DTI tracks water motion along the fibers that connect brain parts and transmit and receive information.

After scanning 18 ADHD-diagnosed kids and 15 children without ADHD, she compared the structure and function of fibers in each group's brains, and found that "the motion of the water, the way it should be in normal controls, is not in ADHD kids."

Ashtari says she found abnormality in the fiber pathways in the frontal cortex, basal ganglia, brain stem and cerebellum—areas that are involved in regulating attention, impulsive behavior, motor activity, and inhibition, which are all related to ADHD symptoms.

She believes they may form a key communication circuit that may be malfunctioning in ADHD kids. "When you actually literally connect the dots, you realize that, wow, maybe we're actually talking about a specific circuit in the brain that connects the front and the back of the brain," she says. "All these spots amount to a specific circuit. So the circuit is not only in one area that it shows abnormality, [but] along the path of it, in several areas, we see the abnormalities."

Ashtari says her study is also in the initial phases of replicating existing research that shows how ADHD medication might help normalize the

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brain. She also stresses that her research won't diagnose individual cases of ADHD. "This study does not help to diagnose a kid," she says. "This study is just tip of iceberg to help to understand the involvement of brain in the ADHD kids and it's just the beginning and our hope is to be able one day to have the tools to put the kids in the MRI and diagnose them.

That is our goal, but we're not there yet."

This research was presented at the 2004 annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America, and was funded by the National Institute of Mental Health.

OUTDOORLINKS:

Manzar Ashtari http://www.yu.edu/aecomdb/facultydir/facultypage4.asp?id=354 Radiological Society of North America http://www.rsna.org/

The neuroanatomy of general intelligence: sex matters

By Richard J. Haier, Rex E. Jungb, Ronald A. Yeoc, Kevin Heada and Michael T. Alkire source: www.sciencedirect.com/ Copyright Š 2004 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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Doch, T. (2005) Odds and ends, themes and trends. Music Therapy Today (online) Vol. VI (2), 288-348. available at http:/ /musictherapyworld.net Redefining implicit and explicit memory: The functional neuroanatomy of

ABSTRACT

We examined the relationship between structural brain variation and general intelligence using voxel-based morphometric analysis of MRI data in men and women with equivalent IQ scores.

Compared to men, women show more white matter and fewer gray matter areas related to intelligence.

In men IQ/gray matter correlations are strongest in frontal and parietal lobes (BA 8, 9, 39, 40), whereas the strongest correlations in women are in the frontal lobe (BA10) along with Broca's area.

Men and women apparently achieve similar IQ results with different brain regions, suggesting that there is no singular underlying neuroanatomical structure to general intelligence and that different types of brain designs may manifest equivalent intellectual performance.

OUTDOORLINKS:

Richard Haier http://www.ucihs.uci.edu/com/pediatrics/ index.html?top.html&menu.html&faculty/neurology/richardHaier.html

Redefining implicit and explicit memory: The functional neuroanatomy of priming, remembering, and control of retrieval

By BjĂśrn H. Schott , Richard N. Henson , Alan Richardson-Klavehn , Christine Becker, Volker Thoma, Hans-Jochen Heinze and Emrah DĂźzel Source: www.pnas.org/January 18, 2005 http://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.0409070102

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Doch, T. (2005) Odds and ends, themes and trends. Music Therapy Today (online) Vol. VI (2), 288-348. available at http:/ /musictherapyworld.net Redefining implicit and explicit memory: The functional neuroanatomy of

We used event-related functional MRI to study awareness of prior episodes during memory retrieval and its relationship to the intention to retrieve memories.

Participants completed cues with words from a prior list (intentional test) or with the first words that came to mind (incidental test).

During both tests, explicit memory was separated from priming in the absence of explicit memory.

Priming was associated with hemodynamic decreases in left fusiform gyrus and bilateral frontal and occipital brain regions; explicit memory was associated with bilateral parietal and temporal and left frontal increases.

Retrieval intention did not change these patterns but was associated with activity in right prefrontal cortex.

Our results provide firm evidence that implicit and explicit memory have distinct functional neuroanatomies, and that strategic control of retrieval engages brain structures distinct from those involved in both implicit and explicit memory.

They have critical implications for theories of memory and consciousness, which often equate consciousness with control.

To whom correspondence should be addressed.

Bjรถrn H. Schott, E-mail: bschott@neuro2.med.uni-magdeburg.de

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Doch, T. (2005) Odds and ends, themes and trends. Music Therapy Today (online) Vol. VI (2), 288-348. available at http:/ /musictherapyworld.net Scientists identify brain regions that decide where we look

OUTDOORLINKS:

Klinik für Neurologie II, Otto-von-Guericke-Universität Magdeburg, Medizinische Fakultät http://neuro2.med.uni-magdeburg.de/

Scientists identify brain regions that decide where we look Source: www.imperial.ac.uk./25 Jan 2005 http://www.imperial.ac.uk./p5935.htm Scientists have found the brain regions that decide where we look, and where to direct our eyes when we’re faced with a difficult choice, such as looking someone straight in the eye or looking away.

According to research published today in Current Biology, the team from Imperial College London and University College London, have found that different areas of the brain are active when we freely select where to look, and when we change our mind and look elsewhere.

Using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), the researchers discovered two distinct areas within the medial frontal cortex of the brain. One became active when a free choice was made, while the other responded to situations of conflict, when one plan had to be discarded in favour of an alternative.

In the experiment, volunteers were asked to freely shift their eyes while in the MRI scanner, and this resulted in the brain region associated with free choice becoming active. When the volunteers had to change their minds and look elsewhere, a different part of the brain was activated.

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Dr Masud Husain from Imperial College London, based at Charing Cross Hospital, said: “This research has revealed the brain regions which decide where we direct our eyes. Sometimes choosing where to look isn’t straightforward. Do you look your boss straight in the eye, or do you decide to look away? Even if you decide to look him in the eye, you might have second thoughts and change our mind - before it’s too late.

Different parts of the medial frontal cortex become active when we choose to make an eye movement of our own free will, and when we face a difficult choice involving conflicting alternatives.”

The researchers believe this discovery may also explain why people with damage to the medial frontal cortex often seem incapable of generating actions of their own free will, or choosing between alternative actions.

OUTDOORLINKS:

Dr Masud Husain http://www1.imperial.ac.uk/medicine/people/m.husain.html

HealthSouth hospitals to offer new Interactive Metronome Therapy - Program brings cutting-edge technology into rehabilitation process Source: www.alphagalileo.org/24 January 2005 http://www.alphagalileo.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=readRelease&ReleaseID=21430 HealthSouth Corporation (OTC Pink Sheets: HLSH) today announced it will offer Interactive Metronome. (IM) therapy at select locations for patients who suffer from neurological and motor impairments such as

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traumatic brain injury, stroke, Parkinson's Disease, amputation, multiple sclerosis or balance disorders.

IM was originally used in a healthcare setting to help children with developmental disorders. In recent years, innovative therapists and clinical researchers have demonstrated IM's effectiveness when applied to a wide range of neurological and motor diagnoses.

"We are excited to offer this new rehabilitation technology to our patients," says Mark Tarr, HealthSouth Inpatient Division President.

"When applied with traditional treatments, our therapists have seen significant improvements in gait and coordination, as well as in attention and mental processing. This technology is one of several new and innovative therapies we have begun to offer in our nationwide network of hospitals."

IM's impact on neurological recovery focuses on improving the brain's ability to perform two critical functions: motor planning and sequencing.

Motor planning and sequencing are central to human activity - from the coordinated movements needed to walk or climb stairs to the order of words in a sentence. IM is the only therapy tool that improves those human capacities by strengthening a person's sensory-motor synchronization, commonly referred to as "timing."

"Physicians and therapists across the country have adopted IM as a rehabilitation program, resulting in some extraordinary recoveries by their patients," says Al Guerra, Vice President Interactive Metronome Rehabilitation Technologies Division. "With the addition of HealthSouth facilities, IM therapy can benefit even more patients in their recovery."

