Inter-subject Correlation While Listening to Minimalist Music: A Study of Electrophysiological and Behavioral Responses to Steve Reich's Piano Phase

Musical minimalism utilizes the temporal manipulation of restricted collections of rhythmic, melodic, and/or harmonic materials. One example, Steve Reich's Piano Phase, offers listeners readily audible formal structure with unpredictable events at the local level. For example, pattern recurrences may generate strong expectations which are violated by small temporal and pitch deviations. A hyper-detailed listening strategy prompted by these minute deviations stands in contrast to the type of listening engagement typically cultivated around functional tonal Western music. Recent research has suggested that the inter-subject correlation (ISC) of electroencephalographic (EEG) responses to natural audio-visual stimuli objectively indexes a state of “engagement,” demonstrating the potential of this approach for analyzing music listening. But can ISCs capture engagement with minimalist music, which features less obvious expectation formation and has historically received a wide range of reactions? To approach this question, we collected EEG and continuous behavioral (CB) data while 30 adults listened to an excerpt from Steve Reich's Piano Phase, as well as three controlled manipulations and a popular-music remix of the work. Our analyses reveal that EEG and CB ISC are highest for the remix stimulus and lowest for our most repetitive manipulation, no statistical differences in overall EEG ISC between our most musically meaningful manipulations and Reich's original piece, and evidence that compositional features drove engagement in time-resolved ISC analyses. We also found that aesthetic evaluations corresponded well with overall EEG ISC. Finally we highlight co-occurrences between stimulus events and time-resolved EEG and CB ISC. We offer the CB paradigm as a useful analysis measure and note the value of minimalist compositions as a limit case for the neuroscientific study of music listening. Overall, our participants' neural, continuous behavioral, and question responses showed strong similarities that may help refine our understanding of the type of engagement indexed by ISC for musical stimuli.

Download Full-text

Inter-Subject Correlation during New Music Listening: A Study of Electrophysiological and Behavioral Responses to Steve Reich’s Piano Phase

10.1101/2021.04.27.441708 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Tysen Dauer ◽

Duc T. Nguyen ◽

Nick Gang ◽

Jacek P. Dmochowski ◽

Jonathan Berger ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Popular Music ◽

Behavioral Responses ◽

New Music ◽

Music Listening ◽

Limit Case ◽

Time Resolved ◽

Expectation Formation ◽

Wide Range ◽

Local Levels ◽

Piano Phase

AbstractMusical minimalism utilizes the temporal manipulation of restricted collections of rhythmic, melodic, and/or harmonic materials. One example, Steve Reich’s Piano Phase, offers listeners readily audible formal structures containing unpredictable events at local levels. Pattern recurrences may generate strong expectations which are violated by small temporal and pitch deviations. A hyper-detailed listening strategy prompted by these minute deviations stands in contrast to the type of listening engagement typically cultivated around functional tonal Western music. Recent research has suggested that the inter-subject correlation (ISC) of electroencephalographic (EEG) responses to natural audio-visual stimuli objectively indexes a state of “engagement”, demonstrating the potential of this approach for analyzing music listening. But can ISCs capture engagement with minimal music, which features less obvious expectation formation and has historically received a wide range of reactions? To approach this question, we collected EEG and continuous behavioral (CB) data while 30 adults listened to an excerpt from Steve Reich’s Piano Phase, as well as three controlled manipulations and a popular-music remix of the work. Our analyses reveal that EEG and CB ISC are highest for the remix stimulus and lowest for our most repetitive manipulation. In addition, we found no statistical differences in overall EEG ISC between our most musically meaningful manipulations and Reich’s original piece. We also found that aesthetic evaluations corresponded well with overall EEG ISC. Finally we highlight co-occurrences between stimulus events and time-resolved EEG and CB ISC. We offer the CB paradigm as a useful analysis measure and note the value of minimalist compositions as a limit case for studying music listening using EEG ISC. We show that ISC is less effective at measuring engagement with this minimalist stimulus than with popular music genres and argue that this may be due to a difference between the type of engagement measured by ISC and the particular engagement patterns associated with minimalism.

