Music and Brain Circuitry: Strategies for Strengthening Evidence-Based Research for Music-Based Interventions.

The neuroscience of music and music-based interventions (MBIs) is a fascinating but challenging research field. While music is a ubiquitous component of every human society, MBIs may encompass listening to music, performing music, music-based movement, undergoing music education and training, or receiving treatment from music therapists. Unraveling the brain circuits activated and influenced by MBIs may help us gain better understanding of the therapeutic and educational values of MBIs by gathering strong research evidence. However, the complexity and variety of MBIs impose unique research challenges. This article reviews the recent endeavor led by the National Institutes of Health to support evidence-based research of MBIs and their impact on health and diseases. It also highlights fundamental challenges and strategies of MBI research with emphases on the utilization of animal models, human brain imaging and stimulation technologies, behavior and motion capturing tools, and computational approaches. It concludes with suggestions of basic requirements when studying MBIs and promising future directions to further strengthen evidence-based research on MBIs in connections with brain circuitry.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Music and music-based interventions (MBI) engage a wide range of brain circuits and hold promising therapeutic potentials for a variety of health conditions. Comparative studies using animal models have helped in uncovering brain circuit activities involved in rhythm perception, while human imaging, brain stimulation, and motion capture technologies have enabled neural circuit analysis underlying the effects of MBIs on motor, affective/reward, and cognitive function. Combining computational analysis, such as prediction method, with mechanistic studies in animal models and humans may unravel the complexity of MBIs and their effects on health and disease.

Approaches for Hybrid Coregistration of Marker-Based and Markerless Coordinates Describing Complex Body/Object Interactions.

Full-body motion capture is essential for the study of body movement. Video-based, markerless, mocap systems are, in some cases, replacing marker-based systems, but hybrid systems are less explored. We develop methods for coregistration between 2D video and 3D marker positions when precise spatial relationships are not known a priori. We illustrate these methods on three-ball cascade juggling in which it was not possible to use marker-based tracking of the balls, and no tracking of the hands was possible due to occlusion. Using recorded video and motion capture, we aimed to transform 2D ball coordinates into 3D body space as well as recover details of hand motion. We proposed four linear coregistration methods that differ in how they optimize ball-motion constraints during hold and flight phases, using an initial estimate of hand position based on arm and wrist markers. We found that minimizing the error between ball and hand estimate was globally suboptimal, distorting ball flight trajectories. The best-performing method used gravitational constraints to transform vertical coordinates and ball-hold constraints to transform lateral coordinates. This method enabled an accurate description of ball flight as well as a reconstruction of wrist movements. We discuss these findings in the broader context of video/motion capture coregistration.

It Takes Two: Interpersonal Neural Synchrony Is Increased after Musical Interaction.

Music's deeply interpersonal nature suggests that music-derived neuroplasticity relates to interpersonal temporal dynamics, or synchrony. Interpersonal neural synchrony (INS) has been found to correlate with increased behavioral synchrony during social interactions and may represent mechanisms that support them. As social interactions often do not have clearly delineated boundaries, and many start and stop intermittently, we hypothesize that a neural signature of INS may be detectable following an interaction. The present study aimed to investigate this hypothesis using a pre-post paradigm, measuring interbrain phase coherence before and after a cooperative dyadic musical interaction. Ten dyads underwent synchronous electroencephalographic (EEG) recording during silent, non-interactive periods before and after a musical interaction in the form of a cooperative tapping game. Significant post-interaction increases in delta band INS were found in the post-condition and were positively correlated with the duration of the preceding interaction. These findings suggest a mechanism by which social interaction may be efficiently continued after interruption and hold the potential for measuring neuroplastic adaption in longitudinal studies. These findings also support the idea that INS during social interaction represents active mechanisms for maintaining synchrony rather than mere parallel processing of stimuli and motor activity.