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Doch, T. (2005) Odds and ends, themes and trends. Music Therapy Today (online) Vol. VI (2), 288-348. available at http:/ /musictherapyworld.net The spatial and temporal meanings of English prepositions can be

Interactive Metronome provides a structured, goal-oriented process that challenges the patient to synchronize a range of hand and foot exercises to a computer-generated reference tone heard through headphones. The patient attempts to match the rhythmic beat with repetitive motor actions.

Over the course of the treatment, patients learn to: • • • • • CONTACT:

Focus and attend for longer periods of time Increase physical endurance and stamina Filter out internal and external distractions Improve their ability to monitor mental and physical actions as they are occurring Progressively improve performance

Interactive Metronome contact Angie Niehoff niehoff@bellsouth.net

OUTDOORLINKS:

Interactive Metronome http://www.interactivemetronome.com/ HealthSouth http://www.healthsouth.com/

The spatial and temporal meanings of English prepositions can be independently impaired

By David Kemmerer Source: http://www.sciencedirect.com/j.neuropsychologia.2004.06.025

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Doch, T. (2005) Odds and ends, themes and trends. Music Therapy Today (online) Vol. VI (2), 288-348. available at http:/ /musictherapyworld.net The spatial and temporal meanings of English prepositions can be

ABSTRACT

English uses the same prepositions to describe both spatial and temporal relationships (e.g., at the corner, at 1:30), and other languages worldwide exhibit similar patterns.

These space–time parallelisms have been explained by the Metaphoric Mapping Theory, which maintains that humans have a cognitive predisposition to structure temporal concepts in terms of spatial schemas through the application of a TIME IS SPACE metaphor.

Evidence comes from (among other sources) historical investigations showing that languages consistently develop in such a way that expressions that originally have only spatial meanings are gradually extended to take on analogous temporal meanings. It is not clear, however, if the metaphor actively influences the way that modern adults process prepositional meanings during language use.

To explore this question, a series of experiments was conducted with four brain-damaged subjects with left perisylvian lesions.

Two subjects exhibited the following dissociation: they failed a test that assesses knowledge of the spatial meanings of prepositions, but passed a test that assesses knowledge of the corresponding temporal meanings of the same prepositions. This result suggests that understanding the temporal meanings of prepositions does not necessarily require establishing structural alignments with their spatial correlates.

Two other subjects exhibited the opposite dissociation: they performed better on the spatial test than on the temporal test. Overall, these findings support the view that although the spatial and temporal meanings of prepositions are historically linked by virtue of the TIME IS SPACE meta-

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phor, they can be (and may normally be) represented and processed independently of each other in the brains of modern adults.

OUTDOORLINKS:

David Kemmerer, Ph.D. http://www.sla.purdue.edu/academic/aus/pages/fac_staff/faculty/ kemmerer.html

Visual speech speeds up the neural processing of auditory speech

By Virginie van Wassenhove, Ken W. Grant and David Poeppel Source: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences/25 January 2005 Published

online

before

print

January

12,

2005,

10.1073/

pnas.0408949102 Š 2005 by The National Academy of Sciences of the USA http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/102/4/1181?etoc Synchronous presentation of stimuli to the auditory and visual systems can modify the formation of a percept in either modality. For example, perception of auditory speech is improved when the speaker's facial articulatory movements are visible.

Neural convergence onto multisensory sites exhibiting supra-additivity has been proposed as the principal mechanism for integration.

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Recent findings, however, have suggested that putative sensory-specific cortices are responsive to inputs presented through a different modality.

Consequently, when and where audiovisual representations emerge remain unsettled. In combined psychophysical and electroencephalography experiments we show that visual speech speeds up the cortical processing of auditory signals early (within 100 ms of signal onset).

The auditory–visual interaction is reflected as an articulator-specific temporal facilitation (as well as a nonspecific amplitude reduction).

The latency facilitation systematically depends on the degree to which the visual signal predicts possible auditory targets.

The observed auditory–visual data support the view that there exist abstract internal representations that constrain the analysis of subsequent speech inputs. This is evidence for the existence of an "analysis-by-synthesis" mechanism in auditory–visual speech perception.

To whom correspondence may be addressed at: University of Maryland, 1401 Marie Mount Hall, College Park, MD 20742.

E-mail:

virginie.van.wassenhove@mrsc.ucsf.edu

or

dpoep-

pel@deans.umd.edu.

OUTDOORLINKS:

Virginie van Wassenhove http://www.wam.umd/~vvw/

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A micromachined cochlear-like acoustic sensor

By Robert D. White, and Karl Grosh Source:

http://www-personal.engin.umich.edu/~rdwhite/

PRESENTATIONS_REPORTS/spie_03_02.pdf ABSTRACT

The mammalian cochlea achieves remarkable acoustic transduction characteristics in a compact and robust design.

For this reason, its mechanics have been extensively studied, both mathematically and experimentally. Recently, a number of researchers have attempted to mimic the cochlear function of the basilar membrane in micromachined mechanical devices.

This paper presents a design for a silicon cochlea which extends previous work by utilizing a micromachined liquid-filled two duct structure similar to the duct structure of the biological cochlea.

Design issues related to both mechanical structure and electrical transduction will be discussed, particularly with regard to optimization of transducer performance.

A parallel beam array structure is proposed as a model for an orthotropic membrane. Fabrication procedures and results are also presented.

Challenging fabrication issues related to through-wafer etching, adhesive wafer bonding, device release, and fluid injection are emphasized.

OUTDOORLINKS:

Karl Grosh http://www-personal.engin.umich.edu/~grosh/ Odds and ends, themes and trends

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Robert D. White (PDF) http://www-personal.engin.umich.edu/~rdwhite/CurriculumVitae.pdf

Loss of Sight and Enhanced Hearing: A Neural Picture Source:

http://www.plosbiology.org/plosonline/?request=getdocu-

ment&doi=10.1371/journal.pbio.0030048 January 25, 2005 Copyright: © 2004 Public Library of Science.

Stevie Wonder and Ray Charles are often cited as evidence that blindness confers superior musical ability. Wonder lost his sight after an incubatorrelated oxygen overdose during infancy; Charles lost his as a boy to glaucoma. It’s impossible to know whether sight would have compromised their success, but many gifted musicians, from Jose Feliciano to Rahsaan Roland Kirk, lost their sight at an early age.

A number of human studies show that blind persons perform nonvisual tasks better than those with sight. Neuroimaging studies of blind persons performing nonvisual tasks, including hearing, show activity in brain areas normally associated with vision.

But much remains to be learned about the nature and extent of this phenomenon: how these “visual areas” are used, the mechanisms that generate individual differences (not all blind persons can localize sounds better than the sighted, for example), and the neural processes that underlie it.

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The task of localizing sound—which requires integrating information available to one ear only (monaural sounds available, for example, when one ear is plugged) or information derived from comparing sounds binaurally—is particularly suited to investigating the neural remapping that seems to follow vision loss.

In a previous study, Franco Lepore and colleagues showed that people who lost their sight at an early age could localize sound, particularly from monaural cues, better than those who could see. These findings suggested that areas of the brain normally dedicated to processing visual stimuli (the visual cortex, located at the back of the brain in the occipital lobe) might play a role in processing sound in these individuals.

In a new report, Lepore and colleagues use functional imaging studies to investigate the functional relationship between neural activity and enhanced hearing abilities in the blind, and find a strong correlation between superior sound localization skills and increased activity in the brain’s visual center.

The authors hypothesized that if visual cortex recruitment bolstered auditory function in some individuals, then visual cortex activity would correlate with individual differences in performance, and the degree of activity should predict such differences. Nineteen people—seven sighted and twelve who lost their sight at an early age—were placed in an echofree chamber and asked to indicate where a sound was coming from, using either one (monaural) or both (binaural) ears. The participants then performed the same tasks within a positron emission tomography (PET) machine, which measures brain activity through changes in cerebral blood flow (CBF).

