The relationship between musicianship and pain. Is chronic pain and its management a problem for student musicians only?

Introduction: The neuro-biological side of chronic pain research has presented reliable evidence of distinct cortical and spinal alteration compared to healthy individuals. Furthermore, research suggests that musicians are especially vulnerable to pain, and recent neurological investigations into musicians' brain plasticity support this hypothesis. However, chronic pain is not acute pain plus time, but a separate condition, and little is known about musicians' chronic pain-related emotions and behaviors.

The same but different. Multidimensional assessment of depression in students of natural science and music.

Depression is one of the most common and debilitating health problems, however, its heterogeneity makes a diagnosis challenging. Thus far the restriction of depression variables explored within groups, the lack of comparability between groups, and the heterogeneity of depression as a concept limit a meaningful interpretation, especially in terms of predictability. Research established students in late adolescence to be particularly vulnerable, especially those with a natural science or musical study main subject.

The critic's voice: On the role and function of criticism of classical music recordings.

In the Western classical tradition music criticism represents one of the most complex and influential forms of performance assessment and evaluation. However, in the age of peer opinion sharing and quick communication channels it is not clear what place music critics' judgments still hold in the classical music market. This article presents expert music critics' view on their role, function, and influence.

Wellbeing in Brass Bands: The Benefits and Challenges of Group Music Making.

The wellbeing impacts of group music making have been established by evidence-based research. However, studies have largely focused on one group music activity; singing in choirs. To what extent can these wellbeing impacts be considered representative of group music making? This paper presents a survey of wellbeing impacts in brass band players.

The music that helps people sleep and the reasons they believe it works: A mixed methods analysis of online survey reports.

Sleep loss is a widespread problem with serious physical and economic consequences. Music can impact upon physical, psychological and emotional states, which may explain anecdotal reports of its success as an everyday sleep aid. However, there is a lack of systematic data on how widely it is used, why people opt for music as a sleep aid, or what music works; hence the underlying drivers to music-sleep effects remain unclear.

Towards a new methodological approach: A novel paradigm for covertly inducing and sampling different forms of spontaneous cognition.

A wide range of cognitions is generated involuntarily in the human mind daily. We developed a paradigm, which covertly induces and samples spontaneous cognitions in the visual and auditory modalities, focusing on 3 key characteristics: spontaneity, repetition, and emotional valence. Sixty participants watched two visual clips while listening to music and assessed their characteristics.

A novel indirect method for capturing involuntary musical imagery under varying cognitive load.

Involuntary musical imagery (INMI), i.e the internal experience of a repetitive musical fragment, is one of the most ubiquitous forms of spontaneous cognition. Findings regarding the relationship between INMI and cognitive load are conflicting.

A Critical Ear: Analysis of Value Judgments in Reviews of Beethoven's Piano Sonata Recordings.

What sets a great music performance apart? In this study, we addressed this question through an examination of value judgments in written criticism of recorded performance. One hundred reviews of recordings of Beethoven's piano sonatas, published in the Gramophone between 1934 and 2010, were analyzed through a three-step qualitative analysis that identified the valence (positive/negative) expressed by critics' statements and the evaluation criteria that underpinned their judgments. The outcome is a model of the main evaluation criteria used by professional critics: aesthetic properties, including intensity, coherence, and complexity, and achievement-related properties, including sureness, comprehension, and endeavor.

The impact of music on learning and consolidation of novel words.

Music can be a powerful mnemonic device, as shown by a body of literature demonstrating that listening to text sung to a familiar melody results in better memory for the words compared to conditions where they are spoken. Furthermore, patients with a range of memory impairments appear to be able to form new declarative memories when they are encoded in the form of lyrics in a song, while unable to remember similar materials after hearing them in the spoken modality. Whether music facilitates the acquisition of completely new information, such as new vocabulary, remains unknown.

Beethoven recordings reviewed: a systematic method for mapping the content of music performance criticism.

Critical reviews offer rich data that can be used to investigate how musical experiences are conceptualized by expert listeners. However, these data also present significant challenges in terms of organization, analysis, and interpretation. This study presents a new systematic method for examining written responses to music, tested on a substantial corpus of music criticism.

A causal involvement of the left supramarginal gyrus during the retention of musical pitches.

