Task-irrelevant auditory metre shapes visuomotor sequential learning.

The ability to learn and reproduce sequences is fundamental to every-day life, and deficits in sequential learning are associated with developmental disorders such as specific language impairment. Individual differences in sequential learning are usually investigated using the serial reaction time task (SRTT), wherein a participant responds to a series of regularly timed, seemingly random visual cues that in fact follow a repeating deterministic structure. Although manipulating inter-cue interval timing has been shown to adversely affect sequential learning, the role of metre (the patterning of salience across time) remains unexplored within the regularly timed, visual SRTT. The current experiment consists of an SRTT adapted to include task-irrelevant auditory rhythms conferring a sense of metre. We predicted that (1) participants' (n = 41) reaction times would reflect the auditory metric structure; (2) that disrupting the correspondence between the learned visual sequence and auditory metre would impede performance; and (3) that individual differences in sensitivity to rhythm would predict the magnitude of these effects. Altering the relationship via a phase shift between the trained visual sequence and auditory metre slowed reaction times. Sensitivity to rhythm was predictive of reaction times over all. In an exploratory analysis, we, moreover, found that approximately half of participants made systematically different responses to visual cues on the basis of the cues' position within the auditory metre. We demonstrate the influence of auditory temporal structures on visuomotor sequential learning in a widely used task where metre and timing are rarely considered. The current results indicate sensitivity to metre as a possible latent factor underpinning individual differences in SRTT performance.

Social singing, culture and health: interdisciplinary insights from the CHIME project for perinatal mental health in The Gambia.

Arts in Health initiatives and interventions to support health have emerged from and been applied to mainly WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic) contexts. This overlooks the rich cultural traditions that exist across the globe, where community groups often make prolific use of participatory song and dance as a part of ceremonies, ritual and gatherings in everyday life. Here, we argue that these practices can provide a valuable starting point for the co-development of health interventions, illustrated by the CHIME project for perinatal mental health in The Gambia, which worked with local Kanyeleng groups (female fertility societies) to design and evaluate a brief intervention to support maternal mental health through social singing. Here, we use the project as a lens through which to highlight the value of co-creation, cultural embeddedness and partnership building in global health research.

Music, attachment, and uncertainty: Music as communicative interaction.

Both papers - to different degrees - underplay the interactive dimensions of music, and both would have benefited from integrating the concept of attachment into their treatments of social bonding. I further suggest that their treatment of music as a discrete domain of human experience and behaviour weakens their arguments concerning its functions in human evolution.

Anterior cingulate and medial prefrontal cortex response to systematically controlled tonal dissonance during passive music listening.

Several studies have attempted to investigate how the brain codes emotional value when processing music of contrasting levels of dissonance; however, the lack of control over specific musical structural characteristics (i.e., dynamics, rhythm, melodic contour or instrumental timbre), which are known to affect perceived dissonance, rendered results difficult to interpret. To account for this, we used functional imaging with an optimized control of the musical structure to obtain a finer characterization of brain activity in response to tonal dissonance. Behavioral findings supported previous evidence for an association between increased dissonance and negative emotion. Results further demonstrated that the manipulation of tonal dissonance through systematically controlled changes in interval content elicited contrasting valence ratings but no significant effects on either arousal or potency. Neuroscientific findings showed an engagement of the left medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and the left rostral anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) while participants listened to dissonant compared to consonant music, converging with studies that have proposed a core role of these regions during conflict monitoring (detection and resolution), and in the appraisal of negative emotion and fear-related information. Both the left and right primary auditory cortices showed stronger functional connectivity with the ACC during the dissonant portion of the task, implying a demand for greater information integration when processing negatively valenced musical stimuli. This study demonstrated that the systematic control of musical dissonance could be applied to isolate valence from the arousal dimension, facilitating a novel access to the neural representation of negative emotion.

Modelling unsupervised online-learning of artificial grammars: linking implicit and statistical learning.

Humans rapidly learn complex structures in various domains. Findings of above-chance performance of some untrained control groups in artificial grammar learning studies raise questions about the extent to which learning can occur in an untrained, unsupervised testing situation with both correct and incorrect structures. The plausibility of unsupervised online-learning effects was modelled with n-gram, chunking and simple recurrent network models. A novel evaluation framework was applied, which alternates forced binary grammaticality judgments and subsequent learning of the same stimulus. Our results indicate a strong online learning effect for n-gram and chunking models and a weaker effect for simple recurrent network models. Such findings suggest that online learning is a plausible effect of statistical chunk learning that is possible when ungrammatical sequences contain a large proportion of grammatical chunks. Such common effects of continuous statistical learning may underlie statistical and implicit learning paradigms and raise implications for study design and testing methodologies.