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Five of the blind participants could accurately localize sounds monaurally; most of the sighted could not. (All 19 participants had no trouble localizing binaural sounds.)

Only the blind individuals with superior localization skills showed increased CBF in the visual cortex while performing monaural localization tasks.

Interestingly, during binaural localization, the sighted participants showed decreased CBF in visual cortical areas. This decrease comports with previous studies showing that engaging one brain center—say, the temporal lobe, which processes sound—inhibits activation of others— such as the occipital lobe, which processes visual cues.

These inhibitions appear to be absent in blind persons, though it’s not clear why. It could be that blind persons don’t need such inhibitions, the authors speculate, or maybe unrestricted access to the visual center serves to compensate for vision loss by boosting nonvisual senses.

Whether the enhanced auditory performance reported here simply reflects increased efficiency of auditory processing or indicates “supranormal” powers, Lepore and colleagues argue that their results show that the visual cortex is “specifically recruited to process subtle monaural cues more effectively.”

It will be interesting to learn whether blind persons can recruit visual centers for other auditory tasks or to help them navigate the world without sight. Such studies would be vital for tailoring sensory support to suit individual needs and maybe even suggest ways to facilitate the neural cross talk that enhances auditory performance. But don’t expect such

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innovations to recreate the likes of Rahsaan Kirk or Ray Charles anytime soon.

OUTDOORLINKS:

FrĂŠdĂŠric Gougoux http://www.rsmnq.ca/en/directory/memberdetails.cfm?MemberID=320&Language=en PLoS Biology http://www.plosbiology.org/plosonline/?request=index-html&issn=15457885

Long Chaotic Transients in Complex Networks Authors: Alexander Zumdieck, Marc Timme, Theo Geisel, Fred Wolf Source: http://arxiv.org/abs/cond-mat/0401038 We show that long chaotic transients dominate the dynamics of randomly diluted networks of pulse-coupled oscillators.

This contrasts with the rapid convergence towards limit cycle attractors found in networks of globally coupled units.

The lengths of the transients strongly depend on the network connectivity and varies by several orders of magnitude, with maximum transient lengths at intermediate connectivities.

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The dynamics of the transient exhibits a novel form of robust synchronization. An approximation to the largest Lyapunov exponent characterizing the chaotic nature of the transient dynamics is calculated analytically.

INFORMATION:

Alexander Zumdieck, E-Mail: az@pks.mpg.de Dr. Fred Wolf, E-Mail: fred@chaos.gwdg.de

OUTDOORLINKS:

Max-Planck-Institut für Physik komplexer Systeme, Dresden http://www.mpg.de/instituteProjekteEinrichtungen/institutsauswahl/ physik_komplexer_systeme/index.html Max-Planck-Institut für Dynamik und Selbstorganisation, Göttingen http://www.mpg.de/instituteProjekteEinrichtungen/institutsauswahl/stroemungsforschung/index.html

Sign language reveals fast track to grammar Languages are quick to develop conventions about word order.

By Michael Hopkin Source: http://www.nature.com/news/2005/050131/full/050131-4.html New languages can develop consistent rules of grammar within a single generation of their birth, a study of an Israeli sign language has shown.

The Al-Sayyid Bedouins, who live in Israel's Negev region, have a high rate of congenital deafness. In a population of about 3,500, roughly 150 people are deaf. The community, which was founded about 200 years Odds and ends, themes and trends

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ago, has developed its own sign language over the past 70 years, with no apparent outside influences. This is the first documented example of a language evolving from scratch in such isolation.

Sentences in Al-Sayyid Bedouin sign language have a word order of 'subject, object, verb' (SOV), as in the phrase 'I apple give'. Israel's spoken languages, Arabic and Hebrew, use 'subject, verb, object' (SVO). The same goes for English, as in 'I give apple'.

"We didn't expect to see word order so quickly, and didn't expect to see this particular word order," says Carol Padden of the University of California, San Diego, who led the study. The discovery suggests that grammar appears early in the development of face-to-face languages. Written language can take centuries to develop consistent grammar.

Speedy development in sign language has been seen before. Nicaraguan deaf people have adopted a common sign language over the past 25 years, since they were brought together in a specialist school system for the deaf. But the Al-Sayyid Bedouins are the first group to be studied that has developed a sign language with no outside influence.

The language's rapid progress is impressive, agrees Steven Pinker, a linguist at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. "This finding suggests that the human mind has the motive and means to create an expressive, grammatical language without requiring many generations of fine-tuning," he says.

But there is nothing remarkable about the contrast between the signers' SOV structure and the SVO grammar of Israel's spoken languages, he says. Languages are split between the two and some switch from one to

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the other, as shown by archaic English phrases that use SOV, such as "With this ring, I thee wed."

The simple structure of Al-Sayyid Bedouin sign language is an important convention that will allow later sophistication, say Padden and her colleagues, writing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences1. The Al-Sayyid Bedouins can sign 'James Jan kiss' and know that James has kissed Jan, rather than the other way around. Once a language is unambiguous outside its immediate context, complicated rules about agreements between subjects and verbs are able to evolve.

But it will take many generations, says Pinker, for such further subtleties to emerge.

References Sandler W., Meir I., Padden C. & Aronoff M., Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA, published online, doi:10.1073/pnas.0405448102 (2005).

OUTDOORLINKS:

University Haifa http://www.haifa.ac.il/ Carol Padden of the University of California, San Diego, http://communication.ucsd.edu/people/PADDEN

Music improves sleep quality in older adults source: Journal of Advanced Nursing Volume 49 Issue 3 Page 234 February 2005 doi:10.1111/j.1365-2648.2004.03281.x

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http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/links/doi/10.1111/j.13652648.2004.03281.x/abs/ AIM.

The aim of this paper is to report an investigation of the effects of soft music on sleep quality in older community-dwelling men and women in Taiwan.

BACKGROUND.

Sleep is a complex rhythmic state that may be affected by the ageing process. Few studies have focused on the effects of music, a non-pharmacological method of improving the quality of sleep in older adults.

METHOD.

A randomized controlled trial was used with a two-group repeated measures design.

Sixty people aged 6083 years with difficulty in sleeping were recruited through community leaders and screened using the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) and Epworth Sleepiness Scale. Those reporting depression, cognitive impairment, medical or environmental problems that might interfere with sleep; and those who used sleeping medications, meditation, or caffeine at bedtime were excluded. Participants listened to their choice among six 45-minute sedative music tapes at bedtime for 3 weeks. There were five types of Western and one of Chinese music. Sleep quality was measured with the PSQI before the study and at three weekly post-tests. Groups were comparable on demographic variables, anxiety, depressive symptoms, physical activity, bedtime routine, herbal tea use, napping, pain, and pretest overall sleep quality.

RESULTS.

Music resulted in significantly better sleep quality in the experimental group, as well as significantly better components of sleep quality: better perceived sleep quality, longer sleep duration, greater sleep efficiency, Odds and ends, themes and trends

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shorter sleep latency, less sleep disturbance and less daytime dysfunction (P = 0·040·001). Sleep improved weekly, indicating a cumulative dose effect.

CONCLUSION.

The findings provide evidence for the use of soothing music as an empirically-based intervention for sleep in older people.

OUTDOORLINKS:

Prof. Marion Good, PhD, FAAN, RN http://fpb.case.edu/Faculty/Good.shtm Artictle in Journal of Advanced Nursing http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/links/doi/10.1111/j.13652648.2004.03281.x/abs/

Scientists identify brain regions that decide where we look Source: www.alphagalileo.org/24 January 2005 http://www.alphagalileo.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=readRelease&ReleaseID=21430 Scientists have found the brain regions that decide where we look, and where to direct our eyes when we’re faced with a difficult choice, such as looking someone straight in the eye or looking away.

According to research published today in Current Biology, the team from Imperial College London and University College London, have found

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that different areas of the brain are active when we freely select where to look, and when we change our mind and look elsewhere.

