scholarly journals Electrical Brain Activity and Its Functional Connectivity in the Physical Execution of Modern Jazz Dance

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johanna Wind ◽  
Fabian Horst ◽  
Nikolas Rizzi ◽  
Alexander John ◽  
Wolfgang I. Schöllhorn

Besides the pure pleasure of watching a dance performance, dance as a whole-body movement is becoming increasingly popular for health-related interventions. However, the science-based evidence for improvements in health or well-being through dance is still ambiguous and little is known about the underlying neurophysiological mechanisms. This may be partly related to the fact that previous studies mostly examined the neurophysiological effects of imagination and observation of dance rather than the physical execution itself. The objective of this pilot study was to investigate acute effects of a physically executed dance with its different components (recalling the choreography and physical activity to music) on the electrical brain activity and its functional connectivity using electroencephalographic (EEG) analysis. Eleven dance-inexperienced female participants first learned a Modern Jazz Dance (MJD) choreography over three weeks (1 h sessions per week). Afterwards, the acute effects on the EEG brain activity were compared between four different test conditions: physically executing the MJD choreography with music, physically executing the choreography without music, imaging the choreography with music, and imaging the choreography without music. Every participant passed each test condition in a randomized order within a single day. EEG rest-measurements were conducted before and after each test condition. Considering time effects the physically executed dance without music revealed in brain activity analysis most increases in alpha frequency and in functional connectivity analysis in all frequency bands. In comparison, physically executed dance with music as well as imagined dance with music led to fewer increases and imagined dance without music provoked noteworthy brain activity and connectivity decreases at all frequency bands. Differences between the test conditions were found in alpha and beta frequency between the physically executed dance and the imagined dance without music as well as between the physically executed dance with and without music in the alpha frequency. The study highlights different effects of a physically executed dance compared to an imagined dance on many brain areas for all measured frequency bands. These findings provide first insights into the still widely unexplored field of neurological effects of dance and encourages further research in this direction.

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johanna Wind ◽  
Fabian Horst ◽  
Nikolas Rizzi ◽  
Alexander John ◽  
Tamara Kurti ◽  
...  

To date, most neurophysiological dance research has been conducted exclusively with female participants in observational studies (i.e., participants observe or imagine a dance choreography). In this regard, the sex-specific acute neurophysiological effect of physically executed dance can be considered a widely unexplored field of research. This study examines the acute impact of a modern jazz dance choreography on brain activity and functional connectivity using electroencephalography (EEG). In a within-subject design, 11 female and 11 male participants were examined under four test conditions: physically dancing the choreography with and without music and imagining the choreography with and without music. Prior to the EEG measurements, the participants acquired the choreography over 3 weeks with one session per week. Subsequently, the participants conducted all four test conditions in a randomized order on a single day, with the EEG measurements taken before and after each condition. Differences between the male and female participants were established in brain activity and functional connectivity analyses under the condition of imagined dance without music. No statistical differences between sexes were found in the other three conditions (physically executed dance with and without music as well as imagined dance with music). Physically dancing and music seem to have sex-independent effects on the human brain. However, thinking of dance without music seems to be rather sex-specific. The results point to a promising approach to decipher sex-specific differences in the use of dance or music. This approach could further be used to achieve a more group-specific or even more individualized and situationally adapted use of dance interventions, e.g., in the context of sports, physical education, or therapy. The extent to which the identified differences are due to culturally specific attitudes in the sex-specific contact with dance and music needs to be clarified in future research.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johanna Wind ◽  
Wolfgang Schöllhorn

AbstractDance as one of the earliest cultural assets of mankind is practised in different cultures, mostly for wellbeing or for treating psycho-physiological disorders like Parkinson, depression, autism. However, the underlying neurophysiological mechanisms are still unclear and only few studies address the effects of particular dance styles. For a first impression, we were interested in the effects of modern jazz dance (MJD) on the brain activation that would contribute to the understanding of these mechanisms. 11 female subjects rehearsed a MJD choreography for three weeks (1h per week) and passed electroencephalographic (EEG) measurements in a crossover-design thereafter. The objectives were to establish the differences between dancing physically and participating just mentally with or without music. Therefore, each subject realized the four following test conditions: dancing physically to and without music, dancing mentally to and without music. Each of the conditions were performed for 15 minutes. Before and after each condition, the EEG activities were recorded under resting conditions (2 min. eyes-open, 2 min. eyes-closed) followed by a subsequent wash-out phase of 10 minutes.The results of the study revealed no time effects for the mental dancing conditions, either to or without music. An increased electrical brain activation was followed by the physical dancing conditions with and without music for the theta, alpha-1, alpha-2, beta and gamma frequency band across the entire scalp. Especially the higher frequencies (alpha-2, beta, gamma) showed increased brain activation across all brain areas. Higher brain activities for the physical dancing conditions were identified in comparison to the mental dancing condition. No statistically significant differences could be found as to dancing to or without music. Our findings demonstrate evidence for the immediate influence of modern jazz dance and its sweeping effects on all brain areas for all measured frequency bands, when dancing physically. In comparison, dancing just mentally does not result in similar effects.


