Abstracts of Pythagoras Graduate School
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Emergence of Musical Percepts in
the Brain Cognitive Brain Research Unit, Department of Psychology,
University of Helsinki Introduction. During the past two decades,
studies
dealing with
physiological responses to music mainly employed paradigms in which the
participants were asked to actively listen to some repeated sound
sequences
and, for example, to evaluate the appropriateness of the ending sounds
to
the preceding context. These studies show that the attended ending
tones
with a pitch, rhythm or harmony discrepant from the preceding context
elicit larger brain responses than less discrepant ones. However, it is
not clear how musical expectations are formed during ongoing listening.
This is a crucial question since the ability to encode and integrate
sounds
over time is what enables us to appreciate music as such. Consequently,
it
is relevant not to overlook the neural processes that are at the basis
of
any conscious musical experience: the encoding over time of each sound
characterized by its specific pitch, duration, timbre into a brief
neural
memory trace how its maintenance contributes to Gestalt formation, and,
finally, how the percepts of the incoming sounds are modulated by the
memory of the previous ones and the implicit knowledge of their
structural
organization. Methods. The neural basis of listeners’ ability
to
perceive
sounds as music can be investigated by measuring the event-related
potentials (ERPs). In particular, the first cortical brain response to
the
incoming sounds is the N1, recorded at the vertex of the scalp and
occurring at a latency of 100 ms. The N1 may be modulated by the sound
context and can thus serve as a tool to study implicit knowledge of the
musical structure by the listeners. Furthermore, the mismatch
negativity
(MMN) is useful to investigate the formation of sensory memory traces
for
the incoming sounds. The MMN is generated automatically, that is, even
when the subject is involved in another task, by neuronal circuits in
the
primary and associative areas of the auditory cortex. It is typically
elicited when in the sound stimulation an invariance (encoded into the
neural memory trace) is established, after which the neural mismatch
can be
generated by the variant sound. This invariance can be simple (such a
single sound), complex (a repeated melody), or hypercomplex (transposed
melodies with same duration and contour). Aims. In the present thesis it will be
investigated
how musical
percepts emerge from the combinations of simple sounds: how two simple
tones presented simultaneously generate different brain responses
according
to the frequency ratios of their components, how tone encoding of
serially
presented tones is affected by familiarity of their intervallic
structure,
or by melodic familiarity, even when this familiarity has been obtained
during the experimental session. Finally, it will be studied how four
sounds are automatically maintained into sensory memory as a unique
musical
motif, and how several motifs can be simultaneously stored giving rise
to
such complexity characterizing our musical listening experience.
Moreover,
it will be demonstrated that those processes occur automatically in the
brain. In other words, listeners’ brain cannot encode incoming
sounds without taking into account the knowledge of the sounds
preceding
them in the near past and of all the sounds that have been listened
attentively or passively since birth. References Brattico, E., Winkler, I., Näätänen, R.,
Paavilainen,
P.,
Tervaniemi, M. (2002). Simultaneous storage of two complex temporal
sound
patterns in the human auditory sensory memory. NeuroReport, 13:
1747-1751. Näätänen, R. & Winkler, I. (1999).
The concept of
auditory stimulus representation in cognitive neuroscience.
Psychological
Bulletin, 125: 826-859. Tervaniemi, M., Huotilainen, M., Brattico, E.,
Reinikainen, K.,
Ilmoniemi,
R. J., Alho, K. (in press). Event-related potentials to expectancy
violation in musical context. Musicae Scientiae. |
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Twelve-tone rows and group
theory: a thesis and a computer application Sibelius Academy My doctoral thesis concerns the utilization of
mathematics and group
theory
in particular in the study of twelve-tone rows and row operations. Past
literature will be analyzed and a new approach will be described.
Purpose
of the study is to create a mathematization of the subject in which the
mathematical concepts used reflect the characteristics of the objects
under
study better than in previous formulations. The approach used
also
creates new ways of describing similarity between twelve-tone rows.