Using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), the researchers discovered two distinct areas within the medial frontal cortex of the brain. One became active when a free choice was made, while the other responded to situations of conflict, when one plan had to be discarded in favour of an alternative.

In the experiment, volunteers were asked to freely shift their eyes while in the MRI scanner, and this resulted in the brain region associated with free choice becoming active. When the volunteers had to change their minds and look elsewhere, a different part of the brain was activated.

Dr Masud Husain from Imperial College London, based at Charing Cross Hospital, said: “This research has revealed the brain regions which decide where we direct our eyes. Sometimes choosing where to look isn’t straightforward. Do you look your boss straight in the eye, or do you decide to look away? Even if you decide to look him in the eye, you might have second thoughts and change our mind - before it’s too late.

Different parts of the medial frontal cortex become active when we choose to make an eye movement of our own free will, and when we face a difficult choice involving conflicting alternatives.”

The researchers believe this discovery may also explain why people with damage to the medial frontal cortex often seem incapable of generating actions of their own free will, or choosing between alternative actions.

MORE INFORMATION:

Tony Stephenson/Imperial College London/ at.stephenson@imperial.ac.uk

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Doch, T. (2005) Odds and ends, themes and trends. Music Therapy Today (online) Vol. VI (2), 288-348. available at http:/ /musictherapyworld.net Circadian sensitivity to the chemotherapeutic agent cyclophosphamide depends

OutDoorLinks: Dr Masud Husain http://www1.imperial.ac.uk/medicine/people/m.husain.html

Circadian sensitivity to the chemotherapeutic agent cyclophosphamide depends on the functional status of the CLOCK/BMAL1 transactivation complex

By Victoria Y. Gorbacheva *, Roman V. Kondratov *, Renliang Zhang , Srujana Cherukuri , Andrei V. Gudkov , Joseph S. Takahashi Âś||, and Marina P. Antoch * Source:

http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/

0409897102v1?view=abstract The circadian clock controls many aspects of mammalian physiology, including responses to cancer therapy. We find that wild-type and circadian mutant mice demonstrate striking differences in their response to the anticancer drug cyclophosphamide (CY).

While the sensitivity of wild-type mice varies greatly, depending on the time of drug administration, Clock mutant and Bmal1 knockout mice are highly sensitive to treatment at all times tested.

On the contrary, mice with loss-of-function mutations in Cryptochrome (Cry1-/-Cry2-/- double knockouts) were more resistant to CY compared with their wild-type littermates. Thus, both time-of-day and allelicdependent variations in response to chemotherapy correlate with the

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functional status of the circadian CLOCK/BMAL1 transactivation complex.

Pharmacokinetic analysis of plasma concentration of different CY metabolites shows that, in contrast to the traditional view, circadian variations in drug sensitivity cannot be attributed to the changes in the rates of CY metabolic activation and/or detoxification.

At the same time, mice of different circadian genotypes demonstrate significant differences in B cell responses to toxic CY metabolites: B cell survival/recovery rate was directly correlated with the in vivo drug sensitivity.

Based on these results, we propose that the CLOCK/BMAL1 transcriptional complex affects the lethality of chemotherapeutic agents by modulating the survival of the target cells necessary for the viability of the organism.

To whom correspondence should be addressed.

Joseph S. Takahashi, E-mail: mailto:j-takahashi@northwestern.edu Marina P. Antoch, E-mail: mailto:antochm@ccf.org OUTDOORLINKS:

Joseph S. Takahashi http://www.northwestern.edu/neurobiology/faculty/takahashi.html Fachzeitschrift PNAS http://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.0409897102

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Stuttering Brains Source: Karen Luri /www.sciencentral.com/3. Feb 2005/ http://www.sciencentral.com/articles/view.php3?article_id=218392468 Once thought to be a psychological problem, stuttering is still often misunderstood. As a ScienCentral News video reports, researchers have shown that even when people who stutter are not speaking, their brains process language differently.

While its causes are many, stuttering used to carry with it the stigma of being a "psychological problem." Now, researchers are finding that stutterers' brains process language differently, even when they aren't speaking.

"Stuttering is known to be a very complex disorder, and there has been evidence that language plays an important role in stuttering," explains Christine Weber-Fox, a cognitive neuroscientist at Purdue University.

"For example, when children begin stuttering it's not when they're saying their first word, it's when they start combining words, and when language becomes more complex and they're having to formulate more. So we were very interested in knowing the role of language processing in stutterers, even when people who stutter aren't required to speak at all."

Weber-Fox and her team compared the brain activity of 22 adults, half stutterers and half non-stutterers, measuring the activity of brain cells in milliseconds using what looks like a wired-up swimming cap with electrodes that sit on the scalp.

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The adults were shown two words on a computer screen, and their job was to identify—silently, by pressing a button—which pairs of words rhymed. Some word pairs, like "own" and "gown," were spelled similarly but did not rhyme; some, like "own" and "cone," rhymed but were not spelled similarly, and some, like "own" and "cake," neither rhymed nor were spelled similarly.

"What that forces you to do is say the words to yourself," says WeberFox. "In other words if you see the word 'own' flashed on the screen, and then you see the word 'gown' flashed on the screen, you have to as quick as possible say whether they rhyme of not.

By doing that we're tapping into some of those same mechanisms that people use when they're trying to formulate speech."

Weber-Fox found that when the two words looked similar, but didn't rhyme, the stutterers took longer to process the words and answer. "They were overall slower, and just by a little bit, just by a hundredth of a second, but that little bit means a lot when you are talking about brain activity," she says. "The complexity of the task really influenced them or interfered with their processing to a greater extent than it did to people who didn't stutter. The results from the brainwave analysis also showed us that people that stutter maybe performing this task in a different way neurally…we found that their activity over the right hemisphere was greater than the left hemisphere and this is not what we found in our normal speakers—their responses were more balanced across both hemispheres for this task."

Weber-Fox points out that although language is an important factor in stuttering, there are other factors, including emotion, anxiety and genetOdds and ends, themes and trends

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ics, and its cause can differ for each person and even throughout one's lifespan. She hopes that work like hers will help to remove the stigma of stuttering.

"This is involuntary behavior that results from real physiological differences, so I think that that's one thing that's important to keep in mind," she says, adding, "even though it's a physiological response or something that is happening in the brain, that doesn't mean that it's not changeable‌I think [the research] actually provides a lot of optimism and hope for finding better ways to treat stuttering."

OUTDOORLINKS:

Video Stuttering Brains http://www.sciencentral.com/articles/view.php3?article_id=218392468 Christine Weber-Fox http://www.sla.purdue.edu/academic/aus/pages/fac_staff/faculty/weberfox.html

Is your illness all in the mind?

There is growing evidence that a patient's outlook on life can affect their chances of recovering from disease.

And having negative thoughts could even make you sick.

Roger Dobson investigates Source: news.independent.co.uk/08 February 2005

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http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/health_medical/ story.jsp?story=608643 Manuela Martinez and her colleagues were intrigued. Why was it that women who had suffered domestic violence seemed more prone to outbreaks of cold sores?

On the surface there appeared to be no connection between the physical and emotional abuse they suffered and the herpes infection that broke out on their lips. To try to find a link, they carried out a detailed profile of the saliva of a group of 74 survivors of abuse and compared it to a similar analysis of other women. They found that the abused women had far fewer immune-system compounds able to neutralise the virus. Their levels of antibodies to the virus were also lower. "Our findings confirm that the stress associated with partner violence could impair health by increasing the likelihood of viral reactivation and reducing the ability to suppress virus proliferation,'' says Dr Martinez, of the department of psychology at Valencia university.

The findings are part of a new and increasing body of evidence showing that the mind, personality and outlook can influence the development and progress of disease. New research, some of it being reported at an international conference on psychosomatic medicine this month, shows that the mind can have an effect on many conditions, from arthritis to cancer and heart disease.

