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| Detecting Spontaneous and Rehearsed Behavior |
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| Living - Relationships | |
| TS-Si News Service | |
| Wednesday, 04 May 2011 15:00 | |
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Leipzig, Germany. The ability to discriminate spontaneous from planned (rehearsed) behavior has been traced to the
 amygdala in the brain and a network of areas known to be involved in the mental simulation of behavior.This is important when inferring the intentions of others in everyday situations, for example, when judging whether another person's behavior is calculated and intended to deceive. In order to examine such basic mechanisms of social abilities in controlled settings, Peter Keller, head of the research group Music Cognition and Action and his research associate Annerose Engel, investigate musical constellations ranging from solos and duos to large musical ensembles. Their findings, in the journal Frontiers in Psychology, address questions like these: A pianist is playing an unknown melody freely without reading from a musical score, so how does the listener’s brain recognise if this melody is improvised or if it is memorized?Paying Attention and Shifting Perspective Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig investigated jazz musicians to discover which brain areas are especially sensitive to features of improvised behavior. The ability to correctly recognise improvisations was not only related to the musical experience of a listener but also to his ability to take the perspective of someone else.In a recent study, they investigated the brain activity of jazz musicians while these musicians listened to short excerpts of improvised melodies or rehearsed versions of the same melodies. The listeners judged whether each heard melody was improvised. “Musical improvisations are more variable in their loudness and timing, most likely due to irregularities in force control associated with fluctuations in certainty about upcoming actions — i.e., when spontaneously deciding what to play — during improvised musical performance”, explains Peter Keller. The amygdala, part of the limbic system, was more active while listening to real improvisations and was sensitive to the fluctuations of loudness and timing in the melodies. Thus, the amygdala seems to be involved in the detection of spontaneous behavior, which is consistent with studies showing an involvement of this structure when stimuli are difficult to predict, novel or ambiguous in their meaning.If a melody was judged as being improvised, regardless of whether this was in fact the case, stronger activity was found in a network which is known to be involved in the covert simulation of actions. This network comprised the frontal operculum, the pre-supplementary area and the anterior insula. “We know today that during perception of actions, similar brain areas are active as during the execution of the same action”, explains Annerose Engel. “This supports the evaluation of other people’s behavior in order to form expectations and predict future behavior.” If a melody is perceived as being more difficult to predict, for example, because of fluctuations in loudness and timing, stronger activity is most likely to be elicited in this specialised network. A further observation the researchers made may be related to this: Not only musical experience but also the capacity to take someone else’s perspective played an important role in judging spontaneity. Jazz musicians who had more musical expertise in playing the piano and playing with other musicians, as well as those who more often described themselves as trying to put themselves in someone else’s shoes were best at recognizing whether a melody was improvised or not. CitationThe perception of musical spontaneity in improvised and imitated jazz performances. Annerose Engel and Peter E. Keller. Frontiers in Psychology 2011; 2:83. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2011.00083
Download PDF Abstract The ability to evaluate spontaneity in human behavior is called upon in the aesthetic appreciation of dramatic arts and music. The current study addresses the behavioral and brain mechanisms that mediate the perception of spontaneity in music performance. In a functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging experiment, 22 jazz musicians listened to piano melodies and judged whether they were improvised or imitated. Judgment accuracy (mean 55%; range 44-65%), which was low but above chance, was positively correlated with musical experience and empathy. Analysis of listeners’ hemodynamic responses revealed that amygdala activation was stronger for improvisations than imitations. This activation correlated with the variability of performance timing and intensity (loudness) in the melodies, suggesting that the amygdala is involved in the detection of behavioral uncertainty. An analysis based on the subjective classification of melodies according to listeners’ judgments revealed that a network including the pre-supplementary motor area, frontal operculum, and anterior insula was most strongly activated for melodies judged to be improvised. This may reflect the increased engagement of an action simulation network when melodic predictions are rendered challenging due to perceived instability in the performer’s actions. Taken together, our results suggest that, while certain brain regions in skilled individuals may be generally sensitive to objective cues to spontaneity in human behavior, the ability to evaluate spontaneity accurately depends upon whether an individual’s action-related experience and perspective taking skills enable faithful internal simulation of the given behavior.Keywords: action simulation, amygdala, human fmri, improvisation, music, spontaneity, uncertainty.
 The TS-Si News Service is a collaborative effort by TS-Si.org editors, contributors, and corresponding institutions. The sources can include the cited individuals and organizations, as well as TS-Si.org staff contributions. Articles and news reports do not necessarily convey official positions of TS-Si, its partners, or affiliates.We welcome your comments. Use the form below to leave a public comment or send private correspondence via the TS-Si Contact Page. We will not divulge any personal details or place you on a mailing list without your permission. TS-Si is dedicated to the acceptance, medical treatment, and legal protection of individuals correcting the misalignment of their brains and their anatomical sex, while supporting their transition into society as hormonally reconstituted and surgically corrected citizens. To create link towards this article on your website, copy and paste the text below in your page. Preview :
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| Last Updated on Wednesday, 04 May 2011 09:52 |
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