Neural Correlates of Music Listening: Does the Music Matter?

The last decades have seen a proliferation of music and brain studies, with a major focus on plastic changes as the outcome of continuous and prolonged engagement with music. Thanks to the advent of neuroaesthetics, research on music cognition has broadened its scope by considering the multifarious phenomenon of listening in all its forms, including incidental listening up to the skillful attentive listening of experts, and all its possible effects. These latter range from objective and sensorial effects directly linked to the acoustic features of the music to the subjectively affective and even transformational effects for the listener. Of special importance is the finding that neural activity in the reward circuit of the brain is a key component of a conscious listening experience. We propose that the connection between music and the reward system makes music listening a gate towards not only hedonia but also eudaimonia, namely a life well lived, full of meaning that aims at realizing one’s own “daimon” or true nature. It is argued, further, that music listening, even when conceptualized in this aesthetic and eudaimonic framework, remains a learnable skill that changes the way brain structures respond to sounds and how they interact with each other

Diffusion map for clustering fMRI spatial maps extracted by independent component analysis

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) produces data about activity inside the brain, from which spatial maps can be extracted by independent component analysis (ICA). In datasets, there are n spatial maps that contain p voxels. The number of voxels is very high compared to the number of analyzed spatial maps. Clustering of the spatial maps is usually based on correlation matrices. This usually works well, although such a similarity matrix inherently can explain only a certain amount of the total variance contained in the high-dimensional data where n is relatively small but p is large. For high-dimensional space, it is reasonable to perform dimensionality reduction before clustering. In this research, we used the recently developed diffusion map for dimensionality reduction in conjunction with spectral clustering. This research revealed that the diffusion map based clustering worked as well as the more traditional methods, and produced more compact clusters when needed.Comment: 6 pages. 8 figures. Copyright (c) 2013 IEEE. Published at 2013 IEEE International Workshop on Machine Learning for Signal Processin

Music and Brain Plasticity: How Sounds Trigger Neurogenerative Adaptations

This contribution describes how music can trigger plastic changes in the brain. We elaborate on the concept of neuroplasticity by focussing on three major topics: the ontogenetic scale of musical development, the phenomenon of neuroplasticity as the outcome of interactions with the sounds and a short survey of clinical and therapeutic applications. First, a distinction is made between two scales of description: the larger evolutionary scale (phylogeny) and the scale of individual development (ontogeny). In this sense, listeners are not constrained by a static dispositional machinery, but they can be considered as dynamical systems that are able to adapt themselves in answer to the solicitations of a challenging environment. Second, the neuroplastic changes are considered both from a structural and functional level of adaptation, with a special focus on the recent findings from network science. The neural activity of the medial regions of the brain seems to become more synchronised when listening to music as compared to rest, and these changes become permanent in individuals such as musicians with year-long musical practice. As such, the question is raised as to the clinical and therapeutic applications of music as a trigger for enhancing the functionality of the brain, both in normal and impaired people

KARTESIOLAISEN KIELITEORIAN PALUU KOGNITIOTIETEESEEN

Descartesin mukaan ihmisille tyypillinen generatiivinen, hierarkkisiin representaatioihinnojaava luovuus on peräisin yhdestä lähteestä, olipa kyse luovuudesta kielen, ajattelun,matematiikan, musiikin tai visuaalisen taiteen piirissä. Tämä lähde oli jakamaton,immateriaalinen sielu. Kognitiotieteessä luovuus on perinteisesti nähty modulaarisenailmiönä, jolloin esimerkiksi kielen lauseiden rakenne poikkeaa täysin matemaattistenolioiden rakenteesta. Kukin luova järjestelmä nojaa omaan, alakohtaiseen muttageneratiiviseen representaatiojärjestelmäänsä. Aivan viime aikoina Descartesinyhden luovuuden hypoteesi on alkanut saada yhä enemmän kannatusta myöskognitiotieteessä, lingvistiikassa ja aivotutkimuksessa. Käyn artikkelissani läpi tähänkehitykseen johtaneita empiirisiä ja teoreettisia syitä, sekä tarkastelen karteesiolaisenluovuusteorian merkitystä erityisesti kielitieteen kannalta.Avainsanat: luovuus, generatiivisuus, rekursio, hierarkkiset representaatiot,minimalismiKeywords: creativity, generativity, recursion, hierarchical representations, minimalis