Although Western medicine is still largely based on the paradigm that the mind and body are separate from one another, there is increasing evidence to the contrary. Such a mind-body connection has been hinted at down the centuries, but most of the evidence until now has been anecOdds and ends, themes and trends

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dotal or inconclusive. But a revival in interest in the mind-body link has triggered a wave of new research. Doctors in Holland who investigated heart disease treatments in almost 1,000 people found that patients with so-called type-D personalities - negative types who have difficulty communicating their emotions - were four times as likely to have heart problems. The same findings have now emerged from at least two other studies.

At Ohio State University, scientists have established that there is a mindbody connection in wound-healing. Their studies found that animals' skin wounds healed twice as quickly when they had social contact with other animals. "Stress delays wound-healing, and social contact helps counteract this delay," says Dr Courtney DeVries, who led the study.

And psychologists at Eastern Michigan University studied the outcome of bone-marrow transplants and found increased rates of survival among patients who were more defiant, better adjusted, and less depressed.

"This first large-scale study provides evidence that psychosocial variables can affect survival,'' say the researchers.

The links don't stop there. Doctors in the UK and Germany looked at 1,300 elderly men and women over 10 years, and found a connection between personality and cancer deaths. "The results justify belief that certain types of cancer may be related to specific stress and personality factors,'' say the researchers. A Japanese study based on more than 30,000 people concluded that personality may affect mortality rates among cancer and cardiovascular disease sufferes. A second study found that skin cancer patients who had group therapy had higher levels of immune-enhancing cells.

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And in Los Angeles, scientists at the Digestive Diseases Research Center believe that the mind can even bring about chronic heartburn. "The presence of a severe, sustained life stress during the previous six months significantly increased heartburn symptoms during the following four months. As with other chronic conditions like irritable bowel syndrome, heartburn severity appears to be responsive to major life events,'' they say.

A large number of studies have shown that people who are depressed suffer greater levels of disease and illness, but research is increasingly showing that happiness and positive attitudes can have the opposite effect.

Scientists in Finland carried out personality tests on 500 older people and then studied them for a decade. Fifty four per cent of the positive thinkers were still alive ten years laters, compared to 39 per cent of the others.

Those with a negative slant on life were also six times more likely to be in institutional care at the end of the survey.

At Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, researchers looked at the effect of humour on heart disease, and found that happy people were healthier. Not only were they less likely to get heart disease, they were also less prone to high blood pressure: "The results suggest that the propensity to laugh may contribute to cardio-protection,'' say the researchers. The mind-body link has also triggered new treatments. At Stanford University, one team found that metastatic breast cancer patients who were in a support group that used self-hypnosis as well as other mindbody techniques lived some 18 months longer than a control group.

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With so much research now suggesting powerful mind-body links, the hunt is on for the mechanisms involved. How can abstract thoughts and feelings affect the body and influence the development and progress of diseases and conditions that are so diverse? Prime candidates for bridging the gap between mind and body include neurotransmitters, the nervous system, hormones and the immune system.

Stress is heavily implicated, with several studies showing that stressed people have lower levels of natural killer cells and are more vulnerable to disease. One study found that students taking exams had depressed immune systems, while others have shown links between high stress events such as divorce and redundancy and the onset of disease. People with a large number of friends and who also have pets have greater immune-system activity.

Stress is known to trigger physical reactions, especially in the flight-orfight response to stimulus. But although it's known that stress can have an effect on the immune system, it is still not known how it can lead to a specific disease. Researchers in the relatively new area of psychoneuroimmunology, the study of how the mind and body interact in health and disease, are dedicated to discovering that mechanism.

One theory is that there is a direct communication system between the immune system, which orchestrates the body's defences, and the nervous system, which passes information between the body and the brain. Some experts believe that nerve endings in the thymus, spleen and bone marrow are evidence of communication.

But others maintain that the effects of the mind on disease are still unproven, and that any apparent effects can have different explanations.

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Are people with a large number of friends likely to live longer because of some unknown socialising effect, or because the friends are more likely to help them through illness? There are concerns too that mind-body explanations may have an adverse effect on patients with serious diseases, who may feel that they are in some way to blame.

"It is important to underline the hypothetical nature of these relationships,'' says Dr Vincent Jadoulle of the UniversitĂŠ Catholique de Louvain.

"Psychosomatic explanations risk being used to fill in knowledge gaps, and to give the illusion that we can avoid or control a disease. They especially risk making the patients feel guilty for their cancer or ist development."

Metrical Categories in Infancy and Adulthood

By Erin E. Hannon, Sandra E. Trehub Source:

http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/psci/2005/

00000016/00000001/art00009 ABSTRACT:

Intrinsic perceptual biases for simple duration ratios are thought to constrain the organization of rhythmic patterns in music.

We tested that hypothesis by exposing listeners to folk melodies differing in metrical structure (simple or complex duration ratios), then testing them on alterations that preserved or violated the original metrical structure.

Simple meters predominate in North American music, but complex meters are common in many other musical cultures.

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In Experiment 1, North American adults rated structure-violating alterations as less similar to the original version than structure-preserving alterations for simple-meter patterns but not for complex-meter patterns.

In Experiment 2, adults of Bulgarian or Macedonian origin provided differential ratings to structure-violating and structure-preserving alterations in complex- as well as simple-meter contexts.

In Experiment 3, 6-month-old infants responded differentially to structure-violating and structure-preserving alterations in both metrical contexts.

These findings imply that the metrical biases of North American adults reflect enculturation processes rather than processing predispositions for simple meters.

OUTDOORLINKS:

Erin E. Hannon http://comp9.psych.cornell.edu/people/Graduate_Students/eeh5.html Sandra E. Trehub http://www.erin.utoronto.ca/~w3cihrsc/Cihr/html/sandra.htm Fachzeitschrift Psychological Science (Bd. 16, Nr. 1, S. 48) http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/psci/2005/00000016/ 00000001/art00009

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Remembering one year later: Role of the amygdala and the medial temporal lobe memory system in retrieving emotional memories

By Florin Dolcos, Kevin S. LaBar and Roberto Cabeza source: www.pnas.org/February 9, 2005 http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/0409848102v1?etoc The memory-enhancing effect of emotion can be powerful and long-lasting. Most studies investigating the neural bases of this phenomenon have focused on encoding and early consolidation processes, and hence little is known regarding the contribution of retrieval processes, particularly after lengthy retention intervals.

To address this issue, we used event-related functional MRI to measure neural activity during the retrieval of emotional and neutral pictures after a retention interval of 1 yr.

Retrieval activity for emotional and neutral pictures was separately analyzed for successfully (hits) vs. unsuccessfully (misses) retrieved items and for responses based on recollection vs. familiarity.

Recognition performance was better for emotional than for neutral pictures, and this effect was found only for recollection-based responses.

Successful retrieval of emotional pictures elicited greater activity than successful retrieval of neutral pictures in the amygdala, entorhinal cortex, and hippocampus.

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Moreover, in the amygdala and hippocampus, the emotion effect was greater for recollection than for familiarity, whereas in the entorhinal cortex, it was similar for both forms of retrieval.

These findings clarify the role of the amygdala and the medial temporal lobe memory regions in recollection and familiarity of emotional memory after lengthy retention intervals.

To whom correspondence should be addressed at: E-mail: fdolcos@duke.edu OUTDOORLINKS:

Florin Dolcos http://www.biac.duke.edu/people/showcontact.asp?contact=florin_dolcos Kevin S. LaBar http://www.pbs.duke.edu/faculty/kevinlabar/kevinlabar.html Roberto Cabeza http://www.cabezalab.org/home.aspx

Lying Faces Source: www.sciencentral.com/ 02.11.05 http://articles/view.php3?article_id=218392481

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When the stakes are high emotions in the face and voice may give away hard-to-spot liars. As a ScienCentral News video reports, one researcher studying deception for the military is finding information that will be helpful in love and war.

LIAR, LIAR

Carved out in our collective imagination is a carpenter's workshop in the Italian story "Pinocchio," where a wooden puppet with an ever-growing nose informs millions of children what might happen if they lie.