Feasibility of an ambulance-based stroke trial, and safety of glyceryl trinitrate in ultra-acute stroke: the rapid intervention with glyceryl trinitrate in Hypertensive Stroke Trial (RIGHT, ISRCTN66434824).

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: The practicalities of doing ambulance-based trials where paramedics perform all aspects of a clinical trial involving patients with ultra-acute stroke have not been assessed. METHODS: We performed a randomized controlled trial with screening, consent, randomization, and treatment performed by paramedics prior to hospitalization. Patients with probable ultra-acute stroke (<4 hours) and systolic blood pressure (SBP) >140 mm Hg were randomized to transdermal glyceryl trinitrate (GTN; 5 mg/24 hours) or none (blinding under gauze dressing) for 7 days with the first dose given by paramedics. The primary outcome was SBP at 2 hours. RESULTS: Of a planned 80 patients, 41 (25 GTN, 16 no GTN) were enrolled >22 months with median age [interquartile range] 79 [16] years; men 22 (54%); SBP 168 [46]; final diagnosis: stroke 33 (80%) and transient ischemic attack 3 (7%). Time to randomization was 55 [75] minutes. After treatment with GTN versus no GTN, SBP at 2 hours was 153 [31] versus 174 [27] mm Hg, respectively, with difference -18 [30] mm Hg (P=0.030). GTN improved functional outcome with a shift in the modified Rankin Scale by 1 [3] point (P=0.040). The rates of death, 4 (16%) versus 6 (38%; P=0.15), and serious adverse events, 14 (56%) versus 10 (63%; P=0.75), did not differ between GTN and no GTN. CONCLUSIONS: Paramedics can successfully enroll patients with ultra-acute stroke into an ambulance-based trial. GTN reduces SBP at 2 hours and seems to be safe in ultra-acute stroke. A larger trial is needed to assess whether GTN improves functional outcome. CLINICAL TRIAL REGISTRATION URL: http://www.controlled-trials.com/ISRCTN66434824/66434824. Unique identifier: 66434824.

Expression of antenatal symptoms of common mental disorders in The Gambia and the UK: a cross-sectional comparison study.

OBJECTIVES: It is important to be able to detect symptoms of common mental disorders (CMDs) in pregnant women. However, the expression of these disorders can differ across cultures and depend on the specific scale used. This study aimed to (a) compare Gambian pregnant women's responses to the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS) and Self-reporting Questionnaire (SRQ-20) and (b) compare responses to the EPDS in pregnant women in The Gambia and UK. DESIGN: This cross-sectional comparison study investigates Gambian EPDS and SRQ-20 scores through correlation between the two scales, score distributions, proportion of women with high levels of symptoms, and descriptive item analysis. Comparisons between the UK and Gambian EPDS scores were made by investigating score distributions, proportion of women with high levels of symptoms, and descriptive item analysis. SETTING: This study took place in The Gambia, West Africa and London, UK. PARTICIPANTS: 221 pregnant women from The Gambia completed both the SRQ-20 and the EPDS; 368 pregnant women from the UK completed the EPDS. RESULTS: Gambian participants' EPDS and SRQ-20 scores were significantly moderately correlated (rs=0.6, p<0.001), had different distributions, 54% overall agreement, and different proportions of women identified as having high levels of symptoms (SRQ-20=42% vs EPDS=5% using highest cut-off score). UK participants had higher EPDS scores (M=6.5, 95% CI (6.1 to 6.9)) than Gambian participants (M=4.4, 95% CI (3.9 to 4.9)) (p<0.001, 95% CIs (-3.0 to -1.0), Cliff's delta = -0.3). CONCLUSIONS: The differences in scores from Gambian pregnant women to the EPDS and SRQ-20 and the different EPDS responses between pregnant women in the UK and The Gambia further emphasise how methods and understanding around measuring perinatal mental health symptoms developed in Western countries need to be applied with care in other cultures.Cite Now.

Exploring violin sound quality: investigating English timbre descriptors and correlating resynthesized acoustical modifications with perceptual properties.