2013 ◽  
Vol 61 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nurhanis Izzati Che Marzuki ◽  
Nasrul Humaimi Mahmood ◽  
Norlaili Mat Safri

Music is the science and the art of tones, or the musical sounds. Music is also the art of combining tones in a manner to please the ear. Music therapy is the planned and creative use of music to attain and maintain health and well–being. There are a lot of experimental efforts to understand musical processing in the brain using electroencephalogram (EEG). It is accepted that listening to music increases the theta and alpha bands power that is associated to increase relaxation. In this study, we are interested to find the type of music that can produce such state of mind by analysing the EEG power spectrum in those frequency bands. 4 types of music were investigated, i.e. sound of instrumental piano, sound of wave, sound of birds and sound of nature. As the result, 71.4% of subjects were able to achieved highest power spectral density in theta and alpha frequency bands while listening to sound of instrumental piano and sound of nature while only 28.6–42.9% of subjects were able to produce the same while listening to sound of wave and sound of bird. From the finding, it can be concluded that sound of instrumental piano and sound of nature increase relaxation as indicated by the increase of PSD in the theta/alpha frequency bands compared to the sound of wave and sound of bird.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. Sanchez-Todo ◽  
R. Salvador ◽  
E. Santarnecchi ◽  
F. Wendling ◽  
G. Deco ◽  
...  

AbstractPersonalization is rapidly becoming standard practice in medical diagnosis and treatment. This study is part of an ambitious program towards computational personalization of neuromodulatory interventions in neuropsychiatry. We propose to model the individual human brain as a network of neural masses embedded in a realistic physical matrix capable of representing measurable electrical brain activity. We call this a hybrid brain model (HBM) to highlight that it encodes both biophysical and physiological characteristics of an individual brain. Although the framework is general, we provide here a pipeline for the integration of anatomical, structural and functional connectivity data obtained from magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), diffuse tensor imaging (DTI connectome) and electroencephalography (EEG). We personalize model parameters through a comparison of simulated cortical functional connectivity with functional connectivity profiles derived from cortically-mapped, subject-specific EEG. We show that individual information can be represented in model space through the proper adjustment of two parameters (global coupling strength and conduction velocity), and that the underlying structural information has a strong impact on the functional outcome of the model. These findings provide a proof of concept and open the door for further advances, including the model-driven design of non-invasive brain-stimulation protocols.


2021 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lilia Maria Morales Chacón ◽  
Lidice Galan García ◽  
Sheyla Berrillo Batista ◽  
Judith González González ◽  
Abel Sánchez Coroneaux

To explore brain function using functional connectivity and network topology derived from electroencephalogram (EEG) in patients with pharmacoresistant epileptic encephalopathy with cannabidiol as adjunctive antiepileptic treatment. Sixteen epileptic patients participated in the study, six of whom had epileptic encephalopathy with a stable dose of cannabidiol Epidiolex (CBD) as adjunctive therapy. Functional connectivity derived from EEG was analyzed based on the synchronization likelihood (SL). The analysis also included reconstructing graph-theoretic measures from the synchronization matrix. Comparison of functional connectivity data between each pathological group with the control group was carried out using a nonparametric permutation test applied to SL values between pairs of electrodes for each frequency band. To compare the association patterns between graph-theoretical properties of each pathological group with the control group, Z Crawford was calculated as a measure of distance. There were differences between pairs of electrodes in all frequency bands evaluated in encephalopathy epileptic patients with CBD adjunctive therapy compared with the control (p < 0.05, permutation test). In the epileptic encephalopathy group without CBD therapy, the SL values were higher than in the control group for the beta, theta, and delta EEG frequency bands, and lower for the alpha frequency band. Interestingly, patients who had CBD as adjunctive therapy demonstrated greater synchronization for all frequency bands, showing less spatial distribution for alpha frequency compared with the control. When comparing both epileptic groups, those patients who had adjunctive CBD treatment also showed increased synchronization for all frequency bands. In epileptic encephalopathy with adjunctive CBD therapy, the pattern of differences for graph-theoretical measures according to Z Crawford indicated less segregation and greater integration suggesting a trend towards the random organization of the network principally for alpha and beta EEG bands. This exploratory study revealed a tendency to an overconnectivity with a random network topology mainly for fast EEG bands in epileptic encephalopathy patients using CBD adjunctive therapy. It can therefore be assumed that the CBD treatment could be related to inhibition of the transition of the interictal to ictal state and/or to the improvement of EEG organization and brain function.


