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The ability to integrate our perceptions across sensory modalities and across time, to execute and coordinate movements, and to adapt to a changing environment rests on temporal processing. Timing is essential for basic daily tasks, such as walking, social interaction, speech and language comprehension, and attention. Impaired temporal processing may contribute to various disorders, from attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and schizophrenia to Parkinson’s disease and dementia. The foundational importance of timing ability has yet to be fully understood; and popular tasks used to investigate behavioral timing ability, such as sensorimotor synchronization (SMS), engage a variety of processes in addition to the neural processing of time. The present study utilizes SMS in conjunction with a separate passive listening task that manipulates temporal expectancy while recording electroencephalographic data. Participants display a larger N1-P2 evoked potential complex to unexpected beats relative to temporally predictable beats, a differential we call the timing response index (TRI). The TRI correlates with performance on the SMS task: better synchronizers show a larger brain response to unexpected beats. The TRI, derived from the perceptually driven N1-P2 complex, disentangles the perceptual and motor components inherent in SMS and thus may serve as a neural marker of a more general temporal processing.

This chapter explores the voice as palimpsest through the experience of Stylianos Floikos, one of the few remaining cantors (or psaltes) at the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople in Istanbul, Turkey. Stylianos, like other psaltes, while interpreting melodies either from neumatic scores or from memory, creates inaudible yet profoundly affective resonance with his own previous interpretations and those of other psaltes. Through this process, both he and those listening experience the act of realizing a melody as a dialogue with past voices rendered present. This multilayered, polyphonic experience of voice forms the context through which both personal and cultural identity are apprehended and renegotiated.

People commonly use words such as “find,” “hold,” “keep,” and “drop” to describe actions related to the musical beat. While such language implies that musical beats exist in an empirically observable, externalized way, musical beats exist only in our perception. This is most clearly evident when people of different cultures perceive different musical beats while listening to the same musical stimuli. At an early age, the ability to discriminate rhythms uncommon to one's surrounding culture declines steeply. However, it has also been shown that rhythmic training may slow or even reverse this decline. This paper explores this process from an ethnographic perspective, observing the way in which American schoolchildren engage with the different temporal dynamics and aesthetics they encounter as they participate in a multicultural music program across several inner-city schools in Southern California.People commonly use words such as “find,” “hold,” “keep,” and “drop” to describe actions related to the musical beat. While such language implies that musical beats exist in an empirically observable, externalized way, musical beats exist only in our perception. This is most clearly evident when people of different cultures perceive different musical beats while listening to the same musical stimuli. At an early age, the ability to discriminate rhythms uncommon to one's surrounding culture declines steeply. However, it has also been shown that rhythmic training may slow or even reverse this decline. This paper explores this process from an ethnographic perspective, observing the way in which American schoolchildren engage with the different temporal dynamics and aesthetics they encounter as they participate in a multicultural music program across several inner-city schools in Southern California.

Single- and multi-agent installations and performances that use physiological signals to establish an interface between music and mental states can be found as early as the mid-1960s. Among these works, many have used physiological signals (or inferred cognitive, sensorimotor or affective states) as media for music generation and creative expression. To a lesser extent, some have been developed to illustrate and study effects of music on the brain. Historically, installations designed for a single participant are most prevalent. Less common are installations that invite participation and interaction between multiple individuals. Implementing such multi-agent installations raises unique challenges, but also unique possibilities for social interaction. Advances in unobtrusive and/or mobile devices for physiological data acquisition and signal processing, as well as computational methods for inferring mental states from such data, have expanded the possibilities for real-world, multi-agent, brain–music interfaces. In this chapter, we examine a diverse selection of playful and social installations and performances, which explore relationships between music and the brain and have featured publically in Mainly Mozart’s annual Mozart & the Mind (MATM) festival in San Diego. Several of these installations leverage neurotechnology (typically novel wearable devices) to infer brain states of participants. However, we also consider installations that solely measure behavior as a means of inferring cognitive state or to illustrate a principle of brain function. In addition to brief overviews of implementation details, we consider ways in which such installations can be useful vehicles, not only for creative expression, but also for education, social interaction, therapeutic intervention, scientific and aesthetic research, and as playful vehicles for exploring human–human and human–machine interaction.

Author(s): Khalil, Alexander K | Abstract: At present, the need for an understanding of both physical and cultural geography is increasingly urgent in America’s schools. The present study explores using music as focus for the exploration of geography. Not only is music strongly linked to culture and environment but also its study provides an experiential understanding of a given culture in a way that few others can. Instrumental music, unfettered by practical, semantic, or representational constraints of other traditional art forms, can be considered as one of the most direct forms of cultural expression, reflecting primarily the collective imagination of the culture that developed it and the environment in which it developed. Musical instruments are shaped by a culture’s aesthetics and made using locally available materials and technologies.The present article takes as a case study a class at the Museum School, a San Diego Unified School District charter school that emphasizes experiential learning and the arts in its daily curriculum. In this case study, 23 children in grades 4-6 focused their attention on the culture and geography of the Island of Bali, Indonesia, through studying its instrumental music, known as “gamelan.”The Museum School has had a Balinese gamelan program as part of its music curriculum since 2000 and thus all of the students approached the subject with substantial experiential knowledge. The course of study, which lasted several weeks, went through four stages of inquiry and discussion. First, the students conducted background research on Balinese music, focusing in particular on organology. Second, the students explored Balinese geography through organology, deducing aspects of the Balinese environment based on the design and construction of the instruments. Third, the students examined Balinese culture through its music, focusing on musical structure. Fourth the students were asked to make connections between Balinese culture and physical geography as seen through music. Finally, the students compared and contrast what they had learned with musics of their own choice, pointing out likely cultural and environmental factors that likely caused the differences and similarities they observed.This course of study helped the students make connections between cultural and physical geography in a nuanced way. Further, although focus on music and art as a subject, the core elements of the class were writing and research skills. Combining these skills with experiential learning not only deepens and nuances understanding of geography but also expands students’ cognitive repertoire, providing tools for further exploration.