Compositions Combining Acoustic, Electro-Acoustic And Synthetic Instruments For Modern Jazz Performance

Compositions Combining Acoustic, Electro-acoustic and Synthetic Instruments for Modern Jazz Performance presents a series of seven compositions by vibraphonist and composer David Kemp. The seven works primarily explore combining acoustic (trumpet and drums), electro-acoustic (electric guitar, bass guitar and pickup equipped vibraphone) and synthetic (electronically created synthesizer patches on a Roland XV5050 Sound Module) instruments, mixing musical styles, using rhythm and duration as a governing force in composition, using an extensive harmonic palette and incorporating technology. In this document, the scores are presented in full in a Portfolio Volume, accompanied by recorded performances in audio and visual formats and written analyses of the compositions. Included is a discussion of archetypal composers, similar stylistic traits of their music to mine, and conclusions drawn from the project. The document is completed by a bibliography and discography

Facilitation of I Kr current by some hERG channel blockers suppresses early afterdepolarizations.

Drug-induced block of the cardiac rapid delayed rectifying potassium current (I Kr), carried by the human ether-a-go-go-related gene (hERG) channel, is the most common cause of acquired long QT syndrome. Indeed, some, but not all, drugs that block hERG channels cause fatal cardiac arrhythmias. However, there is no clear method to distinguish between drugs that cause deadly arrhythmias and those that are clinically safe. Here we propose a mechanism that could explain why certain clinically used hERG blockers are less proarrhythmic than others. We demonstrate that several drugs that block hERG channels, but have favorable cardiac safety profiles, also evoke another effect; they facilitate the hERG current amplitude in response to low-voltage depolarization. To investigate how hERG facilitation impacts cardiac safety, we develop computational models of I Kr block with and without this facilitation. We constrain the models using data from voltage clamp recordings of hERG block and facilitation by nifekalant, a safe class III antiarrhythmic agent. Human ventricular action potential simulations demonstrate the ability of nifekalant to suppress ectopic excitations, with or without facilitation. Without facilitation, excessive I Kr block evokes early afterdepolarizations, which cause lethal arrhythmias. When facilitation is introduced, early afterdepolarizations are prevented at the same degree of block. Facilitation appears to prevent early afterdepolarizations by increasing I Kr during the repolarization phase of action potentials. We empirically test this prediction in isolated rabbit ventricular myocytes and find that action potential prolongation with nifekalant is less likely to induce early afterdepolarization than action potential prolongation with dofetilide, a hERG channel blocker that does not induce facilitation. Our data suggest that hERG channel blockers that induce facilitation increase the repolarization reserve of cardiac myocytes, rendering them less likely to trigger lethal ventricular arrhythmias

A neural oscillations perspective on phonological development and phonological processing in developmental dyslexia

Children’s ability to reflect upon and manipulate the sounds in words (’phonological awareness’) develops as part of natural language acquisition, supports reading acquisition, and develops further as reading and spelling are learned. Children with developmental dyslexia typically have impairments in phonological awareness. Many developmental factors contribute to individual differences in phonological development. One important source of individual differences may be the child’s sensory/neural processing of the speech signal from an amplitude modulation (~ energy or intensity variation) perspective, which may affect the quality of the sensory/neural representations (’phonological representations’) that support phonological awareness. During speech encoding, brain electrical rhythms (oscillations, rhythmic variations in neural excitability) re-calibrate their temporal activity to be in time with rhythmic energy variations in the speech signal. The accuracy of this neural alignment or ’entrainment’ process is related to speech intelligibility. Recent neural studies demonstrate atypical oscillatory function at slower rates in children with developmental dyslexia. Potential relations with the development of phonological awareness by children with dyslexia are discussed.Medical Research Council, G0400574 and G090237

Characterization Of Somatosensation In The Brainstem And The Development Of A Sensory Neuroprosthesis

Innovations in neuroprosthetics have restored sensorimotor function to paralysis patients and amputees. However, to date there is a lack of solutions available to adequately address the needs of spinal cord injury patients (SCI). In this dissertation we develop a novel sensor-brain interface (SBI) that delivers electric microstimulation to the cuneate nucleus (CN) to restore somatosensory feedback in patients with intact limbs. In Chapter II, we develop a fully passive liquid metal antenna using gallium-indium (GaIn) alloy injected in polydimethylsiloxane (PDM) channels to measure forces within the physiological sensitivity of a human fingertip. In Chapter III, we present the first chronic neural interface with the CN in primates to provide access to long-term unit recordings and stimulation. In Chapter IV, we demonstrate that microstimulation to the CN is detectable in a Three Alternative Force Choice Oddity task in awake behaving primates. In Chapter V, we explore the downstream effects of CN stimulation on primary somatosensory cortex, in the context of spontaneous and evoked spindles under sedation. In summary, these findings constitute a proof-of-concept for the sensory half of a bidirectional sensorimotor prosthesis in the CN

