Music and Movement

Author(s):  
Jay Schulkin

Music and movement go together in every human society: “music to my feet,” as it were. The human condition, particularly human emotional expression, is linked to music. Indeed, movement and a sense of time are intimately connected, and the brain is prepared to detect movement, both familiar and unfamiliar. Our sense of self is tied to movement. Aesthetic sense is a feature of the way we come prepared to interpret the world. Such aesthetics are historically variable and rich when the ecological conditions are suitable. Aesthetic judgment reflects our cognitive flexibility, and our extension and use of specific cognitive mechanisms to widen domains of human expression. Music evolved in the context of social contact and meaning. Music continues to allow us to reach out to others and expand our human experience toward and with others. This process began with sounds and expanded into song and instrumental music.

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 88-96
Author(s):  
Mary R. T. Kennedy

Purpose The purpose of this clinical focus article is to provide speech-language pathologists with a brief update of the evidence that provides possible explanations for our experiences while coaching college students with traumatic brain injury (TBI). Method The narrative text provides readers with lessons we learned as speech-language pathologists functioning as cognitive coaches to college students with TBI. This is not meant to be an exhaustive list, but rather to consider the recent scientific evidence that will help our understanding of how best to coach these college students. Conclusion Four lessons are described. Lesson 1 focuses on the value of self-reported responses to surveys, questionnaires, and interviews. Lesson 2 addresses the use of immediate/proximal goals as leverage for students to update their sense of self and how their abilities and disabilities may alter their more distal goals. Lesson 3 reminds us that teamwork is necessary to address the complex issues facing these students, which include their developmental stage, the sudden onset of trauma to the brain, and having to navigate going to college with a TBI. Lesson 4 focuses on the need for college students with TBI to learn how to self-advocate with instructors, family, and peers.


Biomedicines ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 340
Author(s):  
Lehel Balogh ◽  
Masaru Tanaka ◽  
Nóra Török ◽  
László Vécsei ◽  
Shigeru Taguchi

Psychotherapy is a comprehensive biological treatment modifying complex underlying cognitive, emotional, behavioral, and regulatory responses in the brain, leading patients with mental illness to a new interpretation of the sense of self and others. Psychotherapy is an art of science integrated with psychology and/or philosophy. Neurological sciences study the neurological basis of cognition, memory, and behavior as well as the impact of neurological damage and disease on these functions, and their treatment. Both psychotherapy and neurological sciences deal with the brain; nevertheless, they continue to stay polarized. Existential phenomenological psychotherapy (EPP) has been in the forefront of meaning-centered counseling for almost a century. The phenomenological approach in psychotherapy originated in the works of Martin Heidegger, Ludwig Binswanger, Medard Boss, and Viktor Frankl, and it has been committed to accounting for the existential possibilities and limitations of one’s life. EPP provides philosophically rich interpretations and empowers counseling techniques to assist mentally suffering individuals by finding meaning and purpose to life. The approach has proven to be effective in treating mood and anxiety disorders. This narrative review article demonstrates the development of EPP, the therapeutic methodology, evidence-based accounts of its curative techniques, current understanding of mood and anxiety disorders in neurological sciences, and a possible converging path to translate and integrate meaning-centered psychotherapy and neuroscience, concluding that the EPP may potentially play a synergistic role with the currently prevailing medication-based approaches for the treatment of mood and anxiety disorders.


2018 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 150-159
Author(s):  
Jonathan M. P. Wilbiks ◽  
Sean Hutchins

In previous research, there exists some debate about the effects of musical training on memory for verbal material. The current research examines this relationship, while also considering musical training effects on memory for musical excerpts. Twenty individuals with musical training were tested and their results were compared to 20 age-matched individuals with no musical experience. Musically trained individuals demonstrated a higher level of memory for classical musical excerpts, with no significant differences for popular musical excerpts or for words. These findings are in support of previous research showing that while music and words overlap in terms of their processing in the brain, there is not necessarily a facilitative effect between training in one domain and performance in the other.


