tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21605329.post2561918704150693599..comments2024-03-22T00:30:09.536-07:00Comments on The Neurocritic: More Music, More EmpathyThe Neurocritichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08010555869208208621noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21605329.post-57513190814018582612013-01-03T11:49:05.816-08:002013-01-03T11:49:05.816-08:00I did get carried away, but empathy is such a big,...I did get carried away, but empathy is such a big, amorphous subject and there are many ways of relating to music. It's difficult to design experiments to approach your original question. <br /><br />Studies of responses to sports isolate physical performance from the emotional and cultural valence of the music. Ball sports introduce an element of numerical win/loss for each play, but aesthetic sports like gymnastics or diving don't have this.<br /><br />One pro technique for learning classical piano pieces is a stereotyped process. Too bad it isn't compatible with fMRI. To do it right, the student spends a long time, over days to weeks, playing small stretches mechanically for one hand at a greatly reduced tempo. it's a dispiriting process, like making a dog do nothing but submissive commands for an hour. Then after the music starts to "get into the fingers", the tempo is raised gradually with longer passages as a reward for good behavior. Finally, one day there's an event I think of as he Eliza Doolittle moment when it suddenly comes out as music. Raininspain tralala. After that, issues of tempo, dynamics and phrasing. I have no taste, so it's a matter of deciding whether to copy Glenn or Sviatoslav, whoever. But the ability to discern fine points of interpretation has interesting neurological correlates. <br /><br />If someone could capture an Eliza Doolittle moment on fMRI, preferably with a sound tract, it would be a sensation at TED.Roger Bigodnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21605329.post-5527946839061727902013-01-02T10:49:21.674-08:002013-01-02T10:49:21.674-08:00For additional detailed, replicated, peer-reviewed...For additional detailed, replicated, peer-reviewed studies on this topic, many of which support these findings, reference the International Society of Music Perception and Cognition whose members are musicians, researchers, neurologists, neuroscientists, psychiatrists, psychologists, etc. While there may be room for improvement in some of the study's methodology, this is a relevant topic and the questions and conclusions are areas under much discussion.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21605329.post-28395998157755219262013-01-01T11:33:15.342-08:002013-01-01T11:33:15.342-08:00Roger Bigod - Thanks for the comment. You made a n...Roger Bigod - Thanks for the comment. You made a number of good points, enough to fuel several research programs. <br /><br />I'm not really an expert, but in the realm of sports we have <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19946372" rel="nofollow">Modulation of motor area activity by the outcome for a player during observation of a baseball game</a> <br />and <br /><a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21575660" rel="nofollow">Neural correlates related to action observation in expert archers</a>.<br /><br />The first involves greater emotion, because of the requirement to identify with either pitcher or batter. The second seems more mechanical.The Neurocritichttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08010555869208208621noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21605329.post-30650715077941891552012-12-31T11:08:19.395-08:002012-12-31T11:08:19.395-08:00This is analytically less than pristine. For star...This is analytically less than pristine. For starters, it isn't clear what's being mirrored. At a simple physical level, there's identification with the performer as a mechanic. For the emotional response, there's a issue of whether the identification is with the point of view of the performer or a response to it. Then there's the effect on later state of mind.<br /><br />The mechanical stuff might be better studied in sports. It would be interesting to see responses while watching a golf shot, comparing people who play the sport with those who don't. Putts would probably show a rising level of tension as the ball approaches the hole, followed by some sort of discharge depending on the outcome. Pass plays in US football would probably show the same changes. There's probably not so much identification with the passer, but rising tension while the ball is in the air.<br /><br />Classical music and jazz have passages that show off virtuosity. But they often coincide with an emotional climax, so it would be hard to isolate effects. The performers, especially pianists and violinists, appear to have the highest levels of "temperament", possibly the result of pushing technique to the limits.<br /><br />Interpreting the emotional aspects is even messier. General emotional valence (happy, sad) sounds like a mirror neuron effect. But if the performer plays a role like vulnerable child or hopeful lover, different listeners may choose to identify or play a counter-role.<br /><br />Another set of questions concerns music and pathology. Do psychopaths have mirror neurons? Any emotional responses at all?<br /><br />Yet another object of study would be the recurrent "hook" that repeats involuntarily so that "you can't get it out of your head". I'm hoping not to have a relapse by mentioning "MacArthur Park". It would be highly unethical to expose a newbie to that, however noble the goal of the experiment.<br />Roger Bigodnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21605329.post-40712630056681678472012-12-31T07:34:41.703-08:002012-12-31T07:34:41.703-08:00Anonymous - To be honest, I glossed over the metho...Anonymous - To be honest, I glossed over the methods and did not read them in detail. I'd say that yes, EEG recorded while performing a saxophone piece would be riddled with artifacts, but that objection wouldn't apply to the critical OBSERVE condition. I'll quickly list some potential issues with the EEG methods.<br /><br />(1) Artifacts - these would be substantial during EXECUTE but not during OBSERVE, CONTROL (video of quartet turning pages of the score), and REST.<br /><br />(2) Ocular, muscle, and other artifacts were identified and corrected by an unfamiliar-to-me autoregressive method. I've heard of artifact correction for eye blinks but not EMG and other artifacts. EOG artifact correction algorithms can be pretty good but I'm not so sure about correcting for other types of artifacts.<br /><br />(3) Cortical source localization is not precise, because there is no unique solution to the inverse problem, i.e. numerous configurations of cortical sources can generate the pattern of EEG activity recorded from scalp. It's an ill-posed question. So yes, we have to take the sLORETA solutions that identified bilateral BA44/45 sources with a grain of salt. This is one reason to throw out the mirror neuron notion here, because source localization isn't that precise.<br /><br />(4) Nonetheless, the authors could have shown data from the F3/F7 and F4/F8 electrodes as a rough proxy for lateralized frontal activity. However, the location of F7/8 in particular would be yield many artifacts if you're blowing into a saxophone.<br /><br />(5) Again, this objection wouldn't apply to the OBSERVE condition. As I said in the first addendum, the important 'observation of OTHERS' condition is missing here. Direct comparisons of the two, and between OBSERVE vs. CONTROL and OTHER vs. OTHER CONTROL might be informative.<br /><br />(6) I think the correlations were undercorrected for multiple comparisons. They had 4 ROIs, 2 alpha frequency bands (low/high), and 3 recording conditions but only used a Bonferroni correction of p < 0.016. This is too lenient. One of the R44/45 correlations (p=.01) would no longer be significant, and the other might be marginal (p=.004) with adequate correction.<br /><br />(7) I mentioned the low number of subjects too, but really, how many professional saxophone quartets can you recruit? So that aspect of the study is impressive. But for the correlations with empathy in particular, 12 is a low n.The Neurocritichttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08010555869208208621noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21605329.post-14683291124274655692012-12-31T05:29:39.779-08:002012-12-31T05:29:39.779-08:00I did not bother reading the entire paper, but any...I did not bother reading the entire paper, but any EEG/ERP expert can tell you right away that this is totally bogus. Methodologically, the major and unavoidable artifacts present in these datasets, plus the uncertainty of EEG localization (even with clean data and massive Ns), make this study extremely weak. Most likely, nobody will be able to replicate these results. It must have been reviewed by some of these "cognitive neuroscientists" who only know the techniques because they read about them in some textbook! Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com