Brain stimulation studies have previously demonstrated a causal link between general pitch memory processes and activity within the left supramarginal gyrus (SMG). Building on this evidence, the present study tested the impact of left SMG stimulation on two distinct pitch memory phases, retention and encoding. Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) was employed during the retention stage (Experiment 1) and the encoding phase (Experiment 2) of a pitch recognition task.

Sticky tunes: how do people react to involuntary musical imagery?

The vast majority of people experience involuntary musical imagery (INMI) or 'earworms'; perceptions of spontaneous, repetitive musical sound in the absence of an external source. The majority of INMI episodes are not bothersome, while some cause disruption ranging from distraction to anxiety and distress. To date, little is known about how the majority of people react to INMI, in particular whether evaluation of the experience impacts on chosen response behaviours or if attempts at controlling INMI are successful or not.

Anodal transcranial direct current stimulation over the supramarginal gyrus facilitates pitch memory.

Functional neuroimaging studies have shown activation of the supramarginal gyrus during pitch memory tasks. A previous transcranial direct current stimulation study using cathodal stimulation over the left supramarginal gyrus reported a detrimental effect on short-term pitch memory performance, indicating an important role of the supramarginal gyrus in pitch memory. The current study aimed to determine whether pitch memory could be improved following anodal stimulation of the left supramarginal gyrus.

Electrophysiological correlates of melodic processing in congenital amusia.

Music listening involves using previously internalized regularities to process incoming musical structures. A condition known as congenital amusia is characterized by musical difficulties, notably in the detection of gross musical violations. However, there has been increasing evidence that individuals with the disorder show preserved musical ability when probed using implicit methods.

Congenital amusia.

For most people, music, like language, is acquired effortlessly in early life. But a few percent of the population have lifelong difficulties in the perception and production of music. In this chapter we discuss psycho-acoustic and behavioral studies that have attempted to delineate the nature of the auditory perceptual deficits in this group and consider whether these difficulties extend outside the musical domain.

Perception and action de-coupling in congenital amusia: sensitivity to task demands.

Theories that purport the existence of a distinct auditory action stream have received support from the finding that individuals with congenital amusia, a disorder of pitch perception, are able to reproduce the direction of a pitch change that they are unable to identify (Loui, Guenther, Mathys, & Schlaug, 2008). Although this finding has proved influential in theorizing about the existence of an auditory action-stream, aspects of the original study warrant further investigation. The present report attempts to replicate the original study's findings across a sizeable cohort of individuals with amusia (n=14), obtaining action (production) and perception thresholds for pitch direction.

The relationship between pitch and space in congenital amusia.

Congenital amusia manifests as a lifelong difficulty in making sense of musical sound. The extent to which this disorder is accompanied by deficits in visuo-spatial processing is an important question, bearing on the issue of whether pitch processing draws on supramodal spatial representations. The present study assessed different aspects of visuo-spatial processing with a range of tasks (Shepard-Metzler Mental Rotation, Corsi Blocks Task, Visual Patterns Test) in 14 amusics and matched controls.

Memory for pitch in congenital amusia: beyond a fine-grained pitch discrimination problem.

Congenital amusia is a disorder that affects the perception and production of music. While amusia has been associated with deficits in pitch discrimination, several reports suggest that memory deficits also play a role. The present study investigated short-term memory span for pitch-based and verbal information in 14 individuals with amusia and matched controls.

Faster decline of pitch memory over time in congenital amusia.

Congenital amusia (amusia, hereafter) is a developmental disorder that impacts negatively on the perception of music. Psychophysical testing suggests that individuals with amusia have above average thresholds for detection of pitch change and pitch direction discrimination; however, a low-level auditory perceptual problem cannot completely explain the disorder, since discrimination of melodies is also impaired when the constituent intervals are suprathreshold for perception. The aim of the present study was to test pitch memory as a function of (a) time and (b) tonal interference, in order to determine whether pitch traces are inherently weaker in amusic individuals.

Musicians' and nonmusicians' short-term memory for verbal and musical sequences: comparing phonological similarity and pitch proximity.

Language-music comparative studies have highlighted the potential for shared resources or neural overlap in auditory short-term memory. However, there is a lack of behavioral methodologies for comparing verbal and musical serial recall. We developed a visual grid response that allowed both musicians and nonmusicians to perform serial recall of letter and tone sequences.