NBB in Paris

“Georgia… Georgia…The whole day through, just an old sweet song, keeps Georgia on my mind!” As an Atlantean, I grew up hearing the rich, melodic voice of Ray Charles regularly. His iconic song, “Georgia On My Mind,” embodied the rhythm of an entire state. His prolific piano skills mesmerized those who listened and those who watched as the musician ferociously swayed his head while majestically playing the keyboard. Besides his legendary music, Ray Charles stage presence was iconic and never would he be seen without his thick, black sunglasses and 1000-kilowatt smile. Charles was blind by age 7 due to glaucoma. Nonetheless, young Charles had insatiable love for music and learned to play the piano using braille music. He was particularly drawn to jazz and the blues, which he later heavily incorporated into his music. Charles was still incredibly popular when another musician, Stevie Wonder, entered the jazz, R&B realm. The Motown wonder churned classics after classics with hits like “Superstition” and “You are the Sunshine of My Life.” Wonder like Charles had no eyesight and wore thick black frames; Charles had lost his eyesight when he was born six months premature and experienced retinopathy as a premature baby receiving excessive amounts of oxygen. The two men, both blind, had some of the most remarkable hearing.

This made me curious; does being blind influence our auditory processing, making us more attuned to our other senses? This was a rumor I had long heard and was curious to explore further. In an article published just last month in The Journal of Acoustical Society of America, Zhang and Jiang, 2019 tested whether congenital blindness enhances perception of musical rhythm more than melody in Mandarin speakers. While neither Charles nor Wonder spoke Mandarin, it is reasonable to assume that the rhythmic enhancement that would occur due to congenital blindness would similarly occur in those who are congenital blind and speaking English.

Using the Musical Ear Test, a common musical aptitude test that focuses on both rhythm and melody, the researchers tested the musical competence of sighted and congenitally blind individuals to determine musical competence. The experiment included twenty-eight sighted individuals eighteen congenitally blind subjects; all with no formal musical training. They then were placed individually in rooms and given different stimuli to listen to containing various sound pressure and intensity and then asked to identify which stimuli were identical to each other (Zhang and Jiang, 2019). The results were surprising and nuanced. Congenital blind individuals demonstrated higher general higher musical amplitude and more specifically a superiority in music perception exclusively for rhythm (Zhang and Jiang, 2019). Blind and sighted individuals performed equally well on melodic tasks. Perhaps the reason for this is because music is not solely an auditory function but with an underlying motor component (Levitin et al., 2018). The motor components of music such as pulse, tempo and rhythm are vital to musical success and part of our evolutionary history.

While the review article does not explicitly state that rhythm identification is enhanced by blindness, I am curious as to whether those who are congenitally blind grow up relying more on rhythmic components to learn music and thus are more attuned to hearing them. Given we are exposed to music regularly our entire lives, it is difficult to distinguish whether the rhythmic advantage found in congenital blindness in the Zhang and Jiang, 2019 study is one rooted in neuroanatomical differences in our auditory system or whether greater reliance on the auditory system has improved its function through practice. Additionally, these rhythmic enhancements could be due to an absence of visual distractions. When one typically listens to music, one is looking at the singer, observing their emotions and stage presence. In a car, listening to music, yet again we are distracted. Perhaps the rhythmic advantage seen in congenially blind individuals is linked to the decrease of other distracting stimuli, allowing the brain to solely focus on the rhythm.

In addition to rhythm, a recent study conducted Arnaud et al., 2018 analyzed whether patients with early stage blindness had a difference in pitch perception. Pitch perception was tested for fifteen congenially blind adults and fifteen sighted adults with each individual identifying a native and non-native vowel as a baseline. The study then asked participants to identify pitch differences in these vowels and discovered that blind subjects had a higher discernment ability for pitch differences for native vowels, music stimuli, and pure tones (Arnaud et al., 2018). Interestingly, older participants indicated an improved ability to identify instrumental noise over speech sounds. This reminds me of research I did several years ago on Alzheimer’s patients and music, and how songs with strong emotional attachments were played for patients with dementia to recall memories. Music in all its glorious forms seems to touch us deeply and intricately in a way that is not fully understood but is unequivocally challenged amongst people of all stratospheres.

