Mom’s Spaghetti: Demystifying Performance Anxiety

Insights into music performance anxiety and managment with
Prof. Aaron Williamon, Centre for Performance Science

by Darragh Lynch & Georgina Ng

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“His palms are sweaty, knees weak, arms are heavy,
There’s vomit on his sweater already, mom’s spaghetti”

– Eminem (“Lose Yourself”)

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It doesn’t take a psychologist to understand how Eminem felt in his lead single to the film “8 Mile” – we’ve all been there (hopefully without the vomit!). Performance anxiety is a state many have experienced in some form, whether for a school presentation, a sports competition, or a concert. It is rife amongst musicians (Langendörfer et al., 2006), having disrupted the careers of seasoned musicians in both popular music, such as Barbra Streisand (Stossel, 2014), and classical music, such as pianist Vladimir Horowitz and soprano Renee Fleming (Wesner, Noyes & Davis, 1990; Hewett, 2014). Given performance anxiety’s debilitating effects, it is unsurprising that researchers such as Prof. Aaron Williamon of the Centre for Performance Science – a partnership between the Royal College of Music and Imperial College London – have endeavoured to discover more about it. Here, we will discuss how Prof. Williamon’s research into performance stress, as presented at Goldsmiths College, University of London, can be drawn upon to help performers – particularly musicians – with this common difficulty.

What, exactly, is performance anxiety?

Salmon (1990) defines performance anxiety as:

“The experience of persisting, distressful apprehension about and/or actual impairment of, performance skills in a public context, to a degree unwarranted given the individual’s musical aptitude, training, and level of preparation.”

This unwarranted apprehension manifests in three ways: somatic, behavioural, and cognitive. Somatic symptoms are the physical attributes of anxiety triggered by the “fight or flight” response via the sympathetic nervous system, such as an increase in heart rate, sweating, and shortness of breath, while behavioural symptoms include nervous tics such as fidgeting and pacing. Perhaps most obviously, performance anxiety affects cognitive processes and emotions, creating negative feelings and catastrophic thoughts (“What if my guitar string breaks?!”).

Although performance anxiety may certainly give rise to some rather unpleasant feelings, most people mainly dread it because of its effect on performance. Yerkes and Dodson (1908) first posited the inverted U hypothesis where performance quality increases with somatic anxiety (or arousal) up to an individuals’ threshold, after which performance quality decreases with further increase in somatic anxiety.

Yerkes-Dodson inverted-U hypothesis

Catastrophe theory (Hardy & Parfitt, 1991), as depicted in the rather confusing 3D graph below, further specifies the role of cognitive anxiety by adding it along the z-axis. High levels of cognitive anxiety can further hamper the effects of somatic anxiety on performance — if your heart is already racing and your palms are sweaty, worrying about that tricky violin solo is bound to further affect your performance. On the flip side, a “sweet spot” of optimum performance can be attained with the correct levels of cognitive anxiety and physiological arousal.

Catastrophe Theory

Measurement and findings

Theories are useful, but let’s see some evidence! Prof. Williamon presented several recent studies he was involved with, all of which focused on performance stress in musicians.

In one study, Prof. Williamon and colleagues (2013) measured the heart rate of professional pianist Melvyn Tan during high-stress and low-stress performance situations. In a low-stress situation (a practice room with the research team), the pianist’s heart rate steadily increased — from baseline measures, through pre-performance time, to during the performance. Nothing surprising there. However, in a high-stress situation (the Cheltenham Music Festival), heart rate was found to be much higher at pre-performance time than during the actual high stress performance. Although heart rate is an imperfect measure of physiological reactivity to stress due to individual differences and the variability of music over time (some sections of pieces may be more physically demanding) this research can be commended for its pioneering use of complexity science algorithms in analysing heart rate to account for such artefacts.

Experimental design measuring heartrate (Electroencephalogram; ECG) with Melvyn Tan in Williamon et al. (2013)

Another study by Prof. Williamon (currently unpublished) demonstrated similar results with musicians in both London, England, and Lugano, Switzerland. The complexity science approach mentioned before was used to assess physiological reactivity backstage and during performance in both a high- and low-stress performance situation. In both situations, arousal was higher backstage than during the actual performance. A further study with professional choir singers (Fancourt et al., 2015) found that patterns of change in stress hormones largely mirror those of the earlier cardiovascular research, confirming that the physical states in which musicians are in during performance are quantitatively different than when they are in practise.