Pain Medicine ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 21 (12) ◽  
pp. 3530-3538
Author(s):  
Javier Gomez-Pilar ◽  
David García-Azorín ◽  
Claudia Gomez-Lopez-de-San-Roman ◽  
Ángel L Guerrero ◽  
Roberto Hornero

Abstract Objective The analysis of particular (electroencephalographic) EEG frequency bands has revealed new insights relative to the neural dynamics that, when studying the EEG spectrum as a whole, would have remained hidden. This study is aimed at characterizing spectral resting state EEG patterns for assessing possible differences of episodic and chronic migraine during the interictal period. For that purpose, a novel methodology for analyzing specific frequencies of interest was performed. Methods Eighty-seven patients with migraine (45 with episodic and 42 with chronic migraine) and 39 age- and sex-matched controls performed a resting-state EEG recording. Spectral measures were computed using conventional frequency bands. Additionally, particular frequency bands were determined to distinguish between controls and migraine patients, as well as between migraine subgroups. Results Frequencies ranging from 11.6 Hz to 12.8 Hz characterized migraine as a whole, with differences evident in the central and left parietal regions (controlling for false discovery rate). An additional band between 24.1 Hz and 29.8 Hz was used to discriminate between migraine subgroups. Interestingly, the power in this band was positively correlated with time from onset in episodic migraine, but no correlation was found for chronic migraine. Conclusions Specific frequency bands were proposed to identify the spectral characteristics of the electrical brain activity in migraine during the interictal stage. Our findings support the importance of discriminating between migraine subgroups to avoid hiding relevant features in migraine.


2020 ◽  
Vol 48 (3) ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
Yujia Yao ◽  
Yuyang Xuan ◽  
Biao Sang ◽  
Liqing Zhou

Implicit evaluation of emotion regulation (IE-ER) refers to an implicit representation of individuals' attitudes about whether emotion should be regulated, and comprises positive (PIE-ER) and negative (NIE-ER) emotion regulation components. In this study we used the picture position decision task to investigate participants' electrical brain responses to both types of IE-ER. Electroencephalogram data were recorded simultaneously. Analysis of variance results show that the PIEER (vs. NIE-ER) group had significantly higher N1 amplitudes, shorter N1 latencies, and lower P1 amplitudes. The P1 amplitude in the left (vs. right) frontal brain region was significantly higher in both groups. In addition, as the PIE-ER (vs. NIE-ER) group had a greater ability to orient themselves to emotional stimuli, the cognitive resources they allocated to processing emotional stimuli decreased: Processing depth gradually became shallow, and emotion regulation elicited left frontal electrical asymmetry. Our findings provide a new understanding of unconscious emotion regulation, which may impact on physical and psychological intervention for the treatment of individuals' emotional problems and mental health, and well-being promotion.


2019 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 109-118
Author(s):  
Andrés Antonio González-Garrido ◽  
Jacobo José Brofman-Epelbaum ◽  
Fabiola Reveca Gómez-Velázquez ◽  
Sebastián Agustín Balart-Sánchez ◽  
Julieta Ramos-Loyo

Abstract. It has been generally accepted that skipping breakfast adversely affects cognition, mainly disturbing the attentional processes. However, the effects of short-term fasting upon brain functioning are still unclear. We aimed to evaluate the effect of skipping breakfast on cognitive processing by studying the electrical brain activity of young healthy individuals while performing several working memory tasks. Accordingly, the behavioral results and event-related brain potentials (ERPs) of 20 healthy university students (10 males) were obtained and compared through analysis of variances (ANOVAs), during the performance of three n-back working memory (WM) tasks in two morning sessions on both normal (after breakfast) and 12-hour fasting conditions. Significantly fewer correct responses were achieved during fasting, mainly affecting the higher WM load task. In addition, there were prolonged reaction times with increased task difficulty, regardless of breakfast intake. ERP showed a significant voltage decrement for N200 and P300 during fasting, while the amplitude of P200 notably increased. The results suggest skipping breakfast disturbs earlier cognitive processing steps, particularly attention allocation, early decoding in working memory, and stimulus evaluation, and this effect increases with task difficulty.


1981 ◽  
Vol 20 (03) ◽  
pp. 169-173
Author(s):  
J. Wagner ◽  
G. Pfurtscheixer

The shape, latency and amplitude of changes in electrical brain activity related to a stimulus (Evoked Potential) depend both on the stimulus parameters and on the background EEG at the time of stimulation. An adaptive, learnable stimulation system is introduced, whereby the subject is stimulated (e.g. with light), whenever the EEG power is subthreshold and minimal. Additionally, the system is conceived in such a way that a certain number of stimuli could be given within a particular time interval. Related to this time criterion, the threshold specific for each subject is calculated at the beginning of the experiment (preprocessing) and adapted to the EEG power during the processing mode because of long-time fluctuations and trends in the EEG. The process of adaptation is directed by a table which contains the necessary correction numbers for the threshold. Experiences of the stimulation system are reflected in an automatic correction of this table. Because the corrected and improved table is stored after each experiment and is used as the starting table for the next experiment, the system >learns<. The system introduced here can be used both for evoked response studies and for alpha-feedback experiments.


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