PSYCHOACOUSTIC OPTIMIZATION OF THE VQ-VAE AND TRANSFORMER ARCHITECTURES FOR HUMAN-LIKE AUDITORY PERCEPTION IN MUSIC INFORMATION RETRIEVAL AND GENERATION TASKS

Despite incredible advancements in the utilization of learning-based architectures (AI) in natural language and image domains, their applicability to the domain of music has remained limited. In fact, the performance of state-of-the-art Automated Music Transcription (AMT) systems has seen only marginal improvements from novel AI architectures. Moreover, the importance of psychoacoustic perception and its incorporation into MIR systems have mostly stayed addressed, leading to shortcomings in current approaches. This thesis provides an overview of music processing and novel neural architectures, investigates the reasons behind the subpar performance achieved by their utilization in music information retrieval (MIR) tasks, and proposes several ways of adjusting both the music (data-related) pre-processing pipelines, and psychoacoustically-adjusted transformer-based model to improve the performance on MIR and AMT tasks. In particular, a new music transformer architecture is proposed, and various algorithms of music pre-processing for psychoacoustic optimization are implemented along with several adaptive models aimed at addressing the missing factor of modeling human music perception. The preliminary performance results exhibit promising outcomes, warranting the continued investigation of transformer architectures for music information retrieval applications. Several intriguing insights unveiled during the research process are discussed and presented. The thesis concludes by delineating a set of promising future research directions, paving the way for further advancements in the field of music information retrieval and generation using proposed architectures

Autism, new music technologies and cognition

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2006.Page 108 blank.Includes bibliographical references (p. 99-107).Central coherence accounts of autism have shown dysfunction in the processing of local versus global information that may be the source of symptoms in social behavior, communication and repetitive behavior. An application was developed to measure cognitive abilities in central coherence tasks as part of a music composition task. The application was evaluated in collaboration with the Spotlight Program, an interdisciplinary social pragmatics program for children with Asperger's syndrome. This research indicates that it is possible to embed cognitive measure as part of a novel music application. Implications for current treatment interventions, and longitudinal experimentation designs are presented.by Adam Boulanger.S.M

Testing and Analysis of a Computational Model of Human Rhythm Perception

This thesis presents an original methodology, as detailed below, applied to the testing of an existing computational model of human rhythm perception. Since the computational model instantiates neural resonance theory (Large and Snyder,2009), the thesis also tests that theory. Neural resonance theory is a key target for testing since, as contrasted with many other theories of human rhythm perception, it has relatively strong physiological plausibility. Rather than simply matching overt features of human rhythm perception, neural resonance theory shows how these features might plausibly emerge from low-level properties of interacting neurons. The thesis tests the theory using several distinct research methods. The model stood up well to each family of tests, subject to limitations that are analysed in detail. Firstly, the responses of the model to several types of polyrhythmic stimuli were compared with existing empirical data on human responses regarding beat identification to the same stimuli, at a variety of tempi. Polyrhythmic stimuli closely resemble real life complex rhythmical stimuli such as music, and were used for the first time to test the model. It was found that the set of categories of response predicted by the model matched human behaviour. Secondly, the model was systematically analysed by exploring the degree of dependence of its behaviour on the values of its parameters (sensitivity analysis). The behaviour of the model was found to retain consistency in the face of systematic numerical manipulation of its parameters. Thirdly, the behaviour of the model was compared to that of related models. In particular, the focal computational model, which balances physiological plausibility with mathematical convenience, was compared with other models that relate more directly to brain physiology. In each case, all relevant behaviours were found to be closely in line. Lastly, the outputs of the model under polyrhythmic stimuli were analysed to make new testable predictions about previously unobserved human behaviour regarding the time it takes for people to perceive beat in polyrhythms. These predictions led to the design and conduction of new human experimental studies. It was found that the model had successfully predicted previously unobserved aspects of human behaviour, more specifically it predicted the timescale within which people start to perceive beat in a given polyrhythmic stimulus

Movement Interventions for Children with Autism and Developmental Disabilities: An Evidence-Based Practice Project

This review explored the following question: Are the comprehensive treatment models Makoto Therapy, Brain Gym, and Interactive Metronome effective interventions for improving occupational performance including improving executive function, academic performance, and physical coordination in children and adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)? Because current research on Interactive Metronome, Brain Gym®, and Makoto Therapy fails to address children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorder, presents multiple flaws in research design, and does not measure occupational outcomes such as occupational performance, we recommend that these interventions should not be used as comprehensive treatment models in occupational therapy. We recommend that more occupational-based, methodologically-sound research involving youth with ASD be conducted before implementing these interventions in occupational therapy practice