How can these findings help musicians with performance anxiety?

Prof. Williamon’s work suggests two main points. Firstly, the difference in anxiety responses in low- and high-stress performance situations highlights the importance of being accustomed to high-stress situations in predicting (and hence effectively managing) any patterns of performance anxiety one may feel. One way is to practise performing – i.e. repeated exposure to high stress situations. In light of this, Prof. Williamon and colleagues (2014) created a performance simulator to recreate high-stress performance situations, complete with audience and stage, to help bridge the gap between practice and performance.

Prof. Williamon’s virtual reality performance simulator

Secondly, with arousal being highest before performance, a good point at which anxiety management techniques can be implemented is the critical pre-performance period. For instance, to ameliorate the anxiety felt while waiting to go onstage, one could use methods that draw upon the relationship between somatic and cognitive anxiety, such as re-appraising one’s symptoms as excitement (Brooks, 2014) or mindfulness meditation.

Certain practices may also help if integrated into one’s lifestyle, such as the Alexander Technique and yoga, both of which focus on reducing muscular and postural stress. Cross-stressor methods may also help — Childs and de Wit (2014) found that regular exercise may improve emotional resilience to stress and anxiety. For musical performance educators, Prof. Williamon notes that it is equally important to be aware of their students’ particular preferences and anxiety patterns in order to advise on suitable solutions. For instance, students won’t practice mindfulness if they personally think it’s a load of nonsense!

The bottom line? Performance anxiety is a common and crippling problem. However, the work of researchers such as Prof. Williamon offers hope for those of us aiming to overcome it: not only can we understand more about how, when, and why performance anxiety occurs, but we also discover empirical ways of confronting our own personal variation of it. This can only be a good thing — after all, the show must go on!

The Psychoneuroimmunology of Music

“Every Illness is a Musical Problem, The Healing, a Musical Solution”

Cast your mind back thousands of years, and try to imagine living in pre-historic times. Your goal in life is to stay alive by hunting for food. Your survival instinct, known as the ‘fight or flight’ response, becomes activated when faced with an immediate danger, such as a wild beast. Adrenaline courses through your body, keeping your heart rate stable and temporarily shutting down your immune system. Miraculously, you overcome the threat and find your way back to safety. At this point, your body halts the release of adrenaline, instead focusing on the production of cortisol, which will re-activate your physiological systems and allow you to revert to normal functioning. Of course, whilst the likelihood of a stressful confrontation with a feral beast is slim in the modern world, humans are still faced with a vast array of experiences and situations which can be stressful through both acute and chronic pathways. The effects of stress are as relevant today as to our ancient ancestors, and the strategies available for regulation, prevention and treatment of stress are plentiful and creative. We have come leaps and bounds in our understanding of psychoneuroimmunology, (the field seeking to explore the effect of the mind on health and resistance to disease), but, of particular interest to students on the MSc Music, Mind & Brain (MMB) programme, is the relatively unexplored question: is there an inherent potential for music to act as such a healing power for the mind and body?

Despite continuous attempts throughout history, answering this question still remains a challenge. For example, the ancient Greeks believed that music was a type of magic that could vanquish evil spirits that caused illness, whilst the Mycenaean god Pajawo (2000 BC) believed that holy songs could cure disease (Fancourt, 2013). Given the advances of modern technology, it comes as no surprise that research on music and health is starting to grow rapidly within the scientific community. Nowadays, research has investigated the potential of musical treatments using cell counts, brain scans and psychological assessments. As one of the pioneering researchers in this field, Dr. Daisy Fancourt offered her insight into whether music can change our immune systems to the MMB research group at Goldsmiths, University of London on January 14th 2016.

When dealing with such a new area, Fancourt highlighted how important the concepts of consistency and replication are in designing and conducting good-quality research. In collaboration with colleagues, she proposed a new model, which can account more comprehensively for the different ways by which people are affected by music. These include musical components (e.g. rhythm and timbre), getting actively involved in music making and listening, bonding with others over music, and, developing that all-important personal tie to music (See fig. 1 from Fancourt et al., 2014).