Performers often discuss the sound quality of a violin or the sound obtained by particular playing techniques, calling upon a diverse vocabulary. This study explores the verbal descriptions, made by performers, of the distinctive timbres of different violins. Sixty-one common descriptors were collected and then arranged by violinists on a map, so that words with similar meanings lay close together, and those with different meanings lay far apart. The results of multidimensional scaling demonstrated consistent use among violinists of many words, and highlighted which words are used for similar purposes. These terms and their relations were then used to investigate the perceptual effect of acoustical modifications of violin sounds produced by roving of the levels in five one-octave wide bands, 190-380, 380-760, 760-1520, 1520-3040, and 3040-6080 Hz. Pairs of sounds were presented, and each participant was asked to indicate which of the sounds was more bright, clear, harsh, nasal, or good (in separate runs for each descriptor). Increased brightness and clarity were associated with moderately increased levels in bands 4 and 5, whereas increased harshness was associated with a strongly increased level in band 4. Judgments differed across participants for the qualities nasal and good.

Back to basics: A re-evaluation of the relevance of imprinting in the genesis of Bowlby's attachment theory.

Attachment theory is one of the key theoretical constructs that underpin explorations of human bonding, taking its current form in John Bowlby's amalgamation of ideas from psychoanalysis, developmental psychology and ethology. Such a period of interdisciplinary exchange, and Bowlby's interest in Lorenz' concept of imprinting in particular, have been subject to rather historical and biographical studies, leaving a fine-grained theoretical scrutiny of the exact relationship between imprinting and attachment still pending. This paper attempts to remedy such an omission by exploring the relationships between these two constructs. It critically reviews the theories of imprinting in general, of human imprinting in particular, and of attachment; analysis of the links between these processes bring to the foreground the distinction between supra-individual vs. individual aspects of bonding, the relevance of 'proto-attachment' phases before 'proper' Bowlbyan attachment is attained, and the role of communicative signals during such early phases. The paper outlines potential benefits of considering such elements in the study of early social cognition, particularly in respect of the study of the gaze and the infant-directed communicative register.

A functional magnetic resonance imaging examination of audiovisual observation of a point-light string quartet using intersubject correlation and physical feature analysis.

We use functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) to explore synchronized neural responses between observers of audiovisual presentation of a string quartet performance during free viewing. Audio presentation was accompanied by visual presentation of the string quartet as stick figures observed from a static viewpoint. Brain data from 18 musical novices were obtained during audiovisual presentation of a 116 s performance of the allegro of String Quartet, No. 14 in D minor by Schubert played by the 'Quartetto di Cremona.' These data were analyzed using intersubject correlation (ISC). Results showed extensive ISC in auditory and visual areas as well as parietal cortex, frontal cortex and subcortical areas including the medial geniculate and basal ganglia (putamen). These results from a single fixed viewpoint of multiple musicians are greater than previous reports of ISC from unstructured group activity but are broadly consistent with related research that used ISC to explore listening to music or watching solo dance. A feature analysis examining the relationship between brain activity and physical features of the auditory and visual signals yielded findings of a large proportion of activity related to auditory and visual processing, particularly in the superior temporal gyrus (STG) as well as midbrain areas. Motor areas were also involved, potentially as a result of watching motion from the stick figure display of musicians in the string quartet. These results reveal involvement of areas such as the putamen in processing complex musical performance and highlight the potential of using brief naturalistic stimuli to localize distinct brain areas and elucidate potential mechanisms underlying multisensory integration.

Nonverbal Auditory Cues Allow Relationship Quality to be Inferred During Conversations.

The claim that nonverbal cues provide more information than the linguistic content of a conversational exchange (the Mehrabian Conjecture) has been widely cited and equally widely disputed, mainly on methodological grounds. Most studies that have tested the Conjecture have used individual words or short phrases spoken by actors imitating emotions. While cue recognition is certainly important, speech evolved to manage interactions and relationships rather than simple information exchange. In a cross-cultural design, we tested participants' ability to identify the quality of the interaction (rapport) in naturalistic third party conversations in their own and a less familiar language, using full auditory content versus audio clips whose verbal content has been digitally altered to differing extents. We found that, using nonverbal content alone, people are 75-90% as accurate as they are with full audio cues in identifying positive vs negative relationships, and 45-53% as accurate in identifying eight different relationship types. The results broadly support Mehrabian's claim that a significant amount of information about others' social relationships is conveyed in the nonverbal component of speech. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10919-021-00386-y.

Incidental and online learning of melodic structure.

The cognition of music, like that of language, is partly rooted in enculturative processes of implicit and incidental learning. Musicians and nonmusicians alike are commonly found to possess detailed implicit knowledge of musical structure which is acquired incidentally through interaction with large samples of music. This paper reports an experiment combining the methodology of artificial grammar learning with musical acquisition of melodic structure. Participants acquired knowledge of grammatical melodic structures under incidental learning conditions in both experimental and untrained control conditions. Subsequent analysis indicates a large effect of unsupervised online learning in the experimental and control group throughout the course of the testing phase suggesting an effective ongoing learning process. Musicians did not outperform nonmusicians, indicating that musical expertise is not advantageous for the learning of a new, unfamiliar melodic system. Confidence ratings suggest that participants became aware of the knowledge guiding their classification performance despite the incidental learning conditions.

