Co-localizing linguistic and musical syntax with intracranial EEG

Abstract Intracranial EEG (iEEG) studies have suggested that the conscious perception of pain builds up from successive contributions of brain networks in less than 1 s. However, the functional organization of cortico-subcortical connections at the multisecond time scale, and its accordance with iEEG models, remains unknown. Here, we used graph theory with modular analysis of fMRI data from 60 healthy participants experiencing noxious heat stimuli, of whom 36 also received audio stimulation. Brain connectivity during pain was organized in four modules matching those identified through iEEG, namely: 1) sensorimotor (SM), 2) medial fronto-cingulo-parietal (default mode-like), 3) posterior parietal-latero-frontal (central executive-like), and 4) amygdalo-hippocampal (limbic). Intrinsic overlaps existed between the pain and audio conditions in high-order areas, but also pain-specific higher small-worldness and connectivity within the sensorimotor module. Neocortical modules were interrelated via “connector hubs” in dorsolateral frontal, posterior parietal, and anterior insular cortices, the antero-insular connector being most predominant during pain. These findings provide a mechanistic picture of the brain networks architecture and support fractal-like similarities between the micro-and macrotemporal dynamics associated with pain. The anterior insula appears to play an essential role in information integration, possibly by determining priorities for the processing of information and subsequent entrance into other points of the brain connectome.

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‘Tout, dans ses charmes, est dangereux’: music, gesture and the dangers of French pantomime, 1748–1775

Cambridge Opera Journal ◽

10.1017/s0954586709990073 ◽

2008 ◽

Vol 20 (3) ◽

pp. 241-268

Author(s):

HEDY LAW

Keyword(s):

Moral Philosophy ◽

Moral Claim ◽

Potential Danger ◽

Binary Opposition ◽

High Culture ◽

Social Dance ◽

Social Thinking ◽

Musical Syntax ◽

Social Dances ◽

Harmful Effects

AbstractIn 1779 Chabanon noted the potential danger inherent in gesture because it might produce instantaneous and harmful effects. This article examines how Rameau, Rousseau and Grétry incorporated putatively dangerous gestures into the pantomimes they wrote for their operas, and explains why these pantomimes matter at all. In Rameau's Pygmalion (1748), Rousseau's Le Devin du village (1752–3) and Grétry's Céphale et Procris (1773, 1775), pantomime was presented as a type of dance opposite to the conventional social dance. But the significance of this binary opposition changed drastically around 1750, in response to Rousseau's own moral philosophy developed most notably in the First Discourse (1750). Whereas the pantomimes in Rameau's Pygmalion dismiss peasants as uncultured, it is high culture that becomes the source of corruption in the pantomime of Rousseau's Le Devin du village, where uncultured peasants are praised for their morality. Grétry extended Rousseau's moral claim in the pantomime of Céphale et Procris by commending an uneducated girl who turns down sexual advances from a courtier. Central to these pantomimes are the ways in which musical syntax correlates with drama. Contrary to the predictable syntax in most social dances, these pantomimes bring to the surface syntactical anomalies that may be taken to represent moral licence: an unexpected pause, a jarring diminished-seventh chord, and a phrase in a minuet with odd-number bars communicate danger. Although social dances were still the backbone of most French operas, pantomime provided an experimental interface by which composers contested the meanings of expressive topoi; it thus emerged as a vehicle for progressive social thinking.

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Zero-crossing patterns reveal subtle epileptiform discharges in the scalp EEG

Scientific Reports ◽

10.1038/s41598-021-83337-3 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 11 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Jan Pyrzowski ◽

Jean- Eudes Le Douget ◽

Amal Fouad ◽

Mariusz Siemiński ◽

Joanna Jędrzejczak ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Normal Subjects ◽

Intracranial Eeg ◽

Zero Crossing ◽

Temporal Precision ◽

Scalp Eeg ◽

Epileptiform Discharges ◽

Interictal Epileptiform Discharges ◽

Eeg Recordings ◽

Patients With Epilepsy ◽

Low Amplitude

AbstractClinical diagnosis of epilepsy depends heavily on the detection of interictal epileptiform discharges (IEDs) from scalp electroencephalographic (EEG) signals, which by purely visual means is far from straightforward. Here, we introduce a simple signal analysis procedure based on scalp EEG zero-crossing patterns which can extract the spatiotemporal structure of scalp voltage fluctuations. We analyzed simultaneous scalp and intracranial EEG recordings from patients with pharmacoresistant temporal lobe epilepsy. Our data show that a large proportion of intracranial IEDs manifest only as subtle, low-amplitude waveforms below scalp EEG background and could, therefore, not be detected visually. We found that scalp zero-crossing patterns allow detection of these intracranial IEDs on a single-trial level with millisecond temporal precision and including some mesial temporal discharges that do not propagate to the neocortex. Applied to an independent dataset, our method discriminated accurately between patients with epilepsy and normal subjects, confirming its practical applicability.

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