Download Full-text

An Analytical Framework of Tonal and Rhythmic Hierarchy in Natural Music Using the Multivariate Temporal Response Function

Frontiers in Neuroscience ◽

10.3389/fnins.2021.665767 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 15 ◽

Author(s):

Jasmine Leahy ◽

Seung-Goo Kim ◽

Jie Wan ◽

Tobias Overath

Keyword(s):

Brain Activity ◽

Emotional Responses ◽

Analytical Framework ◽

Music Listening ◽

Temporal Response ◽

Neural Encoding ◽

Time Resolved ◽

Complex Stimuli ◽

Wide Range ◽

Music Information

Even without formal training, humans experience a wide range of emotions in response to changes in musical features, such as tonality and rhythm, during music listening. While many studies have investigated how isolated elements of tonal and rhythmic properties are processed in the human brain, it remains unclear whether these findings with such controlled stimuli are generalizable to complex stimuli in the real world. In the current study, we present an analytical framework of a linearized encoding analysis based on a set of music information retrieval features to investigate the rapid cortical encoding of tonal and rhythmic hierarchies in natural music. We applied this framework to a public domain EEG dataset (OpenMIIR) to deconvolve overlapping EEG responses to various musical features in continuous music. In particular, the proposed framework investigated the EEG encoding of the following features: tonal stability, key clarity, beat, and meter. This analysis revealed a differential spatiotemporal neural encoding of beat and meter, but not of tonal stability and key clarity. The results demonstrate that this framework can uncover associations of ongoing brain activity with relevant musical features, which could be further extended to other relevant measures such as time-resolved emotional responses in future studies.

Download Full-text

Reduction of carbon impurities in aluminium nitride from time-resolved chemical vapour deposition using trimethylaluminum

10.26434/chemrxiv.11910735.v2 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Polla Rouf ◽

Pitsiri Sukkaew ◽

Lars Ojamäe ◽

Henrik Pedersen

Keyword(s):

Chemical Vapour Deposition ◽

Vapour Deposition ◽

Chemical Vapour ◽

Aluminium Nitride ◽

Methyl Groups ◽

Time Resolved ◽

Thermally Induced ◽

Light Emitting ◽

Carbon Impurities ◽

Wide Range

Aluminium nitride (AlN) is a semiconductor with a wide range of applications from light emitting diodes to high frequency transistors. Electronic grade AlN is routinely deposited at 1000 °C by chemical vapour deposition (CVD) using trimethylaluminium (TMA) and NH3 while low temperature CVD routes to high quality AlN are scarce and suffer from high levels of carbon impurities in the film. We report on an ALD-like CVD approach with time-resolved precursor supply where thermally induced desorption of methyl groups from the AlN surface is enhanced by the addition of an extra pulse, H2, N2 or Ar between the TMA and NH3 pulses. The enhanced desorption allowed deposition of AlN films with carbon content of 1 at. % at 480 °C. Kinetic- and quantum chemical modelling suggest that the extra pulse between TMA and NH3 prevents re-adsorption of desorbing methyl groups terminating the AlN surface after the TMA pulse.

Download Full-text

Time-Resolved Measurements and Master Equation Modelling of the Unimolecular Decomposition of CH3OCH2

Zeitschrift für Physikalische Chemie ◽

10.1515/zpch-2020-0007 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 234 (7-9) ◽

pp. 1233-1250 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Arrke J. Eskola ◽

Mark A. Blitz ◽

Michael J. Pilling ◽

Paul W. Seakins ◽

Robin J. Shannon

Keyword(s):

Energy Transfer ◽

Master Equation ◽

Rate Coefficient ◽

Zero Point ◽

Buffer Gas ◽

Unimolecular Decomposition ◽

Time Resolved ◽

Point Energy ◽

Wide Range ◽

Transfer Parameters

AbstractThe rate coefficient for the unimolecular decomposition of CH3OCH2, k1, has been measured in time-resolved experiments by monitoring the HCHO product. CH3OCH2 was rapidly and cleanly generated by 248 nm excimer photolysis of oxalyl chloride, (ClCO)2, in an excess of CH3OCH3, and an excimer pumped dye laser tuned to 353.16 nm was used to probe HCHO via laser induced fluorescence. k1(T,p) was measured over the ranges: 573–673 K and 0.1–4.3 × 1018 molecule cm−3 with a helium bath gas. In addition, some experiments were carried out with nitrogen as the bath gas. Ab initio calculations on CH3OCH2 decomposition were carried out and a transition-state for decomposition to CH3 and H2CO was identified. This information was used in a master equation rate calculation, using the MESMER code, where the zero-point-energy corrected barrier to reaction, ΔE0,1, and the energy transfer parameters, ⟨ΔEdown⟩ × Tn, were the adjusted parameters to best fit the experimental data, with helium as the buffer gas. The data were combined with earlier measurements by Loucks and Laidler (Can J. Chem.1967, 45, 2767), with dimethyl ether as the third body, reinterpreted using current literature for the rate coefficient for recombination of CH3OCH2. This analysis returned ΔE0,1 = (112.3 ± 0.6) kJ mol−1, and leads to $k_{1}^{\infty}(T)=2.9\times{10^{12}}$ (T/300)2.5 exp(−106.8 kJ mol−1/RT). Using this model, limited experiments with nitrogen as the bath gas allowed N2 energy transfer parameters to be identified and then further MESMER simulations were carried out, where N2 was the buffer gas, to generate k1(T,p) over a wide range of conditions: 300–1000 K and N2 = 1012–1025 molecule cm−3. The resulting k1(T,p) has been parameterized using a Troe-expression, so that they can be readily be incorporated into combustion models. In addition, k1(T,p) has been parametrized using PLOG for the buffer gases, He, CH3OCH3 and N2.