Investigating Everyday Musical Interaction During COVID-19: An Experimental Procedure for Exploring Collaborative Playlist Engagement.

Musical Group Interaction (MGI) has been found to promote prosocial tendencies, including empathy, across various populations. However, experimental study is lacking in respect of effects of everyday forms of musical engagement on prosocial tendencies, as well as whether key aspects-such as physical co-presence of MGI participants-are necessary to enhance prosocial tendencies. We developed an experimental procedure in order to study online engagement with collaborative playlists and to investigate socio-cognitive components of prosocial tendencies expected to increase as a consequence of engagement. We aimed to determine whether mere perceived presence of a partner during playlist-making could elicit observable correlates of social processing implicated in both MGI and prosocial behaviors more generally and identify the potential roles of demographic, musical, and inter-individual differences. Preliminary results suggest that for younger individuals, some of the social processes involved in joint music-making and implicated in empathic processes are likely to be elicited even by an assumption of virtual co-presence. In addition, individual differences in styles of listening behavior may mediate the effects of mere perceived partner presence on recognition memory.

Reconsidering Empathy: An Interpersonal Approach and Participatory Arts in the Medical Humanities.

The decline of empathy among health professional students, highlighted in the literature on health education, is a concern for medical educators. The evidence suggests that empathy decline is likely to stem more from structural problems in the healthcare system rather than from individual deficits of empathy. In this paper, we argue that a focus on direct empathy development is not effective and possibly detrimental to justice-oriented aims. Drawing on critical and narrative theory, we propose an interpersonal approach to enhance empathic capacities that is centered on constructive and transformative interactions which integrates the participatory arts and involves both patients and health professional students. We describe and evaluate a program where patients and students create collaborative, original songs. Interviews and a focus group revealed interactional processes summarized in four themes: reciprocal relationships, interactions in the community, joint goal, and varied collaboration. There was a significant enhancement of positive attitudes about care post-program amongst health professional students. The interpersonal approach may be a preliminary framework for the medical humanities to shift away from a focus on direct empathy development and further towards participatory, co-creative, and justice-oriented approaches to enhance health and thereby empathic capabilities.

Musical improvisation enhances interpersonal coordination in subsequent conversation: Motor and speech evidence.

This study explored the effects of musical improvisation between dyads of same-sex strangers on subsequent behavioural alignment. Participants-all non-musicians-conversed before and after either improvising music together (Musical Improvisation-MI-group) or doing a motoric non-rhythmic cooperative task (building a tower together using wooden blocks; the Hands-Busy-HB-group). Conversations were free, but initially guided by an adaptation of the Fast Friends Questionnaire for inducing talk among students who are strangers and meeting for the first time. Throughout, participants' motion was recorded with an optical motion-capture system (Mocap) and analysed in terms of speed cross-correlations. Their conversations were also recorded on separate channels using headset microphones and were analysed in terms of the periodicity displayed by rhythmic peaks in the turn transitions across question and answer pairs (Q+A pairs). Compared with their first conversations, the MI group in the second conversations showed: (a) a very rapid, partially simultaneous anatomical coordination between 0 and 0.4 s; (b) delayed mirror motoric coordination between 0.8 and 1.5 s; and (c) a higher proportion of Periodic Q+A pairs. In contrast, the HB group's motoric coordination changed slightly in timing but not in degree of coordination between the first and second conversations, and there was no significant change in the proportion of periodic Q+A pairs they produced. These results show a convergent effect of prior musical interaction on joint body movement and use of shared periodicity across speech turn-transitions in conversations, suggesting that interaction in music and speech may be mediated by common processes.

Correction: Musical improvisation enhances interpersonal coordination in subsequent conversation: Motor and speech evidence.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0250166.].

Perceptual studies of violin body damping and vibrato.

