Leon van Noorden

Activating and relaxing music entrains the speed of beat synchronized walking

Inspired by a theory of embodied music cognition, we investigate whether music can entrain the speed of beat synchronized walking. If human walking is in synchrony with the beat and all musical stimuli have the same duration and the same tempo, then differences in walking speed can only be the result of music-induced differences in stride length, thus reflecting the vigor or physical strength of the movement. Participants walked in an open field in synchrony with the beat of 52 different musical stimuli all having a tempo of 130 beats per minute and a meter of 4 beats. The walking speed was measured as the walked distance during a time interval of 30 seconds. The results reveal that some music is ‘activating’ in the sense that it increases the speed, and some music is ‘relaxing’ in the sense that it decreases the speed, compared to the spontaneous walked speed in response to metronome stimuli. Participants are consistent in their observation of qualitative differences between the relaxing and activating musical stimuli. Using regression analysis, it was possible to set up a predictive model using only four sonic features that explain 60% of the variance. The sonic features capture variation in loudness and pitch patterns at periods of three, four and six beats, suggesting that expressive patterns in music are responsible for the effect. The mechanism may be attributed to an attentional shift, a subliminal audio-motor entrainment mechanism, or an arousal effect, but further study is needed to figure this out. Overall, the study supports the hypothesis that recurrent patterns of fluctuation affecting the binary meter strength of the music may entrain the vigor of the movement. The study opens up new perspectives for understanding the relationship between entrainment and expressiveness, with the possibility to develop applications that can be used in domains such as sports and physical rehabilitation.

Encouraging Spontaneous Synchronisation with D-Jogger, an Adaptive Music Player That Aligns Movement and Music

In this study we explore how music can entrain human walkers to synchronise to the musical beat without being instructed to do so. For this, we use an interactive music player, called D-Jogger, that senses the users walking tempo and phase. D-Jogger aligns the music by manipulating the timing difference between beats and footfalls. Experiments are reported that led to the development and optimisation of four alignment strategies. The first strategy matched the musics tempo continuously to the runners pace. The second strategy matched the musics tempo at the beginning of a song to the runners pace, keeping the tempo constant for the remainder of the song. The third alignment starts a song in perfect phase synchrony and continues to adjust the tempo to match the runners pace. The fourth and last strategy additionally adjusts the phase of the music so each beat matches a footfall. The first two strategies resulted in a minor increase of steps in phase synchrony with the main beat when compared to a random playlist, the last two strategies resulted in a strong increase in synchronised steps. These results may be explained in terms of phase-error correction mechanisms and motor prediction schemes. Finding the phase-lock is difficult due to fluctuations in the interaction, whereas strategies that automatically align the phase between movement and music solve the problem of finding the phase-locking. Moreover, the data show that once the phase-lock is found, alignment can be easily maintained, suggesting that less entrainment effort is needed to keep the phase-lock, than to find the phase-lock. The different alignment strategies of D-Jogger can be applied in different domains such as sports, physical rehabilitation and assistive technologies for movement performance.

Concepts, Technology, and Assessment of the Social Music Game "Sync-in-Team'

Music offers an excellent domain in which advanced forms of non-verbal communication can be explored. The first part of this paper introduces the research concepts behind the idea of a social interactive music game, which is based on the no-tions of ‘embodiment’ and ‘mediation technology’. The second part reviews the development of the ‘Sync-in-Team’ game, and its assessment in four different settings, including noisy eco-logical settings. The third part reviews the technological backbone of the game, and the fourth part discusses further developments. A user-oriented approach, based on concepts from embodied music cognition, may offer a valid contribution to the development of novel music-driven games that foster the sense for social interaction, body movement, collaboration, and competition.