Download Full-text

Detector commissioning and development for PETRA-III

Diamond Light Source Proceedings ◽

10.1017/s2044820110000043 ◽

2010 ◽

Vol 1 (SRMS-7) ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

David Pennicard ◽

Heinz Graafsma ◽

Michael Lohmann

Keyword(s):

High Speed ◽

Materials Science ◽

Dynamic Range ◽

Photon Counting ◽

High Energy ◽

X Rays ◽

Silicon Detectors ◽

Time Resolved ◽

Wide Range ◽

Synchrotron Light

The new synchrotron light source PETRA-III produced its first beam last year. The extremely high brilliance of PETRA-III and the large energy range of many of its beamlines make it useful for a wide range of experiments, particularly in materials science. The detectors at PETRA-III will need to meet several requirements, such as operation across a wide dynamic range, high-speed readout and good quantum efficiency even at high photon energies. PETRA-III beamlines with lower photon energies will typically be equipped with photon-counting silicon detectors for two-dimensional detection and silicon drift detectors for spectroscopy and higher-energy beamlines will use scintillators coupled to cameras or photomultiplier tubes. Longer-term developments include ‘high-Z’ semiconductors for detecting high-energy X-rays, photon-counting readout chips with smaller pixels and higher frame rates and pixellated avalanche photodiodes for time-resolved experiments.

Download Full-text

Uncertainty Estimation for Magnetic Maps

10.5194/egusphere-egu21-3541 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Richard Saltus ◽

Arnaud Chulliat ◽

Brian Meyer ◽

Christopher Amante

Keyword(s):

Local Level ◽

Uncertainty Estimation ◽

Measured Data ◽

Magnetic Minerals ◽

Geochemical Environment ◽

The Earth ◽

Uncertainty Estimates ◽

Wide Range ◽

Machine Learning Applications ◽

Map Data

Magnetic maps depict spatial variations in the Earth&#8217;s magnetic field.&#160; These variations occur at a wide range of scales and are produced via a variety of physical processes related to factors including structure and evolution of the Earth&#8217;s core field and the geologic distribution of magnetic minerals in the lithosphere.&#160; Mankind has produced magnetic maps for 100&#8217;s of years with increasing fidelity and accuracy and there is a general understanding (particularly among the geophysicists who produce and use these maps) of the approximate level of resolution and accuracy of these maps.&#160; However, few magnetic maps, or the digital grids that typically underpin these maps, have been produced with accompanying uncertainty quantification.&#160; When uncertainty is addressed, it is typically a statistical representation at the grid or survey level (e.g., +- 10 nT overall uncertainty based on line crossings for a modern airborne survey) and not at the cell by cell local level.As magnetic map data are increasingly used in complex inversions and in combination with other data or constraints (including in machine learning applications), it is increasingly important to have a handle on the uncertainties in these data.&#160; An example of an application with need for detailed uncertainty estimation is the use of magnetic map information for alternative navigation.&#160; In this application data from an onboard magnetometer is compared with previously mapped (or modeled) magnetic variations.&#160; The uncertainty of this previously mapped information has immediate implications for the potential accuracy of navigation.We are exploring the factors contributing to magnetic map uncertainty and producing uncertainty estimates for testing using new data collection in previously mapped (or modeled) map areas.&#160; These factors include (but are likely not limited to) vintage and type of measured data, spatial distribution of measured data, expectation of magnetic variability (e.g., geologic or geochemical environment), statistics of redundant measurement, and spatial scale/resolution of the magnetic map or model.&#160; The purpose of this talk is to discuss the overall issue and our initial results and solicit feedback and ideas from the interpretation community.