This work explored how the perception of violin notes is influenced by the magnitude of the applied vibrato and by the level of damping of the violin resonance modes. Damping influences the "peakiness" of the frequency response, and vibrato interacts with this peakiness by producing fluctuations in spectral content as well as in frequency and amplitude. Initially, it was shown that thresholds for detecting a change in vibrato amplitude were independent of body damping, and thresholds for detecting a change in body damping were independent of vibrato amplitude. A study of perceptual similarity using triadic comparison showed that vibrato amplitude and damping were largely perceived as independent dimensions. A series of listening tests was conducted employing synthesized, recorded, or live performance to probe perceptual responses in terms of "liveliness" and preference. The results do not support the conclusion that liveliness results from the combination of the use of vibrato and a "peaky" violin response. Judgments based on listening to single notes showed inconsistent patterns for liveliness, while preferences were highest for damping that was slightly less than for a reference (real) violin. In contrast, judgments by players based on many notes showed preference for damping close to the reference value.

Oxybelus lusitanicus spec. nov., a new Crabronid wasp species from Portugal.

Oxybelus lusitanicus spec. nov., a new European Crabronid wasp species is described and diagnosed. It is currently known only from two regions of Portugal. An amendment to the relevant section of Guichard's (1993) most recent English language key to European Oxybelus Latreille, 1796 is included.

Updates to the bee fauna of Portugal with the description of three new Iberian Andrena species (Hymenoptera: Apoidea: Anthophila).

Portugal is home to a rich but understudied bee fauna that was recently comprehensively documented for the first time. As part of ongoing work to improve the knowledge of Portuguese bees, efforts have been made to survey poorly recorded parts of the country and to continue to review existing material in museum collections. These efforts have resulted in 28 species newly discovered in Portugal, as well as eight species added from the literature and two taxa recently raised to full species status. Three additional species, Andrena (Lepidandrena) baetica spec. nov., Andrena (Micrandrena) omnilaevis spec. nov., and Andrena (Notandrena) foeniculae spec. nov. are described from material collected in southern Iberia, north-western Iberia, and southern Iberia, respectively. Andrena omnilaevis spec. nov. is the new name for north-western Iberian material previously identified as Andrena (Micrandrena) semilaevis Pérez. The male of Stelis hispanica Dusmet, previously only known from the holotype female, was also found and is described here. The taxon Andrena (Melandrena) limata mixtura Warncke has been various treated as a subspecies of A. limata Smith or A. nitida Müller. Examination of the holotype from Portugal shows that it actually belongs in its original combination Andrena limata comb. nov., and that true A. nitida is not present in Portugal. Seven additional species have been removed from the total due to misidentification or uncertainty. We also present discussion on the status of species complexes present in Portugal, and review species doubtfully recorded from the country. Altogether, this work increases the number of bee species recorded from mainland Portugal from 680 to 712, and to 722 for the country as a whole when including the faunas of the Madeira and Azores archipelagos.

Community psychosocial music intervention (CHIME) to reduce antenatal common mental disorder symptoms in The Gambia: a feasibility trial.

OBJECTIVES: Examine the feasibility of a Community Health Intervention through Musical Engagement (CHIME) in The Gambia to reduce common mental disorder (CMD) symptoms in pregnant women. DESIGN: Feasibility trial testing a randomised stepped-wedge cluster design. SETTING: Four local antenatal clinics. PARTICIPANTS: Women who were 14-24 weeks pregnant and spoke Mandinka or Wolof were recruited into the intervention (n=50) or control group (n=74). INTERVENTION: Music-based psychosocial support sessions designed and delivered by all-female fertility societies. Sessions lasted 1 hour and were held weekly for 6 weeks. Delivered to groups of women with no preselection. Sessions were designed to lift mood, build social connection and provide health messaging through participatory music making. The control group received standard antenatal care. OUTCOMES: Demographic, feasibility, acceptability outcomes and the appropriateness of the study design were assessed. Translated measurement tools (Self-Reporting Questionnaire (SRQ-20); Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS)) were used to assess CMD symptoms at baseline, post-intervention and 4-week follow-up. RESULTS: All clinics and 82% of women approached consented to take part. A 33% attrition rate across all time points was observed. 72% in the intervention group attended at least three sessions. Audio and video analysis confirmed fidelity of the intervention and a thematic analysis of participant interviews demonstrated acceptability and positive evaluation. Results showed a potential beneficial effect with a reduction of 2.13 points (95% CI (0.89 to 3.38), p<0.01, n=99) on the SRQ-20 and 1.98 points (95% CI (1.06 to 2.90), p<0.01, n=99) on the EPDS at the post-intervention time point for the intervention group compared with standard care. CONCLUSION: Results demonstrate that CHIME is acceptable and feasible in The Gambia. To our knowledge, CHIME is the first example of a music-based psychosocial intervention to be applied to perinatal mental health in a low- and middle-income country context. TRIAL REGISTRATION NUMBER: Pan African Clinical Trials Registry (PACTR201901917619299).