Clustering consistency in neuroimaging data analysis

Clustering techniques have been applied to neuroscience data analysis for decades. New algorithms keep being developed and applied to address different problems. However, when it comes to the applications of clustering, it is often hard to select the appropriate algorithm and evaluate the quality of clustering results due to the unknown ground truth. It is also the case that conclusions might be biased based on only one specific algorithm because each algorithm has its own assumption of the structure of the data, which might not be the same as the real data. In this paper, we explore the benefits of integrating the clustering results from multiple clustering algorithms by a tunable consensus clustering strategy and demonstrate the importance and necessity of consistency in neuroimaging data analysis

Is Finnish topic prominent?

Finnish finite clause exhibits topic prominence in the sense that the preverbal subject position is occupied by the topic (for example, by the direct object topic), not necessarily by the grammatical subject. Three currently unexplained facts concerning the Finnish free word order phenomenon and topicalization are noted in this paper: subject-verb agreement interacts with word order; the preverbal “topic” position is not reserved exclusively for topics; and noun phrase (DP) arguments are also able to dislocate to the right edge of a (potentially very long) finite clause. A generalized morphosyntactic agreement mechanism that requires the presence of nominal phi-features inside the highest finite projection of a clause is posited to explain the link between agreement and word order. The problem with topicality is accounted for by assuming that the topic-focus mechanism operates outside of narrow syntax. Free word order and non-configurationality are argued to result from argument adjunction, not from movement. Finally, it is concluded that the Finnish EPP is connected neither to morphosyntax nor to discourse

Structural Case Assignment and Phi-Agreement in Finnish 1

Abstract Structural Case assignment, agreement in phi-features, and the EPP-movement are related to each other. However, their exact syntactic relationship remains controversial. The matter is examined here from the point of view of Finnish morphosyntax. Finnish provides close to an ideal language for this purpose, as it has fifteen case forms and full syntactic phi-agreement on verbs (finite and nonfinite), nouns, adjectives and prepositions. In addition, Finnish exhibits certain more exotic Case assignment phenomena, among them the long distance Case assignment, quantificational Case and aspectual Case. It is argued that the recent minimalist theory of Agree provides a sound starting point to explain the phenomena, but requires certain modifications to fully capture the Finnish facts. Specifically, it will be argued that Case is not a reflex of an uninterpretable phi-set probe, as posited in the standard theory, but, instead, it is a reflex of a more abstract phi-specification feature of functional heads. In addition, locality restrictions on Agree posited in the standard theory are argued to be too strong

MIKSI KOGNITIOTIETEELLÄ EI OLE TEORIAA KESKUSPROSESSEISTA?

Aivojen ei-modulaaristen keskusprosessien tietämys on edistynyt hitaasti, silläkaikki tunnetut keskusprosessien mallit ovat johtaneet laskennan kompleksisuudenongelmaan. Yhteistä näille malleille on olettaa ihmisen keskuskognition olevanvain näennäisesti monimutkainen systeemi. Artikkelissa tarkastellaan hypoteesia,jonka mukaan aivot olisivat osittain aidosti monimutkainen järjestelmä. "Aitomonimutkaisuus" määritellään algoritmisen informaatioteorian avulla.Avainsanat: Modulaarisuus, kompleksisuus, keskusprosessit, emergenssi,kompleksisuus, oppiminen, synnynnäisyysKeywords: Modularity, complexity, central processes, emergence, learning, innateness