Figure 1: A model of the system interactions involved in the psychoneuroimmunological response to music (Fancourt, Ockelford & Belai, 2014)

Furthermore, Fancourt suggested that each of these engagement mechanisms affect our physiology through different pathways. This has been demonstrated by Fancourt and her colleagues by examining change within identified biomarkers (specific cells, proteins, or hormones) in response to a musical intervention. In particular, her work has documented the responses of such biomarkers to group drumming and choral singing, with populations of mental health service users, professional singers, and cancer patients respectively. She has examined a change in stress hormones (adrenaline and cortisol) and sex hormones (testosterone and progesterone), along with other proteins called cytokines (involved in immune function) as a function of the musical interventions that have been delivered (Fancourt et al., 2016).

Inevitably, some of Fancourt’s work has attracted high-profile attention from outlets such as The Times, The Guardian and Classic FM including her study on the impact of singing on the endocrine system in low versus high stress situations (Fancourt, Aufegger & Williamon, 2015).

Figure 2. Eric Whitacre and music as stress relief (Classic FM, March 2015).

Teaming up with composer Eric Whitacre, Fancourt and her colleagues collected saliva samples and psychological data from a group of professional singers on two consecutive evenings. On the first evening, they took part in an ordinary rehearsal (low-stress situation), but on the second, they performed a live concert to an audience of 610 people (high-stress situation). The comparative results showed a significant decrease in the stress hormones, cortisol and cortisone, across the low-stress condition, suggesting that singing in itself is a stress-reducing activity. However, the same stress hormones significantly increased across the high-stress condition, which highlighted that despite consistently being exposed to performance situations, professional singers have a preserved and important ‘fight or flight’ response, akin to that of our predecessors. This was the first study to show that singing can directly affect stress responses, and that this set of responses change depending on the performance conditions.

Given this, the evidence for music as a tool for potential health promotion has gained an increasing impetus. Fancourt then talked of how her research has also investigated the effectiveness of music in the physiological treatment of mental health. This work focused on observing a group of mental health service-users’ inflammatory responses (cytokine proteins) before and after a group-drumming intervention (Fancourt et al., 2015).

Figure 3. Group drumming interventions

Previous research on depression has demonstrated that psychological symptoms are consistently accompanied by an excess of inflammation in the body. In an attempt to reduce both affected avenues, many alternative intervention programmes such as yoga or mindfulness have been developed, but Fancourt’s work with her colleagues has pioneered music in this domain. Taking the form of a control trial, service users were assigned to either group drumming or a different social activity for six weeks, in which saliva samples were collected pre- and post-sessions. For the first time, Fancourt and colleagues showed that a music-based intervention such as group drumming could enhance immunity and decrease stress over individual sessions, in addition to reducing inflammatory activity (i.e., cytokine activation) associated with poorer immune function. These results aligned nicely with reported improvements in scores on measures of depression, well-being and social resilience; again demonstrating the strong link between mind and body. Fancourt’s future work (in press) will expand upon this exciting finding by demonstrating the durable nature of this effect by following up service users’ physiological and psychological responses up to three months after their initial participation.

Providing scientific evidence supporting not only the effectiveness of music in achieving health outcomes, but sustaining these changes over time is something that could revolutionise modern approaches to healthcare, in terms of wellbeing promotion and alternative medicinal treatments. Fancourt is continuing to explore an array of such possibilities, as evident from her current involvement in research projects such as Music & Motherhood, which assesses the impact of creative interventions such as singing on the symptoms of postnatal depression, and Sing With Us, which will assess the effectiveness of choral singing as an intervention for cancer patients and their carers. Both studies will employ both psychological and physiological measures to further explore the fascinating relationship between mind, body and music; an enigma that has forever intrigued us as a species.

By Jessica Akkermans, Fiona Brien & Sarah Collin

References

Fancourt, D. (2013) Medicine musica: the eighteenth-century rationalization of music and medicine. Hektoen International Journal. Retrieved from: http://www.hektoeninternational.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3:medicine-musica-the-eighteenth-century-rationalization-of-music-and-medicine&catid=77:music-box&Itemid=611

Fancourt, D., Ockelford, A., Belai, A. (2014). The psychoneuroimmunological effects of music: a systematic review and a new model. Brain Behav Immun 36: 15–26.

Fancourt, D. (2015). An Introduction to the Psychoneuroimmunology of Music: History, Future Collaboration and a Research Agenda. Psychology of Music: 1-15.

