Exploring neural markers of dereification in meditation based on EEG and personalized models of electrophysiological brain states.

With mounting evidence for the benefits of meditation, there has been a growing interest in measuring and quantifying meditative states. This study introduces the Inner Dereification Index (IDI), a class of personalized models designed to quantify the distance from non-meditative states such as mind wandering based on a single individual's neural activity. In addition to demonstrating high classification accuracy (median AUC: 0.

Eye gaze as a means of giving and seeking information during musical interaction.

During skilled music ensemble performance, a multi-layered network of interaction processes allows musicians to negotiate common interpretations of ambiguously-notated music in real-time. This study investigated the conditions that encourage visual interaction during duo performance. Duos recorded performances of a new piece before and after a period of rehearsal.

Collaborative Musical Creativity: How Ensembles Coordinate Spontaneity.

Music performance is inherently social. Most music is performed in groups, and even soloists are subject to influence from a (real or imagined) audience. It is also inherently creative.

Strategic Talk in Film.

Conversational robots and agents are being designed for educational and/or persuasive tasks, e.g., health or fitness coaching.

Mutual proximity graphs for improved reachability in music recommendation.

This paper is concerned with the impact of hubness, a general problem of machine learning in high-dimensional spaces, on a real-world music recommendation system based on visualisation of a k-nearest neighbour (knn) graph. Due to a problem of measuring distances in high dimensions, hub objects are recommended over and over again while anti-hubs are nonexistent in recommendation lists, resulting in poor reachability of the music catalogue. We present mutual proximity graphs, which are an alternative to knn and mutual knn graphs, and are able to avoid hub vertices having abnormally high connectivity.

Beating time: How ensemble musicians' cueing gestures communicate beat position and tempo.

Ensemble musicians typically exchange visual cues to coordinate piece entrances. "Cueing-in" gestures indicate when to begin playing and at what tempo. This study investigated how timing information is encoded in musicians' cueing-in gestures.

The Tight-interlocked Rhythm Section: Production and Perception of Synchronisation in Jazz Trio Performance.

This study investigates the production and perception of timing, synchronisation and dynamics in jazz trio performances. In a production experiment, six trio combinations of one saxophonist, two bassists, and three drummers were recorded while they performed three popular jazz songs. Onset timing and dynamics of each performer were extracted and analysed.

Automatic Identification of Character Types from Film Dialogs.

We study the detection of character types from fictional dialog texts such as screenplays. As approaches based on the analysis of utterances' linguistic properties are not sufficient to identify all fictional character types, we develop an integrative approach that complements linguistic analysis with interactive and communication characteristics, and show that it can improve the identification performance. The interactive characteristics of fictional characters are captured by the descriptive analysis of semantic graphs weighted by linguistic markers of expressivity and social role.

Communication for coordination: gesture kinematics and conventionality affect synchronization success in piano duos.

Ensemble musicians often exchange visual cues in the form of body gestures (e.g., rhythmic head nods) to help coordinate piece entrances.

The Problem of Limited Inter-rater Agreement in Modelling Music Similarity.

One of the central goals of Music Information Retrieval (MIR) is the quantification of similarity between or within pieces of music. These quantitative relations should mirror the human perception of music similarity, which is however highly subjective with low inter-rater agreement. Unfortunately this principal problem has been given little attention in MIR so far.

There's More to Groove than Bass in Electronic Dance Music: Why Some People Won't Dance to Techno.

The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between audio descriptors for groove-based electronic dance music (EDM) and raters' perceived cognitive, affective, and psychomotor responses. From 198 musical excerpts (length: 15 sec.) representing 11 subgenres of EDM, 19 low-level audio feature descriptors were extracted.

Finger Forces in Clarinet Playing.

Clarinettists close and open multiple tone holes to alter the pitch of the tones. Their fingering technique must be fast, precise, and coordinated with the tongue articulation. In this empirical study, finger force profiles and tongue techniques of clarinet students (N = 17) and professional clarinettists (N = 6) were investigated under controlled performance conditions.

Structural Studies of GABAA Receptor Binding Sites: Which Experimental Structure Tells us What?

Atomic resolution structures of cys-loop receptors, including one of a γ-aminobutyric acid type A receptor (GABAA receptor) subtype, allow amazing insights into the structural features and conformational changes that these pentameric ligand-gated ion channels (pLGICs) display. Here we present a comprehensive analysis of more than 30 cys-loop receptor structures of homologous proteins that revealed several allosteric binding sites not previously described in GABAA receptors. These novel binding sites were examined in GABAA receptor homology models and assessed as putative candidate sites for allosteric ligands.

When they listen and when they watch: Pianists' use of nonverbal audio and visual cues during duet performance.

Nonverbal auditory and visual communication helps ensemble musicians predict each other's intentions and coordinate their actions. When structural characteristics of the music make predicting co-performers' intentions difficult (e.g.

Context-specific effects of musical expertise on audiovisual integration.

Ensemble musicians exchange auditory and visual signals that can facilitate interpersonal synchronization. Musical expertise improves how precisely auditory and visual signals are perceptually integrated and increases sensitivity to asynchrony between them. Whether expertise improves sensitivity to audiovisual asynchrony in all instrumental contexts or only in those using sound-producing gestures that are within an observer's own motor repertoire is unclear.

Touch and temporal behavior of grand piano actions.

This study investigated the temporal behavior of grand piano actions from different manufacturers under different touch conditions and dynamic levels. An experimental setup consisting of accelerometers and a calibrated microphone was used to capture key and hammer movements, as well as the sound signal. Five selected keys were played by pianists with two types of touch ("pressed touch" versus "struck touch") over the entire dynamic range.

Measurement and reproduction accuracy of computer-controlled grand pianos.

The recording and reproducing capabilities of a Yamaha Disklavier grand piano and a Bösendorfer SE290 computer-controlled grand piano were tested, with the goal of examining their reliability for performance research. An experimental setup consisting of accelerometers and a calibrated microphone was used to capture key and hammer movements, as well as the acoustic signal. Five selected keys were played by pianists with two types of touch ("staccato" and "legato").