In real life, who hasn't wished the liars in their world were as transparent?

The good news is that researchers are finding clues in the body that— with the right training—might tell you how to spot when someone's trying to pull a fast one.

Psychologist Paul Ekman, a professor at the University of California, San Francisco is working with the Department of Defense on software that analyzes facial muscles to help detect liars. "There are movements of the face that can show an emotion that doesn't fit with what the person's saying," Ekman explains. "We call that a 'hot spot,' which means that you are not getting a full account."

To first prove that people's faces differ when they lie, Ekman videotaped 11 men truthfully discussing a topic they felt strongly about and nine men lying about their stance. Volunteers watched the tapes and tried to spot liars.

Ekman reported that 90 percent of the liars' faces showed fear and disgust whereas only 30 percent of truth tellers displayed these emotions. He calls these concealed emotions 'microexpressions.' "They look just like

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ordinary expressions except that they are on the face for about a 25th of a second," explains Ekman.

Catching these transitory glimpses—some disguised as fearful wide eyes or a disgusted wrinkled up nose—is tough, but not impossible, and almost anybody can be trained to spot them, Ekman says. But once detected, he warns that you have to be careful not to misinterpret the signals. "Some people will show microexpressions about emotions they're feeling from being questioned not relevant to whether or not they committed a crime," he explains, offering this example: If someone's wife was murdered and the police were interrogating the husband, that man might show anger that wouldn't stem from guilt. Instead, he'd be irritated that the police were wasting time on him or accusing him.

The complicated nature of human emotion makes facial expression weak as a standalone tool, Ekman cautions, and suggests combining face readings with verbal cues. Get a person talking, and the easier it is to pick up discrepancies in their story, he says. "We have found a powerful correlation between the number of words spoken and the ease [with which] you can evaluate truthfulness," he explains.

What makes Ekman so sure of something seemingly so unscientific?

He's spent over 40 years studying deception, including a 1967 stint in Papua New Guinea, where he went to prove Charles Darwin's assumption that facial expressions are universal in people. He studied the Fore, a tribe that exists in relative isolation, uninfluenced by movies, television or magazines.

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As he showed Fore photographs of people's faces, they matched scenarios like the death of a child to expressions in the photos. Then, Ekman categorized the responses into roughly seven states—sadness, surprise, anger, contempt, disgust, fear and happiness.

Over time, Ekman's trained hundreds of police and FBI agents how to interpret microexpressions in suspects to inform their interrogations. But he reminds them that the old adage "practice makes perfect" holds true for liars whose stories become more believable with every retelling.

Ekman's advice? Get to the suspect quickly, before they have time to rehearse.

Ekman is confident that his system can help interrogators. "Think of the microexpression as pliers," he says. "You want to have a plier in your toolbox but it doesn't mean you don't want a screwdriver and a hammer.

We're trying to develop screwdrivers and hammers in addition to the pliers that are already developed."

Ekman's most recent book is Emotions Revealed: Recognizing Faces and Feelings to Improve Communication and Emotional Life (Owl Books, 2004). His previous research appeared in the June, 1997 Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. His current research is funded by the U.S. Department of Defense and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

OUTDOORLINK:

Paul Ekman http://www.paulekman.com/

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Broken Heart Syndrome - Neurohumoral Features of Myocardial Stunning Due to Sudden Emotional Stress

By Ilan S. Wittstein, M.D., David R. Thiemann, M.D., Joao A.C. Lima, M.D., Kenneth L. Baughman, M.D., Steven P. Schulman, M.D., Gary Gerstenblith, M.D., Katherine C. Wu, M.D., Jeffrey J. Rade, M.D., Trinity J. Bivalacqua, M.D., Ph.D., and Hunter C. Champion, M.D., Ph.D. Source: New England Journal of Medicine http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/short/352/6/539 ABSTRACT:

Background . Reversible left ventricular dysfunction precipitated by emotional stress has been reported, but the mechanism remains unknown.

Methods . We evaluated 19 patients who presented with left ventricular dysfunction after sudden emotional stress. All patients underwent coronary angiography and serial echocardiography; five underwent endomyocardial biopsy. Plasma catecholamine levels in 13 patients with stressrelated myocardial dysfunction were compared with those in 7 patients with Killip class III myocardial infarction.

Results . The median age of patients with stress-induced cardiomyopathy was 63 years, and 95 percent were women. Clinical presentations included chest pain, pulmonary edema, and cardiogenic shock. Diffuse Twave inversion and a prolonged QT interval occurred in most patients.

Seventeen patients had mildly elevated serum troponin I levels, but only 1 of 19 had angiographic evidence of clinically significant coronary disease. Severe left ventricular dysfunction was present on admission (median ejection fraction, 0.20; interquartile range, 0.15 to 0.30) and rap-

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idly resolved in all patients (ejection fraction at two to four weeks, 0.60; interquartile range, 0.55 to 0.65; P<0.001).

Endomyocardial biopsy showed mononuclear infiltrates and contractionband necrosis. Plasma catecholamine levels at presentation were markedly higher among patients with stress-induced cardiomyopathy than among those with Killip class III myocardial infarction (median epinephrine level, 1264 pg per milliliter [interquartile range, 916 to 1374] vs. 376 pg per milliliter [interquartile range, 275 to 476]; norepinephrine level, 2284 pg per milliliter [interquartile range, 1709 to 2910] vs. 1100 pg per milliliter [interquartile range, 914 to 1320]; and dopamine level, 111 pg per milliliter [interquartile range, 106 to 146] vs. 61 pg per milliliter [interquartile range, 46 to 77]; P<0.005 for all comparisons).

Conclusions . Emotional stress can precipitate severe, reversible left ventricular dysfunction in patients without coronary disease. Exaggerated sympathetic stimulation is probably central to the cause of this syndrome.

ADDRESS REPRINT REQUESTS TO

Dr. Wittstein at the Division of Cardiology, Johns Hopkins Hospital, Carnegie 568, 600 N. Wolfe St., Baltimore, MD 21287, or at iwittste@jhmi.edu.

OUTDOORLINKS:

Ilan S. Wittstein, M.D. http://www.cardiology.hopkinsmedicine.org/facultydtl.cfm?ID=17

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A Functional Neuroimaging Study of Sound Localization: Visual Cortex Activity Predicts Performance in Early-Blind Individuals

By Frédéric Gougou , Robert J. Zatorre, Maryse Lassonde, Patrice Voss, Franco Lepore Source:

http://www.plosbiology.org/plosonline/?request=get-docu-

ment&doi=10.1371/journal.pbio.0030027 © 2005 Gougoux et al.

Blind individuals often demonstrate enhanced nonvisual perceptual abilities. However, the neural substrate that underlies this improved performance remains to be fully understood.

An earlier behavioral study demonstrated that some early-blind people localize sounds more accurately than sighted controls using monaural cues.

In order to investigate the neural basis of these behavioral differences in humans, we carried out functional imaging studies using positron emission tomography and a speaker array that permitted pseudo-free-field presentations within the scanner.

During binaural sound localization, a sighted control group showed decreased cerebral blood flow in the occipital lobe, which was not seen in early-blind individuals.

During monaural sound localization (one ear plugged), the subgroup of early-blind subjects who were behaviorally superior at sound localization displayed two activation foci in the occipital cortex.

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This effect was not seen in blind persons who did not have superior monaural sound localization abilities, nor in sighted individuals. The degree of activation of one of these foci was strongly correlated with sound localization accuracy across the entire group of blind subjects.

The results show that those blind persons who perform better than sighted persons recruit occipital areas to carry out auditory localization under monaural conditions. We therefore conclude that computations carried out in the occipital cortex specifically underlie the enhanced capacity to use monaural cues.

Our findings shed light not only on intermodal compensatory mechanisms, but also on individual differences in these mechanisms and on inhibitory patterns that differ between sighted individuals and those deprived of vision early in life.