Relationships between musical and linguistic skills in early development: the role of informal musical experience in the home

Research on the relationship between formal musical training and cognitive abilities has been burgeoning over the last decade, with a specific focus on the relationship between language and music skills. However, a significant gap exists when looking at the start of the developmental path of the relationship between these abilities: whereas something is known about infants and a significant amount has been learned about school-aged children, very little is known about preschool children. Aiming to fill this gap, this research has moved along two interlocking paths: first, studying the early relationship between cognitive processing of both music and language, and second, evaluating a dimension so far unexplored: the influence of informal musical interaction and exposure in the home on musical and linguistic development. Using a correlational design and a set of novel age-appropriate musical abilities tasks, Study 1 examined the relationship between a range of musical skills and linguistic development in 3- and 4-year-old children. The second study investigated the contribution of informal musical experience in the home in the development of these skills. Based on the findings from Study 2, which suggested a significant association between informal musical experience in the home and the development of key language areas, Study 3 sought to develop a validated instrument with good psychometric properties for the assessment of informal musical experience. To this end, two online surveys were conducted, and factor analytical and confirmatory methods were used to explore and consolidate the factor structure of the new instrument (Music@Home Questionnaire). Reliability and validity of the new instrument were also investigated. Study 4 focused on a specific aspect of music and language processing namely, the processing of structure, and examined the hypothesis that these skills are related in 4- and 6-year-old children. Study 4 also investigated the impact of home experience with music, as assessed with the newly developed instrument, on language and music structural processing. The combined findings of the present thesis contribute towards a comprehensive account of the relationship between language and music from a developmental perspective. They also provide researchers with new tools to assess musical abilities in young children and with a novel parent-report instrument for the assessment of a largely unexplored area of environmental experience: i.e. informal musical experience in the home

Difficulties in auditory organization as a cause of reading backwardness? An auditory neuroscience perspective.

Over 30 years ago, it was suggested that difficulties in the 'auditory organization' of word forms in the mental lexicon might cause reading difficulties. It was proposed that children used parameters such as rhyme and alliteration to organize word forms in the mental lexicon by acoustic similarity, and that such organization was impaired in developmental dyslexia. This literature was based on an 'oddity' measure of children's sensitivity to rhyme (e.g. wood, book, good) and alliteration (e.g. sun, sock, rag). The 'oddity' task revealed that children with dyslexia were significantly poorer at identifying the 'odd word out' than younger children without reading difficulties. Here we apply a novel modelling approach drawn from auditory neuroscience to study the possible sensory basis of the auditory organization of rhyming and non-rhyming words by children. We utilize a novel Spectral-Amplitude Modulation Phase Hierarchy (S-AMPH) approach to analysing the spectro-temporal structure of rhyming and non-rhyming words, aiming to illuminate the potential acoustic cues used by children as a basis for phonological organization. The S-AMPH model assumes that speech encoding depends on neuronal oscillatory entrainment to the amplitude modulation (AM) hierarchy in speech. Our results suggest that phonological similarity between rhyming words in the oddity task depends crucially on slow (delta band) modulations in the speech envelope. Contrary to linguistic assumptions, therefore, auditory organization by children may not depend on phonemic information for this task. Linguistically, it is assumed that 'book' does not rhyme with 'wood' and 'good' because the final phoneme differs. However, our auditory analysis suggests that the acoustic cues to this phonological dissimilarity depend primarily on the slower amplitude modulations in the speech envelope, thought to carry prosodic information. Therefore, the oddity task may help in detecting reading difficulties because phonological similarity judgements about rhyme reflect sensitivity to slow amplitude modulation patterns. Slower amplitude modulations are known to be detected less efficiently by children with dyslexia.This research was funded by Medical Research Council grants G0400574 and G0902375 to Usha Goswami.This is the author accepted manuscript. It is currently under an indefinite embargo pending publication by Wiley