Fancourt, D., Aufegger, L., and Williamon, A. (2015). Low-stress and high-stress singing have contrasting effects on glucocorticoid response. Front. Psychol. 6:1242. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01242

Fancourt, D., Perkins, R., Ascenso, S., Atkins, L., Kilfeather, S., Carvalho, L., Steptoe, A., & Williamon, A. (2015). Group Drumming Modulates Cytokine Response in Mental Health Services Users: A Preliminary Study. Psychotherapy and psychosomatics, 85(1), 53-55.

Fancourt, D., Williamon, A., Carvalho, L. A., Steptoe, A., Dow, R., & Lewis, I. (2016). Singing modulates mood, stress, cortisol, cytokine and neuropeptide activity in cancer patients and carers. ecancermedicalscience, 10.

 

Music and Language Learning

Quite frankly, the number of time that I have started, and failed, to learn a second language is embarrassing. Despite my best intentions, I can never seem to stick with it for longer than a couple of weeks at most. One of the main reasons for my constant failure is my perceived lack of progress. Words that I had spent a few days mastering would suddenly disappear from my mind as I would stare blankly at my computer screen trying to remember the German word for ‘fruit’. I’m sure I’m not alone in my failed endeavours. Thankfully, the work done by Vicky Williamson could provide you and I with the tools necessary to finally succeed in becoming bilingual. And the key to success might just lie in music.

Ask a student how they study for exams, and more than a few will tell you that they like to have music on in the background. They claim that it can help them focus on the task at hand. For others, the presence of music is a distractor, making it almost impossible to concentrate on anything else other than the melody that is playing. Previous work by Thompson et al in 2001 demonstrated that listening to music can relieve boredom and fatigue, and was even able to show that the Mozart Effect (an idea based off the 1993 study by Rauscher, Shaw and Ky that showed that listening to Mozart increased spatial-reasoning skills on a task. This idea was widely misinterpreted that listening to Mozart could help increase IQ) was an artefact of music increasing arousal and mood.  Therefore, music in a general sense can helps us perform better in tasks. But is that all there is to it? The research would suggest that there is a slightly more complex interaction between music and language.

Williamson argues that there is a shared overlap in memory processes between music and language, and it is this that can allow music to enhance our learning of another tongue.  Functional magnetic imaging studies (fMRI) have shown that, in comparable memory tasks for both, there is a similar overlap in brain regions that are activated (Koelsch et al, 2009). Additionally, a study by Ho et al in 2003 was able to show that musical training can improve verbal memory in children. Those who were studying music had better verbal memory than those not and, a year later, those who continued studying music had a better verbal memory than either those who had never learnt, or those who had given up learning. There was no effect of musical training on visual memory, suggesting that there is a special relationship between music and language that could possibly be exploited when it comes to teaching yourself another language.

Having established that there is a relationship between the two, the question then becomes whether there is an overlap in terms of rehearsal or encoding of information. In an experiment by Schaal et al, 2015, participants were given transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) in the supramarginal gyrus during the encoding stage and retention stage of a pitch memory task. TMS emits a magnetic pulse that induces activity within the underlying neurons. The supramarginal gyrus is traditionally associated with language perception and processing. Therefore, if stimulation of this area results in a change in a pitch memory task, it would suggest that the two domains are linked. They were able to show that TMS during the retention stage led to an increase in reaction time when compared to controls, whilst there was no effect ton reaction time in the encoding condition. Therefore, there seems to be an overlap in rehearsal between music and language.

Whilst this is highly interesting, and it is useful to know about the relationship between these two domains, I’m still not closer to knowing what I can do to actually learn a language. Thankfully, an experiment by Kang and Williamson in 2012 might just be able to help. They theorised that simple instrumental music would help people in learning a second language, and employed the use of ‘earworms’, an audio CD where learning a language it set to background music. Taking the two most bought CDs (Arabic and Mandarin), they tested 32 participants learning one of the languages for two weeks, spending about 30 minutes each day on learning. Some would be learning with music in the background, and others would learn without music. They were tested on their ability to recall from their native language to the language that they were learning, and their ability to translate from the learnt language to their first language. Additionally, they were rated on their ability to pronounce the new words that they had been learning by native speakers on a scale of 1-9 and asked to keep a diary about their enjoyment and achievement when learning.  Interestingly, there was no effect of music when it came to learning Arabic. Both recall and translation stayed roughly the same between the two groups, and there was no improvement in pronunciation.  However, when it came to learning Mandarin, music did play an important role; those who learnt with music in the background had better recall and translation abilities compared to those learning without music. Nevertheless, there was still no effect on pronunciation.

