The Raelian Movement
for those who are not afraid of the future : http://www.rael.org
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Music on Prescription Could Help Treat Emotional and Physical Pain
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/09/100909101557.htm
ScienceDaily (Sep. 9, 2010) — New research into how music conveys
emotion could benefit the treatment of depression and the management
of physical pain.
Using an innovative combination of music psychology and leading-edge
audio engineering the project is looking in more detail than ever
before at how music conveys emotion.
The project, at Glasgow Caledonian University is supported by the
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).
The research could lead to advances in the use of music to help
regulate a person's mood, and promote the development of music-based
therapies to tackle conditions like depressive illnesses. It could
help alleviate symptoms for people who are dealing with physical pain
and even lead to doctors putting music on a prescription that is
tailored to suit the needs of an individual.
"The impact of a piece of music on a person goes so much further than
thinking that a fast tempo can lift a mood and a slow one can bring it
down. Music expresses emotion as a result of many factors," says audio
engineering specialist Dr Don Knox, project leader. "These include the
tone, structure and other technical characteristics of a piece. Lyrics
can have a big impact too. But so can purely subjective factors: where
or when you first heard it, whether you associate it with happy or sad
events and so on. Our project is the first step towards taking all of
these considerations -- and the way they interact with each other --
on board."
Raymond MacDonald, Professor of Music Psychology at Glasgow Caledonian
University, is also playing a central role in the initiative.
The team has already carried out an unprecedentedly detailed audio
analysis of pieces of music, identified as expressing a range of
emotions by a panel of volunteers.
Each volunteer listens to pieces of previously unheard contemporary
popular music* and assigns each one a position on a graph. One axis
measures the type of feeling (positivity or negativity) that the piece
communicates; the other measures the intensity or activity level of
the music. The research team then assess the audio characteristics
that the pieces falling into each part of the graph have in common.
"We look at parameters such as rhythm patterns, melodic range, musical
intervals, length of phrases, musical pitch and so on," says Dr Knox.
"For example, music falling into a positive category might have a
regular rhythm, bright timbre and a fairly steady pitch contour over
time. If tempo and loudness increase, for instance, this would place
the piece in a more 'exuberant' or 'excited' region of the graph."
The team are now about to start their assessment of the impact of
lyrics, and then hope to focus on how individuals use and experience
music at a subjective level.
The ultimate aim is to develop a comprehensive mathematical model that
explains music's ability to communicate different emotions. This could
make it possible, within a few years, to develop computer programs
which identify pieces of music that will influence a individual's mood
(e.g. to motivate them when exercising or when revising for exams),
meet their emotional needs and help them cope better with physical
pain.
"By making it possible to search for music and organise collections
according to emotional content, such programs could fundamentally
change the way we interact with music," says Dr Knox. "Some online
music stores already tag music according to whether a piece is 'happy'
or 'sad'. Our project is refining this approach and giving it a firm
scientific foundation, unlocking all kinds of possibilities and
opportunities as a result."
'Emotion Classification in Contemporary Music' is a 3 year project due
for completion at the end of October 2010. It is receiving EPSRC
funding of just over £82,000.
* Music classified by the volunteers consists of contemporary popular
music not available on general release, in order to eliminate any
personal, subjective connotations any of the pieces may have for the
volunteers. "This focus on popular music is an innovative feature of
our project as previous studies on music's emotional content have
concentrated on classical music," says Dr Knox. "We think
concentrating on popular music is important as our work could have
important implications for the use of personal music players and on
how people interact with their music collections."
In this project, digital music files are analysed using advanced
signal processing techniques. Many measures are based on extraction of
the signal frequency spectrum over time. From this information,
measures of intensity, timbre and rhythm can be calculated, in
addition to estimates of musical pitch and tonality.
Story Source:
The above story is reprinted (with editorial adaptations by
ScienceDaily staff) from materials provided by Engineering and
Physical Sciences Research Council.
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"Ethics" is simply a last-gasp attempt by deist conservatives and
orthodox dogmatics to keep humanity in ignorance and obscurantism,
through the well tried fermentation of fear, the fear of science and
new technologies.
There is nothing glorious about what our ancestors call history,
it is simply a succession of mistakes, intolerances and violations.
On the contrary, let us embrace Science and the new technologies
unfettered, for it is these which will liberate mankind from the
myth of god, and free us from our age old fears, from disease,
death and the sweat of labour.
Rael
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