For Fulltext go to http://www.plosbiology.org/plosonline/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pbio.0030027 To whom correspondence should be addressed.

E-mail: franco.lepore@ umontreal.ca OUTDOORLINKS:

Franco Lepore, Ph.D. http://www.criugm.qc.ca/chercheur1.php4?num=23

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Blind engineering student 'reads' color-scaled weather maps using Cornell software that converts color into sound Source:

http://www.news.cornell.edu/releases/Jan05/Wong.soft-

ware.to.html A melody of staccato piano notes sings out from the speakers of Victor K. Wong's desktop computer. But it is not a melody made by Bach, or Liberace, or even Alicia Keys. It is the melody of color.

Wong, a Cornell University graduate student from Hong Kong who lost his sight in a road accident at age seven, is helping to develop innovative software that translates color into sound. "Color is something that does not exist in the world of a blind person," explains Wong. "I could see before, so I know what it is. But there is no way that I can think of to give an exact idea of color to someone who has never seen before."

He helped develop the software in Cornell's Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) with undergraduate engineering student Ankur Moitra and research associate James Ferwerda from the Program of Computer Graphics.

The inspiration for using image-to-sound software came in early 2004 when Wong realized his problems in reading color-scaled weather maps of the Earth's upper atmosphere -- a task that is a necessary part of his doctoral work in Professor Mike Kelley's ECE research group.

It is a field dubbed "space weather," which attempts to predict weather patterns high over the equator for use by Global Positioning System and other satellite communications. A space weather map might show alti-

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tude in the vertical direction (along the "y" axis), time in the horizontal direction (along the "x" axis), and represent density with different colors.

As a scientist, Wong needs to know more than just the general shape of an image. He needs to explore minute fluctuations and discern the numerical values of the pixels so that he can create mathematical models that match the image. "Color is an extra dimension," explains Wong.

At first, the team tried everything from having Kelley verbally describe the maps to Wong to attempting to print the maps in Braille. When none of those methods provided the detail and resolution Wong needed, he and Ferwerda began investigating software. Moitra later became their project programmer."We started with the basic research question of how to represent a detailed color-scaled image to someone who is blind," recalls Ferwerda. "The most natural approach was to try sound, since color and pitch can be directly related and sensitivity to changes in pitch is quite good."

Over the summer of 2004, Moitra wrote a Java computer code that could translate images into sound, and in August he unveiled a rudimentary software program capable of converting pixels of various colors into piano notes of various tones.

Wong test-drove the software by exploring a color photograph of a parrot. He used a rectangular Wacom tablet and stylus -- a computer input device used as an alternative to the mouse -- which gives an absolute reference to the computer screen, with the bottom left-hand corner of the tablet always corresponding to the bottom left-hand corner of the screen.

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As Wong guided the stylus about the tablet, piano notes began to sing out. The full range of keys on a piano was employed, allowing color resolution in 88 gradations, ranging from blue for the lowest notes to red for the highest.

The software also has an image-to-speech feature that reads aloud the numerical values of the x and y coordinates as well as the value associated with a color at any given point on the image. "In principle I could turn off the music and just have the software read out the value of each point. I would know what the gradient is in a more absolute sense, but it would get annoying after some time. It keeps reading out 200.1, 200.8, 200.5, and so on," says Wong.

One of the biggest challenges of the project is the so-called "land-andsea" problem. "Sometimes I just want to know where is the land and where is the sea," says Wong -- meaning that he would like to have an idea where the major boundaries in an image lie, such as the boundary between the parrot and the background. The problem hinges on shape recognition, which for Wong can be difficult.

In the simplest situation, the right half of an image would be completely blue and the left half completely red. To find the boundary Wong has to move the stylus continuously back and forth from one color to the next along the length of the tablet, which is both time-consuming and error prone.

To solve the land-and-sea problem, Wong, Moitra and Ferwerda tried printing the major boundary lines of an image in Braille and then laying the printed sheet over the Wacom tablet, combining both audio and tactile detection. However, they are still working to develop software that can Odds and ends, themes and trends

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effectively pick out the important boundaries in an image so that it can be printed.

"It is also important that there is no time delay between notes," says Moitra. "That is something we need to improve. Otherwise the image will become shifted and distorted in Victor's mind."

One of the major issues facing the project is funding. "The initial work was done on a shoestring as a side project to grants Kelley and I have received," says Ferwerda, who is preparing a proposal to the National Science Foundation to extend this work and explore other ideas for making images and other technical content accessible to blind scientists and engineers.

Says Wong: "Tackling complex color images is only one problem out of many that blind scientists are facing. But I think this is a pretty important idea."

OUTDOORLINKS:

Media contact: David Brand, E-Mail: deb27@cornell.edu Cornell's Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) http://www.ee.cornell.edu/ Cornell-Universit채t in New York http://www.cornell.edu/

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Visual Recognition: As Soon as You Know It Is There, You Know What It Is

By Kalanit Grill-Spector and Nancy Kanwisher Source:

http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/links/doi/10.1111/j.0956-

7976.2005.00796.x/abs/ ABSTRACT

What is the sequence of processing steps involved in visual object recognition?

We varied the exposure duration of natural images and measured subjects' performance on three different tasks, each designed to tap a different candidate component process of object recognition.

For each exposure duration, accuracy was lower and reaction time longer on a within-category identification task (e.g., distinguishing pigeons from other birds) than on a perceptual categorization task (e.g., birds vs. cars).

However, strikingly, at each exposure duration, subjects performed just as quickly and accurately on the categorization task as they did on a task requiring only object detection: By the time subjects knew an image contained an object at all, they already knew its category.

These findings place powerful constraints on theories of object recognition.

OUTDOORLINKS:

Kalanit Grill-Spector http://www-psych.stanford.edu/~kalanit/ Nancy Kanwisher Odds and ends, themes and trends

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http://web.mit.edu/mcgovern/html/Principal_Investigators/kanwisher.shtml

British Academy Centenary Research Project Lucy to Language: The Archaeology of the Social Brain Source: http://pcwww.liv.ac.uk/~lucy2003/index.html The social brain has become iconic for what it is to be human. Indeed, it bridges both our evolutionary history and our contemporary experience in a way that no other concept does. The Centenary Project - a collaboration between archaeologists and psychologists - has set itself the remit of exploring these two axes of the human experience.

The project aims to explore how the early hominid brain evolved from its essentially apelike beginnings among the earliest australopithecines (ca 3-5 million years ago) to the modern human potential of the â&#x20AC;&#x153;Upper Palaeolithic Revolutionâ&#x20AC;? (ca 50,000 years ago) and its final expression in the dramatic social and economic changes of the last 10,000 years.

By bringing together Palaeolithic archaeologists and evolutionary and social psychologists, together with cognate interests in behavioural ecology, social and biological anthropology, sociology, linguistics, history and musicology, the project aims to open up an entirely new interdisciplinary approach not only to archaeology and psychology but also more widely to the humanities and social sciences.

By focussing on the inferences we can make from primary evidence, such as stone tools, and on what we can infer about social and cognitive phenomena from living humans and other primates, the project aims to

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explore what it means to be human, and when and how we, as a species, came to be that way.

The Lucy-to-Language Project is funded by a 7-year programme grant from the British Academy awarded to Professor Robin Dunbar FBA, Professor Clive Gamble FBA and Professor John Gowlett, following a competitive call to celebrate the centenary of the Academyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s establishment in 1902.

The Project is a collaborative venture between the University of Liverpool and Royal Holloway, London University, but it has additional partnerships with staff at the University of Southampton and the University of Kent at Canterbury.

The Centenary Project was formally launched in October 2003 and will formally end in September 2010.

OUTDOORLINKS:

Prof. Robin Dunbar FBA http://www.google.com/search?q=Robin+Dunbar&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF8

<http://www.google.com/search?q=Robin+Dunbar&amp;ie=UTF-

8&amp;oe=UTF-8> Online-Dienst der Fachzeitschrift Science http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/

Termites tune in to food frequencies Insects choose their meal using vibration signals. Noisy eating helps termites choose their meal.

