Evoked potential studies provide an objective measure of the neural pathways involved with perception. The effects of cognitive factors, such as anticipation or awareness, on evoked potentials are not known. The aim was to compare the evoked potential response to oesophageal stimulation with the cortical activity associated with anticipation of the same stimulus. In 12 healthy men (23.5 +/- 4 years), oesophageal electrical stimulation (15 mA, 0.2 Hz, 0.2 msec) was applied, and the evoked potentials recorded using scalp electrodes. A computerized model of randomly skipped stimuli (4:1 ratio) was used to separately record the evoked potentials associated with stimulation and those associated with an anticipated stimulus. The electrical stimulus represented the nontarget stimulus and the skipped impulse the target (anticipatory) stimulus. This anticipatory evoked potential was also compared to auditory P300 evoked potentials. Reproducible evoked potentials and auditory P300 responses were elicited in all subjects. Anticipatory evoked potentials (peak latency 282.1 +/- 7.9 msec, amplitude 8.2 +/- 0.7 microV, P < 0.05 vs auditory P300 evoked potential) were obtained with the skipped stimulus. This anticipatory evoked potential was located frontocentrally, while the auditory P300 potential was located in the centro-parietal cortex. The anticipatory evoked potential associated with expectation of an oesophageal stimulus, although of similar latency to that of the auditory P300 evoked response, originates from a different cortical location. The recording of cognitive evoked potentials to an expected oesophageal stimulus depends on attention to, and awareness of, the actual stimulus. Anticipatory evoked potentials to GI stimuli may provide an objective electrophysiological tool for the assessment of the cognitive factors associated with visceral perception.

Many stage and film musicals have a limited ability to develop characters, due in part to the narrative and music genres to which many musicals cleave, which also has the effect of limiting female singers to either “head voice” or “belt.” Writing songs in a particular tessitura—defined by The Handbook of Musical Terms as the register within which most of the tones will be found—is linked then to women’s role in society, as ingénue, wife, mother, diva, and so forth. The tessellated, multi-episode form of TV allows Crazy Ex-Girlfriend to have its characters sing in a range of musical styles and genres and, by extension, its female characters sing in a range of timbres, genres, and tessituras. Through a combination of music video aesthetics, generic musical numbers, and a variety of popular music genres, the show extends character narratives past the conventional romance that ostensibly anchors the show into issues such as mental health, sexism, depression, and sex. Crazy Ex thereby confronts the sexism inherent in the Broadway musicals from which it draws its inspiration, and of which protagonist Rebecca Bunch is an avid fan. This paper analyzes how, through a combination of genre and vocal range, Crazy Ex parodies and interrogates the musical but also expands it.

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