The power of music

Sacks, Oliver

doi:10.1093/brain/awl234

Cited by 137 publications

(85 citation statements)

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“…Previous studies suggested that certain types of music are able to improve mental function (Sack 2006) and alleviate brain diseases (Kuester et al 2010). For instance, it have been confirmed that the exposure to Mozart Sonata can improve spatial cognitive ability inducing in both humans and animals (Rauscher 1993;Ivanov and Geake 2003;Rauscher et al 1998).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 92%

Exposure to Mozart music reduces cognitive impairment in pilocarpine-induced status epilepticus rats

et al. 2015

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Patients with temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) often display cognitive deficits. However, current epilepsy therapeutic interventions mainly aim at how to reduce the frequency and degree of epileptic seizures. Recovery of cognitive impairment is not attended enough, resulting in the lack of effective approaches in this respect. In the pilocarpine-induced temporal lobe epilepsy rat model, memory impairment has been classically reported. Here we evaluated spatial cognition changes at different epileptogenesis stages in rats of this model and explored the effects of long-term Mozart music exposure on the recovery of cognitive ability. Our results showed that pilocarpine rats suffered persisting cognitive impairment during epileptogenesis. Interestingly, we found that Mozart music exposure can significantly enhance cognitive ability in epileptic rats, and music intervention may be more effective for improving cognitive function during the early stages after Status epilepticus. These findings strongly suggest that Mozart music may help to promote the recovery of cognitive damage due to seizure activities, which provides a novel intervention strategy to diminish cognitive deficits in TLE patients.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 92%

Exposure to Mozart music reduces cognitive impairment in pilocarpine-induced status epilepticus rats

et al. 2015

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“…People sing together and dance together in every culture, and one can imagine them having done so around the first fires, a hundred thousand years ago" (1). Sacks adds, "In such a situation, there seems to be an actual binding of nervous systems accomplished by rhythm" (2). These thoughts lead to the question: Is there any underlying and quantifiable structure to the subjective experience of "musical binding"?…”

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confidence: 99%

Synchronization in human musical rhythms and mutually interacting complex systems

Hennig

2014

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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Though the music produced by an ensemble is influenced by multiple factors, including musical genre, musician skill, and individual interpretation, rhythmic synchronization is at the foundation of musical interaction. Here, we study the statistical nature of the mutual interaction between two humans synchronizing rhythms. We find that the interbeat intervals of both laypeople and professional musicians exhibit scale-free (power law) cross-correlations. Surprisingly, the next beat to be played by one person is dependent on the entire history of the other person's interbeat intervals on timescales up to several minutes. To understand this finding, we propose a general stochastic model for mutually interacting complex systems, which suggests a physiologically motivated explanation for the occurrence of scale-free cross-correlations. We show that the observed long-term memory phenomenon in rhythmic synchronization can be imitated by fractal coupling of separately recorded or synthesized audio tracks and thus applied in electronic music. Though this study provides an understanding of fundamental characteristics of timing and synchronization at the interbrain level, the mutually interacting complex systems model may also be applied to study the dynamics of other complex systems where scale-free crosscorrelations have been observed, including econophysics, physiological time series, and collective behavior of animal flocks.time series analysis | long-range cross-correlations | anticorrelations | musical coupling | interbrain synchronization I n his book Musicophilia, neurologist Oliver Sacks writes: "In all societies, a primary function of music is collective and communal, to bring and bind people together. People sing together and dance together in every culture, and one can imagine them having done so around the first fires, a hundred thousand years ago" (1). Sacks adds, "In such a situation, there seems to be an actual binding of nervous systems accomplished by rhythm" (2). These thoughts lead to the question: Is there any underlying and quantifiable structure to the subjective experience of "musical binding"? Here, we examine the statistical nature of musical binding (also referred to as musical coupling) when two humans play rhythms in synchrony.Every beat a single (noninteracting) layperson or musician plays is accompanied by small temporal deviations from the exact beat pattern, i.e., even a trained musician will hit a drum beat slightly ahead or behind the metronome (with a SD of typically 5-15 ms). Interestingly, these deviations are statistically dependent and exhibit long-range correlations (LRC) (3, 4). Listeners significantly prefer music mirroring long-range correlated temporal deviations over uncorrelated (white noise) fluctuations (5, 6). LRC are also inherent in the reproduction of both spatial and temporal intervals of single subjects (4, 7-9) and in musical compositions, such as pitch fluctuations (a simple example of pitch fluctuations is a melody) (10, 11) and note lengths (12). The observation of ...

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“…Taken as a whole, this research underscores a human 'peculiar sensitivity to music' (Sacks 2006), and I would argue affective visual music. It highlights how different individuals can respond so differently to the same piece and the same individual can respond differently on different occasions.…”

Section: Visual Music Music and Affectmentioning

confidence: 59%

Creating Affective Visual Music

Watkins

2018

Electronic Workshops in Computing

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This paper delineates the on-going development of a methodology for creating affective visual music. Visual music is a creative practice that does not split the eye and ear; it problematizes this long-standing duality and seeks to make a singularity. Visual music encompasses many types of output: abstract paintings, time-based performance art such as colour organs, abstract film, projected light shows, art installations of film and expanded cinema (digital media). The impulse to find correspondences between music and visuals and use these to create a new genre has a long history. This practice-based research is historicised and highlights both the key seminal influences underpinning the work and the innovations embodied within it. This paper will discuss experimental, visual music pieces from my own practice (Watkins 2016, 2017, 2018) that employ Ron Kuivila's strategy 'over' technology and seminal works from the visual music canon. Visual music is often approached from the viewpoint of a musical composer, this practice-based research is visually led; visual structures, rather than musical structures, are explored. Visual music can be perceived as overly repetitive, cold and alienating if it has a purely mechanical alignment of music to image, or if it seems disengaged from both human emotions and natural imagery. A key objective is to create work that is non-figurative, non-narrative, pre-language, extra-language, and yet suffused with human presence, to create visual music that is affective.Visual music. Affect. Human traces. Visual structure. Rhythm. Practice-based research.

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The power of music

Cited by 137 publications

References 0 publications

Exposure to Mozart music reduces cognitive impairment in pilocarpine-induced status epilepticus rats

Exposure to Mozart music reduces cognitive impairment in pilocarpine-induced status epilepticus rats

Synchronization in human musical rhythms and mutually interacting complex systems

Creating Affective Visual Music

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