References:

Arnaud Laureline, Gracco Vincent, Menard Lucie (2018). Enhanced perception of pitch changes in speech and music in early blind adults. Neuropsychologia. 117, 261-270,

Levitin, D. J., Grahn, J. A., and London, J. (2018). “The psychology of music: Rhythm and movement,” Ann. Rev. Psychol. 69, 51–75.

Zhang, Linjun & Jiang, Wenling & Shu, Hua & Zhang, Yang. (2019). Congenital blindness enhances perception of musical rhythm more than melody in Mandarin speakers. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. 145. EL354-EL359.

Ray Charles

Stevie Wonder

A band at Fête de la Musique

There are few things more important in my life than music.  Its propensity to evoke emotion, inspire, and educate are, in my opinion, unparalleled compared to any other art form.  I started playing music at six years old, and I cannot think of something that has shaped my development as fundamentally as music has.  For me, learning certain pieces, such as Chopin’s Nocturne in E Flat Major for piano or Wieniawski’s Second Violin Concerto in D Minor, represents memorable steps in my growth as both a musician as a person.  Another work that comes to mind when I think of pieces which have contributed to growth is Igor Stravinsky’s Firebird.  Composed as a score for a ballet of the same name, Firebird is the first of three momentous ballet scores by Stravinsky, the other two being Petrushka and the iconic Rite of Spring.  These ballets, especially Firebird and Rite of Spring are some of the most notable works of 20th-century music if not of music in its entirety.  These works burst onto the music scene and sent shockwaves throughout the artistic world, as they are some of the first, and most notable, pieces containing the jarring atonality and complex polyrhythms that have come to define the music of the early 20^th century.  It was not only the music that was cutting edge but also the ballets.  Like the music, the choreography, especially Vaslav Nijinsky’s choreography for The Rite of Spring, was extremely avant-garde, as it dispelled of traditional ballet movements and ushered in primitive hops and jumps.

A still image from The Rite of Spring’s iconic Sacrificial Dance (image courtesy of the National Endowment for the Arts)

Choreographer Vaslav Nijinsky (Image courtesy of Wikipedia)

However, despite the acclaim these pieces have since garnered, they were not received particularly well upon their premiere.  In fact, the premiere of The Rite of Spring has become infamous for the alleged riots that occurred during its first performance.  Although accounts of the riots at The Rite are varied in intensity with some accounts stating that audience members tore their seats out of the theatre and others stating there was merely angry murmuring and yelling from the audience, it is unquestionable that the performance was met with extreme disgust from the audience (Taruskin, 2012).

Composer Igor Stravinsky (Image courtesy of Wikipedia)

To this day, it baffles me how something as seemingly innocuous as attending a ballet could incite such visceral reactions.  However, research from the Watching Dance Project, a group comprising of researchers from four UK universities, is seeking to examine just that.  In a 2016 paper entitled Spectators’ Aesthetic Experience of Sound and Movement in Dance Performance: A Transdisciplinary Investigation, researchers investigated how an audience’s experience of sound and movement impacted their perception of the performance (Reason et al., 2016).  To do this, the researchers paired a short dance production with three different soundscapes: J.S. Bach’s Concerto for Oboe and Violin in C Minor, an ambient noise track, and an electronic music composition by Ian Wallman (Reason et al., 2016).  Subject’s reactions to the different music accompanying the dance were analyzed both qualitatively, through interviews and discussions, and quantitatively, via fMRI analyses (Reason et al., 2016).

The study found that audience member’s reactions to the dance performance were effected by different musical backings (Reason et al., 2016).  One subject, called David, stated, “different backing music or lack of music inspired different emotions at each time … you change the music, you don’t change the dance, you repeat the dance, and it’s got a totally different emotional effect” (Reason et al., 2016).  In addition to evoking different emotional responses, different musical backing tracks led to audience members perceiving identical performances differently (Reason et al., 2016).  A common theme in discussions post-performance was how the performance paired with the Bach concerto seemed more beautiful and flowing, while during the ambient noise and electronic noise repetitions, participants noted the dance seemed more intense and uncomfortable (Reason et al., 2016).

