Lecture 23

Question 1

how does enculturation affect neural responses to music?

Answer 1

there is some similar regions activated by both familiar and unfamiliar music
- east and west music can affect same regions in social cog and affective processes

Question 2

what do differences in neural responses to culturally familiar and unfamiliar music relate to?

Answer 2

degree of activation
- the same parts of the brain can be activated by different types of music but the level of activation differs

Question 3

what is an example of rhythmic patterns generating stronger responses in the brain?

Answer 3

complex rhythmical patterns generate stronger responses in putamen in those who have been encultured

Question 4

what were the conclusions determined by Hodges about cross-cultural music?

Answer 4

• enculturation strongly affects how brains interpret, understand and respond to music (link between auditory and motor networks)
• some cog and emotional processes supporting all musical experiences, regardless of culture
• certain basic emotions may be identifiable in unfamiliar but some emotions will be culturally specific
• music enculturation begins early in infancy
• actively playing music is more efficient than passive exposure in terms of enculturation process

Question 5

what visual analogy did Hodges use to portray the interaction between nature and nurture?

Answer 5

tree with extensive root system

Question 6

what does the trunk of the tree represent?

Answer 6

universal aspects of music

Question 7

what do the branches of the tree represent?

Answer 7

cultural traditions
- 1 branch would be Eastern music
- 1 branch would be Western music

Question 8

what do the twigs/leaves represent?

Answer 8

additional variation that can be inherent to larger cultural traditions
- different genres
for ex: hip hop, rap and RnB are similar but have differences

Question 9

what do leaves on the same branches represent?

Answer 9

nearby musical styles that are more understandable to listeners who occupy the part of the tree
- more difficult to understand
- the greater the distance, the greater the difficulty (cultural distance)

Question 10

what do the deep-seated root system represent?

Answer 10

supporting biological and cultural underpinnings of music
- intertwined to the point where they cannot be separated

Question 11

what do Demorest and Morrison propose about cultural distance to precisely measure differences in musical systems across cultures?

Answer 11

• continuous measurement to better support various kinds of investigations/comparisons that are not possible with traditional categorical measurements

Question 12

what is statistical learning?

Answer 12

underlies many forms of learning including those associated with musical expectations inherent to one’s culture

Question 13

what does statistical learning do?

Answer 13

• shape the enculturation processes that affects how we perceive familiar/unfamiliar music

Question 14

what kind of music stands out?

Answer 14

when expectations are violated making it unique

Question 15

what is statistical learning used for?

Answer 15

to build a model that captures in a continuous way the cultural distance

Question 16

what is the assumption for cultural distance?

Answer 16

properties common to particular culture’s music system provides a framework gets internalized to guide behavior through statistical learning
- musical systems differ from each other but still provide differing degrees of overlap between conventions

Question 17

what is the cultural distance hypothesis?

Answer 17

the degree of overlap in musical conventions across specific cultures can predict the magnitude of behavioral differences observed for stimuli considered familiar and unfamiliar

Question 18

how can the cultural distance hypothesis be tested?

Answer 18

developing computational model to represent the statistical properties of structural parameters considered typical of a given culture’s music

Question 19

IDyOM

Answer 19

information dynamics of music

Question 20

what does IDyOM do?

Answer 20

captures the internal representations of the structure of a given style of music that would come internalized within individuals familiar with that style on basis of statistical learning, model building and probabilist prediction

Question 21

what is an example of statistical regularity taken into account by IDyOM?

Answer 21

intervallic content of a melody
- large corpus of data must be obtained to extract relevant probability distribution
- each probability is log-transformed to produce a value that represent information content

Question 22

what is information content?

Answer 22

value thought as reflecting how unexpected/surprising a given note is found to be within particular context
- measure of surprisal and entropy used to stimulate successful anticipation of forthcoming sensory input

Question 23

what are common chords that follow one another and what does it reflect?

Answer 23

G following E
- low info content = highly predictable

Question 24

what chords that follow one another is rare and what does it reflect?

Answer 24

D following E
- high info content = highly unpredictable