Metrics, which is a concept borrowed from topology (another
mathematical
theory), will we applied to the existing concept of similarity
measures. References |
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Virtual Instruments Telecommunications Software and Multimedia Laboratory,
Helsinki University of Technology Physical sound modeling is nowadays an active research
area. The sound
is
produced in real-time, which makes it possible to alter any model
parameter while playing. This creates a need for controllers that
meet the sound model complexity by input flexibility. References |
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The emotional functions of music in
adolescence Department of Music, University of Jyväskylä,
Finland My research concerns the psychological meanings of music
in the
everyday life of adolescents. The focus is on the emotion-related
functions. The overall emotionality, as well as the need for emotion
regulation, increases during the transitional period of adolescence,
and music offers a profound way of enhancing emotional processing.
Music is an integral part of adolescent life these days. However, the
research about the emotional and psychological functions of music in
adolescence is quite limited. References Laiho, Suvi (2004). The Psychological Functions of Music in Adolescence.
Nordic Journal of
Music Therapy, 13 (1), pp.49-65. Saarikallio,
Suvi (2005). Regulation and Gratification: The Emotional Meanings of
Music in
Adolescence. Proceedings of the First European Conference on
Developmental
Psychology of Music, 17-19 November 2005, |
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The Impact of Musical Aptitude in
Foreign Language Acquisition Department of English, University of Turku, Finland,
& Centre for
Cognitive Neuroscience, University of Turku, Finland. When learning a new language, the differences between
the phonetic
systems
of the target language and the native language often deteriorate
performance in pronunciation and discrimination tasks of the target
language. Näätänen (2001) suggested that proper neural
models formed in the auditory cortex for the phonemes are a necessary
prerequisite for the learning of the target language also in terms of
pronunciation. Previously, a connection between the accuracy of
cortical
networks in representing musical sound pattern and the behaviorally
determined musical aptitude was proposed (Tervaniemi et al. 1997). Consequently, the relationship between language skills,
musical
aptitude,
and cortical brain activity is under investigation in the present
project. As a model of language skills, the efficacy of Finnish pupils
in foreign
(English) language acquisition and especially pronunciation is
determined
in relation to their musical aptitude. The Finnish speakers with a musical aptitude were found
to produce the
various phonemes that occur in the English language better than other
pupils (Milovanov, 2000). In the next stage of the project,
event-related
potential recordings in a mismatch negativity (MMN) paradigm will be
used
to determine whether the cortical networks in the musically talented
subjects will represent the important sound features more readily than
other pupils. Moreover, music for special needs will be discussed:
students with dyslexia seem to benefit from music. References Näätänen, R. (2001). The perception of
speech sounds by
the
human brain as reflected by the mismatch negativity (MMN) and its
magnetic
equivalent (MMNm). Psychophysiology, 38, 1-21. Tervaniemi, M., Ilvonen, T., Karma, K., Alho, K.,
Näätänen,
R. (1997). The musical brain: brain waves reveal the neurophysiological
basis of musicality in human subjects. Neuroscience Letters, 226,1-4. |
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Generalized linear-in-parameter
models - Theory and audio signal processing applications Laboratory of Acoustics and Audio Signal Processing,
Helsinki University of Technology Following is a short description of the PhD thesis
content: References? |
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Analysis, modeling and synthesis
of plucked string instruments Laboratory of Acoustics and Audio Signal Processing,
Helsinki University of
Technology. My post-graduate studies and research will concentrate
on modeling
plucked
string instruments, including analysis and synthesis of plucked string
instrument sounds. In this context modeling means that the behaviour of
an
instrument is imitated by mathematical means and implemented with a
computer. Analysis here means that recordings and measurement data of a
certain instrument is analyzed with a computer and relevant properties
and
variables are distracted. Synthesis again stands for producing audible
signals, by the means of a model that resemble the target instrument as
well as possible. |