2015 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 125-134 ◽  
Author(s):  
Evan Hy Einstein

Depression is currently understood within a biomedical paradigm. This paradigm is an example of reductionism; people are clinically diagnosed and categorized based on behavior and affect, while they are then prescribed psychotropic medications based on an inconclusively correlated neurotransmitter imbalance in the brain. In this article, clinical diagnosis and labeling are explored with respect to their detrimental potential. A framework of embodied cognition is used to conceptualize a cognitive model of depressive experience. This theoretical model explores the potentially self-reinforcing cognitive mechanisms behind a depressive experience, with the goal of highlighting the possibility of diagnosis as a detrimental influence on these mechanisms. The aim of this article is to further a discussion about our current mental health care paradigm and provide an explanation as to how it could cause harm to some. Clinical applications of the model are also discussed pertaining to the potential of rendering formal dichotomist diagnoses irrelevant to the ultimate goal of helping people feel better.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Avital Sternin ◽  
Lucy M. McGarry ◽  
Adrian M. Owen ◽  
Jessica A. Grahn

Abstract We investigated how familiarity alters music and language processing in the brain. We used fMRI to measure brain responses before and after participants were familiarized with novel music and language stimuli. To manipulate the presence of language and music in the stimuli, there were four conditions: (1) whole music (music and words together), (2) instrumental music (no words), (3) a capella music (sung words, no instruments), and (4) spoken words. To manipulate participants' familiarity with the stimuli, we used novel stimuli and a familiarization paradigm designed to mimic “natural” exposure, while controlling for autobiographical memory confounds. Participants completed two fMRI scans that were separated by a stimulus training period. Behaviorally, participants learned the stimuli over the training period. However, there were no significant neural differences between the familiar and unfamiliar stimuli in either univariate or multivariate analyses. There were differences in neural activity in frontal and temporal regions based on the presence of language in the stimuli, and these differences replicated across the two scanning sessions. These results indicate that the way we engage with music is important for creating a memory of that music, and these aspects, over and above familiarity on its own, may be responsible for the robust nature of musical memory in the presence of neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer's disease.


2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ali Yoonessi ◽  
Seyed Amir Hossein Batouli ◽  
Iman Ahmadnezhad ◽  
Hamid Soltanian-zadeh

Background: Addiction is currently one of the problems of human society. Drug abuse is one of the most important issues in the field of addiction. Methamphetamine (crystal) is one of the drugs that has been abused in recent decades. Methods: In this case-control study, 10 individuals aged 20 to 40 years old with at least 2 years of experience of methamphetamine consumption without any history of drug use or other stimulants from clients and drug withdrawal centers in Tehran City, and 10 healthy volunteers were selected. Age, social status, and economic status of addicts were included in the fMRI apparatus, and 90 selected pleasurable, non-pleasurable, and neutral images (IAPS) were displayed by the projector through an event-related method. The playback time of each photo was 3 s, and after this process, the person outside the device, without the time limit selected the enjoyable and unpleasant images. Results: The results showed that there was no significant difference between the groups in terms of age, alcohol use, and smoking history (P < 0.05). There was no significant difference in terms of the age at first use between members of the methamphetamine-dependent group. Also, the methamphetamine-dependent group showed more brain activity in their pre-center and post-center gyrus than the normal (control) group. Conclusions: According to the results obtained in this study, in general, it can be concluded that there are some areas in the brain of addicts that are activated when watching pleasant photos, while these areas are not active in the brains of normal people.