Interestingly, despite the apparent differences in perception of the dance with different musical backing, the fMRI data showed a large amount of overlap in brain regions active during all performances (Reason et al., 2016).   Bilaterally, in both visual and auditory cortex, fMRI data showed that activity was highly synchronized (Reason et al., 2016).  The four areas with the most evident overlap were the parietal cortex, the dorsal premotor cortex, and the ventral premotor cortex, and the superior temporal gyrus (Reason et al., 2016).  However, not all brain activity was synchronized across the three different performances.  During the Bach-accompanied performance, regions in the right cuneus, left lingual gyrus, cerebellum, and superior temporal gyrus, exhibited increased activation in comparison to the other performances (Reason et al., 2016).  During the ambient noise-accompanied performance, there was increased activation in multiple areas including Brodmann areas 7, 17, 18, 19, 22, 37, and 41 (Reason et al., 2016).

fMRI data showing areas of neural activation in audience members when viewing the dance performance accompanied by Bach (yellow) as opposed to the ambient track (purple). Brown= areas of overlapping activation. (Reason et al., 2016)

Many of the cortical areas that showed increased activation during the ambient-accompanied performance are associated with visual, auditory, and somatosensory processing (Reason et al., 2016).  Researchers hypothesize that this could be due to the synchronicity between the sounds of the ambient track (dancer’s breaths and footfalls) and the motion of their bodies (Reason et al., 2016).  Researchers also believe these findings could serve as preliminary data to support the hypothesis that auditory and visual perceptions of dance can influence one’s aesthetic perception of a performance (Reason et al., 2016).

The research presented by the Watching Dance Project in this research study showcases some interesting differences in an audience member’s perception of a dance performance when accompanied by different musical backing both in terms of personal experience and neural activity.  However, there is more research to be done, as fMRI studies face inherent limitations due to the technique’s relatively poor spatial resolution.  Perhaps these data presented by the Watching Dance Project researchers can serve to elucidate why Stravinsky and Nijinsky’s The Rite of Spring premiere induced such infamous riots.  I for one will definitely keep tabs on this group’s research, as I find their intersectional approach to music, dance, and the brain fascinating.

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References

Reason, M., Jola, C., Kay, R., Reynolds, D., Kauppi, J., Grobras, M., … Pollick, F. E. (2016). Spectators’ aesthetic experience of sound and movement in dance performance: A transdisciplinary investigation. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 10(1), 42-55. doi:10.1037/a0040032

Taruskin, R. (2012, September 14). ‘Rite of Spring? Cools Into a Rite of Passage. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/16/arts/music/rite-of-spring-cools-into-a-rite-of-passage.html

I recently attended a performance of the Swan Lake ballet by the Universal Ballet of Seoul at the Palais des Congrès in Paris. While watching the ballerinas execute perfect pirouettes and fouettes, all I could do was watch in amazement as I remembered my struggle to even do adequate double turns in ballet class. It was not just me either; it seemed that everyone in the audience was just as enthralled at every dizzying turn and every gravity defying leap. When the performance concluded, the applause reverberated around the hall as the principal ballerinas bowed repeatedly. This moment of collective audience admiration made me think of a moment that contrasted dramatically. In Paris of 1913 at the opening performance of Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring with an accompanying ballet performance, audience members were so shocked at the strange, stamping movements that they began to riot. While we mainly discussed the auditory elements of the performance in class, it was actually the dance choreography that provoked the scandal (Chua, 2007). I wondered what made people react positively or negatively to dance and whether there was a science behind this.