Download Full-text

A Novel Adaptive Pixels Segmentation Algorithm for Pavement Crack Detection

10.31124/advance.13601339.v1 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Nima Safaei ◽

Omar Smadi ◽

Babak Safaei ◽

Arezoo Masoud

Keyword(s):

Crack Detection ◽

Low Cost ◽

Local Level ◽

Cost Effective ◽

Segmentation Algorithm ◽

Pavement Maintenance ◽

Detection Systems ◽

Wide Range ◽

Cost Efficient ◽

Pavement Crack Detection

Cracks considerably reduce the life span of pavement surfaces. Currently, there is a need for the development of robust automated distress evaluation systems that comprise a low-cost crack detection method for performing fast and cost-effective roadway health monitoring practices. Most of the current methods are costly and have labor-intensive learning processes, so they are not suitable for small local-level projects with limited resources or are only usable for specific pavement types. This paper proposes a new method that uses an improved version of the weighted neighborhood pixels segmentation algorithm to detect cracks in 2-D pavement images. This method uses the Gaussian cumulative density function as the adaptive threshold to overcome the drawback of fixed thresholds in noisy environments. The proposed algorithm was tested on 300 images containing a wide range of noise representative of different noise conditions. This method proved to be time and cost-efficient as it took less than 3.15 seconds per 320 × 480 pixels image for a Xeon (R) 3.70 GHz CPU processor to determine the detection results. This makes the model a perfect choice for county-level pavement maintenance projects requiring cost-effective pavement crack detection systems. The validation results were promising for the detection of low to severe-level cracks (Accuracy = 97.3%, Precision = 79.21%, Recall= 89.18% and F1 score = 83.9%).

Download Full-text

Testing the habituation assumption underlying models of parasitoid foraging behavior

PeerJ ◽

10.7717/peerj.3097 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 5 ◽

pp. e3097 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Paul K. Abram ◽

Antonino Cusumano ◽

Katrina Abram ◽

Stefano Colazza ◽

Ezio Peri

Keyword(s):

Foraging Behavior ◽

Time Allocation ◽

Behavioral Response ◽

Behavioral Responses ◽

Protein Synthesis Inhibitor ◽

Partial Recovery ◽

Behavioral Strategies ◽

Atpase Inhibitor ◽

Wide Range ◽

Training Interval

BackgroundHabituation, a form of non-associative learning, has several well-defined characteristics that apply to a wide range of physiological and behavioral responses in many organisms. In classic patch time allocation models, habituation is considered to be a major mechanistic component of parasitoid behavioral strategies. However, parasitoid behavioral responses to host cues have not previously been tested for the known, specific characteristics of habituation.MethodsIn the laboratory, we tested whether the foraging behavior of the egg parasitoidTrissolcus basalisshows specific characteristics of habituation in response to consecutive encounters with patches of host (Nezara viridula) chemical contact cues (footprints), in particular: (i) a training interval-dependent decline in response intensity, and (ii) a training interval-dependent recovery of the response.ResultsAs would be expected of a habituated response, wasps trained at higher frequencies decreased their behavioral response to host footprints more quickly and to a greater degree than those trained at low frequencies, and subsequently showed a more rapid, although partial, recovery of their behavioral response to host footprints. This putative habituation learning could not be blocked by cold anesthesia, ingestion of an ATPase inhibitor, or ingestion of a protein synthesis inhibitor.DiscussionOur study provides support for the assumption that diminishing responses of parasitoids to chemical indicators of host presence constitutes habituation as opposed to sensory fatigue, and provides a preliminary basis for exploring the underlying mechanisms.

Download Full-text

Time-Resolved Spectroscopy with SDSS

Proceedings of the International Astronomical Union ◽

10.1017/s1743921312000816 ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 7 (S285) ◽

pp. 289-290

Author(s):

Steven Bickerton ◽

Carles Badenes ◽

Thomas Hettinger ◽

Timothy Beers ◽

Sonya Huang

Keyword(s):

Time Base ◽

Time Resolved ◽

Time Resolved Spectroscopy ◽

Wide Range ◽

Over Time

AbstractWe present a brief technical outline of the newly-formed project, “Detection of Spectroscopic Differences over Time” (DS/DT). Our collaboration is using individual exposures from the SDSS spectroscopic archive to produce a uniformly-processed set of time-resolved spectra. Here we provide an overview of the properties and processing of the available data, and highlight the wide range of time base-lines present in the archive.

Download Full-text