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By Roxanne Khamsi Source: www.nature.com/21 February 2005 http://www.nature.com/news/2005/050221/full/050221-4.html Š D. McClenaghan FORGET THE TASTE OF YOUR MEAL, HOW DOES IT SOUND?

That's the question that termites ask themselves when chomping into wood, an Australian study suggests.

It seems that these insects choose what to eat according to the way each piece of wood vibrates in response to their gnashing jaws. The finding could lead to new approaches to controlling termite damage, say researchers.

The scientists examined the feeding behaviour of the drywood termite species Cryptotermes domesticus, which thrives in several continents.

Close relatives in the Kalotermes termite genus wreak havoc on homes in Europe. Scientists know that C. domesticus prefers eating small rather than large pieces of wood in the wild, but they were mystified about exactly how the termites made this choice.

So the Australian group recorded the sound generated as termites tunnelled into pinewood, a common building material. "Almost all woodeating pest termites find it very palatable... unfortunately," says Theodore Evans of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation in Canberra, Australia.

Along with engineer Joseph Lai of the Australian Defence Force Academy in Canberra and his colleagues, Evans found that when termites

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chewed their way through a 20-millimetre-long wood block, the sound of their bites created a vibration of 7.2 kilohertz. Termites in a similar block that was 160 millimetres long generated a slower vibration at 2.8 kilohertz, which would match a high F note from a xylophone.

SIZE MATTERS

Given the choice, the termites showed a clear preference for the smaller block. They were even more attracted than normal to the 20-millimetre block when its usual 7.2-kilohertz sound was boosted in volume. In this case, the insects burrowed four times more into the shorter block than the longer, clearly preferring the sounds of a small block of wood.

The discovery about termites' use of sound has excited the scientific community. "This is a landmark paper that will stimulate completely new directions of research," says termite expert Barbara Thorne of the University of Maryland in College Park. The findings appear this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences1.

As surprising as the termite insight may seem, even people use sound to select food. "Humans can appraise the quality or condition of food using vibratory cues: tapping a melon gives is a good indication of ripeness," Evans points out.

Sound diet So why do these termites prefer smaller blocks of wood? "I think that drywood termites have evolved a preference for smaller pieces of wood because their greatest competitors are not interested in small pickings," Evans explains.

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Evans says that a penchant for smaller wood, which is more easily transported from place to place, has also allowed these termites to spread easily. He adds that a better understanding of how termites select food could help people to stop the termites' damaging rampage through their best furniture.

The study only looked at one type of termite, explains Thorne. "Other species and types of termites may well prefer larger pieces of wood," she says. After all, "humans tend to think that bigger is better, particularly when selecting among pieces of cake or chocolate."

"This was the first study of its kind and we are expanding our work to other termite species, including subterranean termites," says Evans.

REFERENCES

Evans T. A.

et al. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. published online (2005).

doi:10.1073/pnas.0408649102 OUTDOORLINKS:

CSIRO Entomology http://www.ento.csiro.au/ Professor Joseph Lai http://www.unsw.adfa.edu.au/about/rectors_office/joseph_lai.html

Musical taste - A musical synaesthete Source: www.economist.com/Mar 3rd 2005 http://www.economist.com/printedition/displayStory.cfm?Story_ID=3715160 Odds and ends, themes and trends

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In the long tradition of neurological research, she is known only by her initials, to protect her anonymity. But ES is not ill. Indeed, she is almost the opposite of ill. For she is a professional musician who is able, literally, to taste what she hears.

Almost every musical interval provokes a gustatory sensation in her. A major third sounds sweet. A minor third, salty. A fourth has the flavour of mown grass. Only an octave is tasteless.

Synaesthesia, as the stimulation of one sensory perception by another is known, is not that unusual. But the stimulated sensation is usually colour vision. Words or numbers, for example, take on reliable hues.

In ES's case, that happens too. Individual tones have their own colours: C is red, F-sharp is violet. But her perception of intervals as flavours, reported in this week's Nature by Gian Beeli and his colleagues at the University of Zurich, is a phenomenon recorded only once before.

In the previous case, the individual in question, known as S, had no musical training, and tended to experience what the researchers refer to as “blended gustatory sensations”—in other words, entire meals rather than particular flavours.

Dr Beeli speculates that ES's musical training has helped her to focus her synaesthesia on particular flavours. Whether the musical training focused the synaesthesia, or the synaesthesia provoked the passion for music, it is definitely the case that ES makes specific use of her synaesthesia to assist her professional life. For her, music truly is the food of love.

OUTDOORLINKS:

Prof. Dr. rer. nat. Lutz Jäncke

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http://www.neuroscience.unizh.ch/e/groups/jaencke00.htm Nature http://www.nature.com/index.html

Divergent Effects of Laughter and Mental Stress on Endothelial Function: Potential Impact of Entertainment

By Michael Miller, Charles Mangano, Young Park, Radha Goel, Gary Plotnick, Robert Vogel Source: www.abstractsonline.com/Monday, Mar 07, 2005 http://www.abstractsonline.com/viewer/viewAbstract.asp?CKey={1D63C87A-DB46-40BF-B91F2E8ED6FB4D97}&MKey={01BF70A7-CBFB-4EA8-A9F06A7C23C53D59}&AKey={7455DAE5-72D2-487B-A9CAC5758F04C24E}&SKey={F70D5302-6E52-4E09-824A5349C76E554E ABSTRACT:

Background . Endothelial function plays an important role in the pathogenesis of cardiovascular disease (CVD) and brachial artery (BA) flowmediated vasodilation (FMD) is impaired by CVD risk factors, including mental stress. However, positive physiologic responses (e.g., laughter) on endothelial function have not been studied.

Methods: BA FMD was measured as % diameter change in 20 healthy, non-smoking volunteers (10 M, 10 F; mean age: 33 yrs) after an overnight fast. Each volunteer was randomized to view a 30 min segment of a movie designed to induce either mental stress or laughter. Then, volunOdds and ends, themes and trends

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teers returned a minimum of 48 hr later to view the 30 min segment not previously seen. BA measurements were obtained 4 times during each phase and a total of 160 measurements were made.

Results: 95% of volunteers had increased FMD during the laughter phase while 74% had decreased FMD during mental stress (P < 0.001). Overall, mean BA FMD increased 22% during laughter and decreased 35% during mental stress (P = 0.0007) (Figure). Average baseline diameter was unaffected during either phase suggesting internal consistency of measurements.

Conclusion: The overall difference in FMD (> 50%) between laughter and mental stress suggests that entertainment may affect endothelial function in healthy men and women. With 2/3 of U.S. children viewing at least 2 hrs of T.V. daily and movie attendance at record levels OUTDOORLINKS:

Michael Miller, M.D. Associate Professor of Medicine http://www.umm.edu/doctors/michael__miller.html

Musical imagery: Sound of silence activates auditory cortex

By DAVID J. M. KRAEMER, C. NEIL MACRAE, ADAM E. GREEN & WILLIAM M. KELLEY Source: www.nature.com/10.03.2005 http://www.nature.com/cgi-taf/DynaPage.taf?file=/nature/journal/v434/ n7030/abs/434158a_fs.html Nature 434, 158 (10 March 2005); doi:10.1038/434158a

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Š 2005 Nature Auditory imagery occurs when one mentally rehearses telephone numbers or has a song 'on the brain' â&#x20AC;&#x201D; it is the subjective experience of hearing in the absence of auditory stimulation, and is useful for investigating aspects of human cognition.

Here we use functional magnetic resonance imaging to identify and characterize the neural substrates that support unprompted auditory imagery and find that auditory and visual imagery seem to obey similar basic neural principles.

OUTDOORLINKS:

David Kraemer http://www.dartmouth.edu/~psych/people/gradstud.html Dartmouth College Hanover http://www.dartmouth.edu/~psych/

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