The effect of high variability and individual differences on phonetic training of Mandarin tones

High variability phonetic training (HVPT) has been found to be more effective than low variability phonetic training (LVPT) in learning various non-native phonetic contrasts. However, little research has considered whether this applies to the learning of tone contrasts. Two relevant studies suggested that the effect of high variability training depends on the perceptual aptitude of participants (Perrachione, Lee, Ha, & Wong, 2011; Sadakata & McQueen, 2014). It is also unclear how different types of individual difference measures interact with the learning of tonal language. What work there is, suggests that musical ability is related to discriminating tonal information and in general attention and working memory are linked to language learning. The present study extends these findings by examining the interaction between individual aptitude and input variability and between learning outcomes and individual measures using natural, meaningful L2 input (both previous studies used pseudowords). In Study 1, forty English speakers took part in an eight-session phonetic training paradigm. They were assigned to high/low variability training groups. High variability used four speakers during the training sessions while low variability used one. All participants learned real Mandarin tones and words. Individual aptitude was measured using an identification and a categorisation task. Learning was measured using a categorical discrimination task, an identification task and two production tasks. Overall, all groups improved in both production and perception of tones which transferred to novel voices and items, demonstrating the effectiveness of training despite the increased complexity of the training material compared with previous research. Although the low variability group exhibited better learning during training than the high variability group, there was no evidence that the different variability training conditions led to different performances in any of the tests of generalisation. Moreover, although performance on one of the aptitude tasks significantly predicted overall performance in categorical discrimination, identification and training tasks, it did not predict improvement from pre- to post- test. Critically, there was also no interaction between individual aptitude and variability-condition, contradicting with previous findings. One possibility was that the high variability condition was too difficult as speakers were randomly presented during training, resulting in low trial-by-trial consistency. This greater difficulty might block any advantage of variability for generalisation. In order to examine this, Study 2 recruited additional 20 native English speakers and tested them in a further condition, identical to the previous high variability condition except that each speaker was presented in their own block during the training. Although participants performed better in training compared with the high variability group from study 1, there was again no difference in generalisation compared with the previous conditions, and again no interaction between individual aptitude and variability-condition was found. Bayes Factors were also used to assess the null results. There was evidence for the null for the benefits of high variability for generalisation but only ambiguous evidence regarding whether there was interaction between variability and individual aptitude. The HPVT used in Study 1 and Study 2 did not replicate the interaction between variability-condition and aptitude found in previous studies. Moreover, although one of the measures of aptitude did correlate with the baseline measures of performance, there was no evidence that it predicted learning due to training. Additionally, the two individual aptitude measures used in Study 1 and 2 – taken from Perrachione, et al. (2011) and Sadakata and McQueen (2013) – are not comprehensive. They are natural language-related tasks which directly measure tone perception itself, rather than the underlying cognitive factors which could underpin this ability. Another interesting question is whether these different cognitive factors might contribute to learners at different stages differently, particularly since language training studies vary as to whether they use current learners of the language or naïve participants, a factor may contribute towards differing findings in the literature. To explore these issues, Study 3 investigated the relationship between a battery of cognitive individual difference measures and Mandarin tone learning. Sixty native English speakers (forty of whom were currently studying Mandarin at undergraduate level, twenty of whom were naïve learners) took part in a six-session training paradigm. With high-variability training stimuli similar to that used in Study 2 (four speakers blocked), their learning outcomes were assessed by identification, categorical discrimination and production tasks similar to Study 1. Their working memory, attention and musical ability were also measured. Overall, both groups showed improvements during training and in the generalisation tasks. Although Mandarin learner participants performed better than naïve participants overall, the improvements were not generally greater than naïve participants. Each of the individual difference measures was used to predict participant’s performance at pre-test and their improvement due to training. Bayes Factors were used as the key method of inference. For Mandarin learner participants, both performances at pre-test and pre- to- post improvement were strongly predicted by attention measures while for naïve speakers, musical ability was the dominant predictor for pre- to- post improvement. This series of studies demonstrates that Mandarin lexical tones can be trained using natural stimuli embedded in a word learning task and learning generalises to untrained voices and items as well as to production. Although there is no evidence in the current data that the type of training materials affected learning outcomes, tone learning is indeed affected by individual cognitive factors, such as attention and musical ability, with these playing a different role for learners at different stages