Tempo and walking speed with music in the urban context

The study explored the effect of music on the temporal aspects of walking behavior in a real outdoor urban setting. First, spontaneous synchronization between the beat of the music and step tempo was explored. The effect of motivational and non-motivational music (Karageorghis et al., 1999) on the walking speed was also studied. Finally, we investigated whether music can mask the effects of visual aspects of the walking route environment, which involve fluctuation of walking speed as a response to particular environmental settings. In two experiments, we asked participants to walk around an urban route that was 1.8 km in length through various environments in the downtown area of Hradec Králové. In Experiment 1, the participants listened to a musical track consisting of world pop music with a clear beat. In Experiment 2, participants were walking either with motivational music, which had a fast tempo and a strong rhythm, or with non-motivational music, which was slower, nice music, but with no strong implication to movement. Musical beat, as well as the sonic character of the music listened to while walking, influenced walking speed but did not lead to precise synchronization. It was found that many subjects did not spontaneously synchronize with the beat of the music at all, and some subjects synchronized only part of the time. The fast, energetic music increases the speed of the walking tempo, while slower, relaxing music makes the walking tempo slower. Further, it was found that listening to music with headphones while walking can mask the influence of the surrounding environment to some extent. Both motivational music and non-motivational music had a larger effect than the world pop music from Experiment 1. Individual differences in responses to the music listened to while walking that were linked to extraversion and neuroticism were also observed. The findings described here could be useful in rhythmic stimulation for enhancing or recovering the features of movement performance.

Four Applications of Embodied Cognition

This article presents the views of four sets of authors, each taking concepts of embodied cognition into problem spaces where the new paradigm can be applied. The first considers consequences of embodied cognition on the legal system. The second explores how embodied cognition can change how we interpret and interact with art and literature. The third examines how we move through architectural spaces from an embodied cognition perspective. And the fourth addresses how music cognition is influenced by the approach. Each contribution is brief. They are meant to suggest the potential reach of embodied cognition, increase the visibility of applications, and inspire potential avenues for research.

Different Types of Sounds and Their Relationship With the Electrocardiographic Signals and the Cardiovascular System – Review

Background: For some time now, the effects of sound, noise, and music on the human body have been studied. However, despite research done through time, it is still not completely clear what influence, interaction, and effects sounds have on human body. That is why it is necessary to conduct new research on this topic. Thus, in this paper, a systematic review is undertaken in order to integrate research related to several types of sound, both pleasant and unpleasant, specifically noise and music. In addition, it includes as much research as possible to give stakeholders a more general vision about relevant elements regarding methodologies, study subjects, stimulus, analysis, and experimental designs in general. This study has been conducted in order to make a genuine contribution to this area and to perhaps to raise the quality of future research about sound and its effects over ECG signals. Methods: This review was carried out by independent researchers, through three search equations, in four different databases, including: engineering, medicine, and psychology. Inclusion and exclusion criteria were applied and studies published between 1999 and 2017 were considered. The selected documents were read and analyzed independently by each group of researchers and subsequently conclusions were established between all of them. Results: Despite the differences between the outcomes of selected studies, some common factors were found among them. Thus, in noise studies where both BP and HR increased or tended to increase, it was noted that HRV (HF and LF/HF) changes with both sound and noise stimuli, whereas GSR changes with sound and musical stimuli. Furthermore, LF also showed changes with exposure to noise. Conclusion: In many cases, samples displayed a limitation in experimental design, and in diverse studies, there was a lack of a control group. There was a lot of variability in the presented stimuli providing a wide overview of the effects they could produce in humans. In the listening sessions, there were numerous examples of good practice in experimental design, such as the use of headphones and comfortable positions for study subjects, while the listening sessions lasted 20 min in most of the studies.

From observation to enactment: Can dance experience enhance multisensory temporal integration?

We report two experiments aiming to define how experience and stimulus enactment affect multisensory temporal integration for ecologically-valid stimuli. In both experiments, a number of different dance steps were used as audiovisual displays at a range of stimulus onset asynchronies using the method of constant stimuli. Participants were either professional dancers or non-dancers. In Experiment 1, using a simultaneity judgment (SJ) task, we aimed at defining — for the first time — the temporal window of integration (TWI) for dancers and non-dancers and the role of experience in SJ performance. Preliminary results showed that dancers had smaller TWI in comparison to non-dancers for all stimuli tested, with higher complexity (participant rated) dance steps requiring larger auditory leads for both participant groups. In Experiment 2, we adapted a more embodied point of view by examining how enactment of the stimulus modulates the TWIs. Participants were presented with simple audiovisual dance steps that could be synchronous or asynchronous and were asked to synchronize with the audiovisual display by actually performing the step indicated. A motion capture system recorded their performance at a millisecond level of accuracy. Based on the optimal integration hypothesis, we are currently looking at the data in terms of which modality will be dominant, considering that dance is a spatially (visual) and temporally (audio) coordinated action. Any corrective adjustments, accelerations–decelerations, hesitations will be interpreted as indicators of the perception of ambiguity in comparison to their performance at the synchronous condition, thus, for the first time, an implicit SJ response will be measured.