Graceful and well-balanced ballerinas from Swan Lake

A 2012 neuroimaging study investigated the brain responses to dance that one perceives as aesthetically pleasing vs unpleasing. The images demonstrated that the active engagement of sensorimotor brain areas, which are those covering the primary sensory and motor areas of the brain, is more implicated with observing dance movements perceived as pleasing. This suggested that the motor system plays a role in the appreciation and enjoyment of dance (Cross and Ticini, 2012). This link between motor system and aesthetic perception was further investigated in a 2015 study by Kirsch et al. of how motor familiarity relates to a viewer’s aesthetic appraisal of it. Twenty-two participants were trained for 4 days with difference dance sequences. Every day they had to physically rehearse one set of sequences, just passively watch a second set, listen to the music of the third set, and were unexposed to a fourth set. Functional magnetic resonance imaging, which detects brain activity based on blood flow in areas of the brain, was obtained prior to and directly after training as participants watched videos of dance stimuli videos. They were then asked to aesthetically rate the observed dance (“How much did you like the movement you just watched”) and also to assess their physical ability to reproduce the movement (“How well could you reproduce the movement you just watched?). Results indicated that participants reported increased enjoyment for movements they had themselves physically practiced or even just passively observed for four days. The left superior temporal gyrus (STG), which is important in the interaction of the auditory and motor system, had the most change in activation, suggesting that STG activation may reflect how auditory, visual, and motor experience become associated with each other to produce a more enjoyable experience. These results also suggested that with increased exposure to a movement sequence, whether it be through physical performance or just listening to the soundtrack, people reported greater aesthetic perception of the dance movements (Kirsch et al., 2015).

A potential confounding variable I thought of after reading about this experiment was their use of only hip-hop dance and pop songs. I think the personal feelings people may have regarding this genre of dance and music may influence the degree of activation in the brain. For future directions, I believe that it would be interesting to look into a variety of dance styles and music for greater confidence that results are accurate. As a future direction, I wonder whether they’d be able to stimulate the STG to create greater preference for certain dance movements over others. This would indicate the STG plays a role in creating pleasant experiences linked to watching dance.

Area lit up in image on the left shows the STG where brain activation corresponds to increased liking

This finding of how perception of dance is influenced by what people are exposed to was investigated in another study that looked at how ballet has evolved between the 1960s to 2000s. The same ballet poses were extracted from productions of The Sleeping Beauty and transformed into a standardized form of either stick figures based on principal body segments or quadrilateral shapes which connected the endpoints of each limb. Twelve dance naïve volunteers, meaning without significant experience of performing or attending dance, viewed the stick figure and polygon images and then judged which images they preferred. Results showed that there was a significant tendency for production year and aesthetic evaluation to be correlated, meaning subjects were most likely to prefer the forms from the most recent ballet production possibly due to inadvertent exposure to media within their culture (Daprati et al., 2009).

The standardized forms (B) shown to subjects based on ballerina (A)

All in all, I think that the research into dance preference can serve to inform us about why the audience reacted so vehemently to the performance of Rite of Spring all those years ago; they had never been exposed to such a form of dance before and were not comfortable with how dance was being represented on stage as much of our aesthetic perception comes from what we have seen or been exposed to before. Perhaps this is why as modern performances became more commonplace, the Rite of Spring became an iconic performance that was replicated countless times to audiences that began to applaud instead of riot.

Bibliography

Chua, D.K.L. (2007) Rioting with Stravinsky: a Particular Analysis of the Rite of Spring. Music Analysis, 26, 59-109.

Cross, E.S. & Ticini, L.F. (2012) Neuroaesthetics and beyond: new horizons in applying the science of the brain to the art of dance. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 11, 5-16.

Daprati, E., Iosa, M. & Haggard, P. (2009) A Dance to the Music of Time: Aesthetically Relevant Changes in Body Posture in Performing Art. PLOS ONE, 4, e5023.

Kirsch, L.P., Dawson, K. & Cross, E.S. (2015) Dance experience sculpts aesthetic perception and related brain circuits. Ann N Y Acad Sci, 1337, 130-139.

Image 1: https://en.parisinfo.com/paris-show-exhibition/212781/le-lac-des-cygnes-universal-ballet

Image 2: Kirsch et al., 2015

Image 3: Daprati et al., 2009