Rhythmic Complexity in Jazz: An Information Theory Approach

Many techniques of quantifying rhythmic complexity have been explored, including methods based on the concept of entropy. Roughly speaking, entropy measures a rhythm’s unpredictability. The primary goals of this study were to answer two questions: 1) Does rhythmic entropy correspond to perceived rhythmic complexity? and 2) Does entropy of a jazz solo depend on soloist? Additionally, I used entropy to study the relationship between sheet music and jazz versions of songs from the American songbook, and I used the concept of mutual information to study soloist-accompanist interactions in the music of Charlie Parker. I asked fifteen UMass music majors to rate short, eighth-note based jazz rhythms for complexity. Entropies were calculated by constructing distributions based on the inter-onset intervals (IOI’s) between notes. Using a mixed effects multiple regression model, I found, as expected, that higher entropy resulted in higher complexity ratings. Other factors did, too, namely: number of notes, syncopation, lack of periodicity, and the effects of each complexity rating on the following one. It is possible that entropy was mediated by lack of periodicity. I then transcribed (or compiled and checked) a corpus of 88 solos by Armstrong, Hawkins, Young, Christian, and Parker, and calculated entropies based on the IOI’s between stress-accented notes. I used the technique of estimated marginal means with number of distinct IOI’s and number of accents as covariates to show that entropy depends significantly on soloist: solos by Lester Young were significantly more entropic than those by Armstrong, Christian, and Parker. Stress accent density and contour accent density were used to explain the unexpected lack of differentiation between Parker and Hawkins in terms of entropy. I demonstrated that jazz renditions of popular songs had higher entropy than their sheet music counterparts. Finally, I used mutual information to show that interrelationships between Parker and his accompanists were stronger than those between Parker and a Charleston comping rhythm. This work demonstrates the utility of entropy-based methods in predicting a listener’s perceived complexity, in characterizing a soloist’s oeuvre, and in describing embellished versions of songs. It also demonstrates the utility of mutual information in describing soloist/accompanist interactions

Identification, discrimination, and selective adaptation of simultaneous musical intervals

Four experiments investigated perception of major and minor thirds whose component tones were sounded simultaneously. Effects akin to categorical perception of speech sounds were found. In the first experiment, musicians demonstrated relatively sharp category boundaries in identification and peaks near the boundary in discrimination tasks of an interval continuum where the bottom note was always an F and the top note varied from A to A flat in seven equal logarithmic steps. Nonmusicians showed these effects only to a small extent. The musicians showed higher than predicted discrimination performance overall, and reaction time increases at category boundaries. In the second experiment, musicians failed to consistently identify or discriminate thirds which varied in absolute pitch, but retained the proper interval ratio. In the last two experiments, using selective adaptation, consistent shifts were found in both identification and discrimination, similar to those found in speech experiments. Manipulations of adapting and test showed that the mechanism underlying the effect appears to be centrally mediated and confined to a frequency-specific level. A multistage model of interval perception, where the first stages deal only with specific pitches may account for the results

Phonological representations in dyslexia: nature, influences and development.

Developmental dyslexia is a specific difficulty in acquiring literacy skills that manifests despite normal IQ, adequate educational opportunity and in the absence of any obvious sensory or neurological damage. According to the Phonological Representations Hypothesis a core deficit for individuals with dyslexia across languages is a brain-based difficulty in accurately storing the sound sequences that make up words, or 'phonological' representations. In this thesis the Phonological Representation Hypothesis (PRH) of dyslexia was tested and elaborated. Twenty-four dyslexic children alongside chronological age and reading age matched groups were assessed over a three-year period. Consistent with the PRH, associations were found between the quality of the dyslexic children's phonological representations, as indexed by picture naming, and their performance on related input and output phonological processing tasks based on the same lexical items. Possible reasons for the underspecificity of dyslexic phonological representations were also investigated at cognitive and perceptual levels. The sensitivity of dyslexic individuals to the presence of similar-sounding words within their mental lexicon, 'phonological neighbourhood density', was assessed. Across a range of phonological awareness tasks the dyslexic group were found to be as sensitive to this lexical factor as their age peers. Perception of amplitude envelope onsets (AEOs) was also investigated. AEOs are an auditory parameter associated with speech rhythm and were hypothesised here to be important for the establishment of well-specified phonological representations. Dyslexic insensitivity to AEO variation was seen longitudinally through both behavioural and neurophysiological assessment. These findings suggest that for some dyslexic children perception of basic rhythmic speech cues may play a role in their phonological representation deficit