Music in learning and relearning : The life-span approach

During past decades, our knowledge about the brain functions and structures underlying music perception, performance, and emotions has accumulated relatively quickly. However, much less is known about the brain determinants underlying music learning and music rehabilitation. In my contribution, I will briefly illuminate the effects of music learning on brain functions in newborn infants, toddlers, and school-age children. Furthermore, I will discuss results from studies of music rehabilitation obtained from neurological patients. Taken together, these data indicate that music can be learnt across the whole life span, and, further, that it can be used in neurorehabilitation in a highly versatile manner.Peer reviewe

Pleasure of sad music – From descriptions toward explanations. : Comment on “An Integrative Review of the Enjoyment of Sadness Associated with Music” by Tuomas Eerola et al.

Non peer reviewe

Mismatch negativity : stimulation paradigms in past and in future

The maturation of 5-6-year-old children's auditory discrimination - indicated by the development of the auditory event-related-potentials (ERPs) - has not been previously studied in longitudinal settings. For the first time, we present here the results based on extensive dataset collected from 75 children. We followed the 5- to 6-year-olds for 20 months and measured their ERPs four times with the same multifeature paradigm with phonemic stimuli. The amplitude of the mismatch negativity (MMN) response increased during this time for vowel, vowel duration and frequency changes. Furthermore, the P3a component started to mature toward adult-like positivity for the vowel, intensity and frequency deviants and the late discriminative negativity (LDN) component decreased with age for vowel and intensity deviants. All the changes in the components seemed to happen during the second follow-up year, when Finnish children are taught letter symbols and other preliminary academic skills before going to school at the age of seven. Therefore, further studies are needed to clarify if these changes in the auditory discrimination are purely age-related or due to increasing linguistic knowledge of the children.Peer reviewe

Music as the Goal of Training and Means of Rehabilitation: Evidence From Brain Science

(Abstract to follow

Planning music-based amelioration and training in infancy and childhood based on neural evidence

Music-based amelioration and training of the developing auditory system has a long tradition, and recent neuroscientific evidence supports using music in this manner. Here, we present the available evidence showing that various music-related activities result in positive changes in brain structure and function, becoming helpful for auditory cognitive processes in everyday life situations for individuals with typical neural development and especially for individuals with hearing, learning, attention, or other deficits that may compromise auditory processing. We also compare different types of music-based training and show how their effects have been investigated with neural methods. Finally, we take a critical position on the multitude of error sources found in amelioration and training studies and on publication bias in the field. We discuss some future improvements of these issues in the field of music-based training and their potential results at the neural and behavioral levels in infants and children for the advancement of the field and for a more complete understanding of the possibilities and significance of the training.Peer reviewe

The Interplay between Musical and Linguistic Aptitudes: A Review

According to prevailing views, brain organization is modulated by practice, e.g., during musical or linguistic training. Most recent results, using both neuropsychological tests and brain measures, revealed an intriguing connection between musical aptitude and second language linguistic abilities. A significant relationship between higher musical aptitude, better second language pronunciation skills, accurate chord discrimination ability, and more prominent sound-change-evoked brain activation in response to musical stimuli was found. Moreover, regular music practice may also have a modulatory effect on the brain’s linguistic organization and alter hemispheric functioning in those who have regularly practised music for years. These findings, together with their implications, will be introduced and elaborated in our review