2022 ◽  

Sir William Gerard Golding (1911–1993), the writer of Lord of the Flies (LOTF), occupies a pivotal position within the post–World War II canon of writers. Though Golding does not seem to belong to any particular “school” or movement of fiction writers who wrote at the height of Cold War and its aftermath per se, he is a staple in high school, college, and university curricula all over the globe. His magnum opus, Lord of the Flies (1954), transformed him into a writer who commands worldwide attention. In the book he attacked the belief in any stable notions of civilization, society, and culture, and was keen to show the innate depravity of the human spirit. His trilogy To the Ends of the Earth, which comprises Rites of Passage (1980), Close Quarters (1987) and Fire Down Below (1989), further explores his themes of the civilizing process and class consciousness, while the travelogue An Egyptian Journal (1985) shows his fascination for the ancient land and his journey there after he won the Nobel Prize in 1983. His famous quote about humanity, “Man produces evil as a bee produces honey,” speaks of his disbelief in the progress and the health of modern civilization and any stable notions of human progress. His Nobel Prize citation stated it was given “for his novels which, with the perspicuity of realistic narrative art and the diversity and universality of myth, illuminate the human condition in a world of today,” thus summarizing his lifelong mission as a writer. Golding’s themes are class consciousness, human society (particularly what happens to it in isolation), modern and postmodern trauma with respect to human dreams and aspirations, and, lastly, the entire notion of “civilization” itself. His fiction has been analyzed with recourse to anthropology, psychoanalysis, postmodernism, narratology, trauma studies, and queer scholarship. Critical commentary on Golding continues to grow, especially around LOTF, due to its continued relevance owing to themes of violence, totalitarianism, queer studies, and its apocalyptic vision. It should be stressed, however, that compared to LOTF, his only play, The Brass Butterfly (1958), his Poems (1934) and his other nonfiction, such as A Moving Target (1982) and The Hot Gates (1965), the three short narratives in The Scorpion God (1971), and even his posthumous The Double Tongue (1995), have received scant attention. Though the themes of the essential drama of human conflict played against the backdrop of morality, human choice, and postmodern trauma that remain foundational to human existence might be applied to any 20thcentury writer, they are particularly germane to Golding’s works.


Author(s):  
Jay Schulkin

Sport as a practice and cognitive event is largely action-oriented: there is thought in action, even if it is not particularly conscious thought. Habits codified in the motor regions of the brain underlie action. Muscle memory is fundamental; it is a metaphor for the organization of action. Importantly, neurotransmitters such dopamine are tied to the organization of action, salience, cognition, and, perhaps, the prediction of events. Diverse regions of the brain (e.g., the amygdala) and neuropeptides (oxytocin) are linked to social contact and play-related behaviors, and these same regions are crucial to a broad-based assessment of social context and meaning.


Author(s):  
Jeff Bancroft ◽  
Yingxu Wang

The cognitive mechanisms of knowledge representation, memory establishment, and learning are fundamental issues in understanding the brain. A basic approach to studying these mental processes is to observe and simulate how knowledge is memorized by little children. This paper presents a simulation tool for knowledge acquisition and memory development for young children of two to five years old. The cognitive mechanisms of memory, the mathematical model of concepts and knowledge, and the fundamental elements of internal knowledge representation are explored. The cognitive processes of children’s memory and knowledge development are described based on concept algebra and the object-attribute-relation (OAR) model. The design of the simulation tool for children’s knowledge acquisition and memory development is presented with the graphical representor of memory and the dynamic concept network of knowledge. Applications of the simulation tool are described by case studies on children’s knowledge acquisition about family members, relatives, and transportation. This work is a part of the development of cognitive computers that mimic human knowledge processing and autonomous learning.


Author(s):  
Anjali Daisy

Neural networks are like the models of the brain and nervous system. It is highly parallel and processes information much more like the brain than a serial computer. It is very useful in learning information, using and executing very simple and complex behaviors, applications like powerful problem solvers and biological models. There are different types of neural networks like Biological, Feed Forward, Recurrent, and Elman. Biological Neural Networks require some biological data to predict information. In Feed Forward Networks, information flows in one way. In Recurrent Networks, information flows in multiple directions. Elman Networks feature Partial re-currency with a sense of time.


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