Neurocognition of Major-Minor and Consonance-Dissonance

Peer reviewe

Digitaalisuudella tehokkuutta liiketoimintaan

Tässä julkaisussa keskitytään siihen, kuinka digitaalisuus näkyy erityisesti pk-yrityksissä ja valmistavan teollisuuden aloilla. Digitaalisuus haastaa uudistumaan ja ajattelemaan toisin. Yhteiskehittämisalustat ja erilaiset innovaatioekosysteemit tarjoavat hedelmällisen alustan uusien toimintojen kehittämiseen. Tiina Tervaniemen artikkelissa käsitellään juuri näitä innovaatioekosysteemejä verkostomaisen kehittämisen alustoina. Kaupan ja palveluiden ala on tarkastelussa Heli Aaltosen artikkelissa, jossa käsitellään Digitaalisuudella verkkokauppaa. Verkkokauppiaat ovat usein uuden edessä, sillä verkkokaupassa myyminen vaatii myyntiosaamisen lisäksi myös teknologian tuntemusta ja kykyä hyödyntää sitä. Aaltonen jatkaa toisessa artikkelissa digitaalisesta kaupankäynnistä ja markkinoinnista ja tuo videot osaksi sisältömarkkinointia. Anna-Maija Torniaisen artikkelissa on pohdittu suomalaisten pk-yritysten uudistumisen esteitä. Työn tuottavuutta on suomalaisissa pk-yrityksissä haettu pikemminkin säästöjen kautta kuin uusilla innovaatioilla tai panostamalla digitaalisuuteen. Kuitenkin tutkimuksissa on todettu juuri voimakkaasti kasvavien yritysten olevan samalla digitalisaatiota voimakkaimmin hyödyntäviä yrityksiä. Tiina Maarasen artikkelissa tarkastellaan, kuinka työhyvinvointi voisi kasvaa uudella koulutuksella ja koulutuksen seurauksena työn uudenlaisella organisoinnilla. Timo Partalan artikkelissa pohditaan digitaalisaation vaikutuksia ja erityisesti rakennusten tietomallien hyödyntämisen mahdollisuuksia rakennusalalla. Uusina teknologioina virtuaalitodellisuus, lisätty todellisuus ja tehokkaat simuloinnit voivat muuttaa tulevaisuuden rakennussuunnittelua merkittävästi. Tämä julkaisu on toteutettu Digitaalisuudella ja prosessien hallinnalla tuottavuuteen – hankkeessa. Hankkeen tavoitteena oli yhtäältä lisätä digitaalisuuteen liittyvää osaamista pk-yrityksissä ja toteuttaa yhdessä yritysten kanssa valmennuspilotti, jossa korostuvat vertaisoppiminen ja verkottuminen. Toisaalta tavoitteena oli käynnistää Etelä-Savon teknologia- ja prosessiteollisuusyrityksissä systemaattinen kehittämisprosessi tuotannon tuottavuuden parantamiseksi ja kehittää näin yritysten kansainvälistä kilpailukykyä. Julkaisussa on haluttu ottaa laajempi useita eri toimialojen pk-yrityksiä hyödyttävä näkökulma digitaalisuuden murrokseen ja työn tuottavuuteen. Lisäksi pohditaan ihan uusien innovaatioiden ja markkinoiden syntyä. Digitalisaation hyödyntäminen pk-yrityksissä kysyy ennen kaikkea rohkeutta innovoida uusia tuotteita ja palveluita sekä uskoa tulevaisuudessa oleviin mahdollisuuksiin. Digitalisaation huomattavan nopeasta kehityksestä huolimatta, monet digitaaliset ratkaisut ovat sellaisia, joista on olemassa enemmän tulevaisuuden lupauksia kuin tutkittua ja toteen näytettyä tietoa tuottavuuden parantumisesta. Digitaalisuuden voimakas hyödyntäminen tuo kuitenkin lähes alalla kuin alalla yritykselle merkittävän kilpailuedun

Naturalistic music and dance : Cortical phase synchrony in musicians and dancers

Expertise in music has been investigated for decades and the results have been applied not only in composition, performance and music education, but also in understanding brain plasticity in a larger context. Several studies have revealed a strong connection between auditory and motor processes and listening to and performing music, and music imagination. Recently, as a logical next step in music and movement, the cognitive and affective neuro-sciences have been directed towards expertise in dance. To understand the versatile and overlapping processes during artistic stimuli, such as music and dance, it is necessary to study them with continuous naturalistic stimuli. Thus, we used long excerpts from the contemporary dance piece Carmen presented with and without music to professional dancers, musicians, and laymen in an EEG laboratory. We were interested in the cortical phase synchrony within each participant group over several frequency bands during uni- and multimodal processing. Dancers had strengthened theta and gamma synchrony during music relative to silence and silent dance, whereas the presence of music decreased systematically the alpha and beta synchrony in musicians. Laymen were the only group of participants with significant results related to dance. Future studies are required to understand whether these results are related to some other factor (such as familiarity to the stimuli), or if our results reveal a new point of view to dance observation and expertise.Peer reviewe

Promises of Music in Education?

Learning in school is intended to help students master academic skills such as reading, writing, and mathematics, as well as to acquire knowledge about different subjects such as history, geography, biology, and so on. However, in the future, successful learning will be largely manifested by students' global and transferable skills, such as analytical thinking, problem solving, collaboration, and social skills. Here we explore the promises of using music to support learning in the future. We review empirical evidence on the effects of music learning on neurocognitive development in children in formal and informal settings, in music interventions, and also in community settings. With this review, we wish to stimulate discussion about the roles that music could play in promoting learning in schools and elsewhere