Why would music affect Mandarin but not Arabic? This is difficult to answer. Reviewers for the paper claimed that, as Mandarin is a tonal language, music could have more of an influence. However, Williamson argues that, if this was the case, there also should have been a difference in pronunciation. For now, this will have to remain a mystery until further work is done.

Will I finally be able to master another language after years of trying by using music? The work done by Williamson suggests that this is certainly a possibility, although it does seem that music is better suited for helping us learn a more tonal language. Maybe it’s time for me to switch from trying to learn German to learning Mandarin.

Yǔ gǎnxiè Dr Williamson.

Zàijiàn.

David Budd

 

References:

Ho, Y., Cheung, M., Chan, A. (2003). Music training improves verbal but not visual memory: Cross-sectional and longitudinal explorations in children. Neuropsychology, 17(3), 439-450.

Kang, J., Williamson, V. (2014) Background music can aid second language learning. Psychology of Music. 42(5), 728-747

Koelsch, S., K. Schulze, D. Sammler, et al. 2009. Functional architecture of verbal and tonal working memory: an FMRI study. Hum. Brain Mapp, 30, 859– 873.

Rauscher, F.H. , Shaw, G.L. & Ky, K.N. (1993). Music and spatial task performance. Nature, 365, 611.

Schaal, N., Williamson, V.,  Kelly, M., Muggleton, N., Bannisy, M. (2015). Time-specific involvement of the left SMG during the retention of musical pitches. Cortex, 64, 310–317

Thompson, W., Schellenberg, E., Husain, G. (2001).  Arousal, Mood, and The Mozart Effect. Psychological Science, 12(3), 248-251.

 

 

Did Marilyn Actually Sing in Tune?

Reporting on a talk by Pauline Larrouy-Maestri from the Max Plank Institute for Empirical Aesthetics in Germany, with an academic background in psychology, speech therapy, music, and pedagogy, 12th November 2015

May 1962 Birthday Salute to the President. Marilyn Monroe sings “Happy Birthday”. New York, New York, Madison Square Garden. Please credit “Cecil Stoughton, White House/John Fitzgerald Kennedy Library, Boston”.

Marilyn Monroe singing Happy Birthday to American president John F. Kennedy

Did Marilyn actually sing in tune? Sounds simple, but according to Pauline Larrouy-Maestri there are many factors that contribute to our perception of whether a singer is ‘in tune’ or ‘out of tune’. In a talk given to the Music Mind and Brain class, she explained that although we can perceive very small deviations in mistuning, this does not always hamper our enjoyment of a performance. Even operatic singers don’t always sing in tune. When Larrouy-Maestri, Magis and Morsomme (2014a) objectively measured it. They showed that their singing voice can deviate up to 100 cents from a target tone, which is way more than we would usually find acceptable in a different type of singer; but somehow it can still sound ok to the listener! As bizarre as this sounds, this is because the fundamental frequency is only one factor amongst other aspects such as shimmer, jitter, vibrato, tempo or timbre (Larrouy-Maestri, Magis and Morsomme, 2014b) in their singing performance.

Trained operatic singer ‘Brunnhilde’ from Wagner’s opera Die Walkure

Focusing on performances of occasional singers (i.e. without specific vocal training), Pauline Larrouy-Maestri, Lévêque, Schön, Giovanni, and Morsomme (2013) started a series of experiments to see what aspects of singing lead listeners to hear incorrect intonation. In one of their earliest experiments in 2013, 166 sung performances of happy birthday were analyzed in terms of error using computer softwares (Larrouy-Maestri & Morsomme, 2014) and then by eighteen judges with musical expertise. They then compared the judges ratings to errors identified objectively by the computer software, and confirmed that deviation from target intervals, was subjectively considered as an error by the listeners. More recently, they replicated this study with laymen, i.e., judges without any formal training in music and found a similar pattern of results (Larrouy-Maestri, Magis, Grabenhorst, & Morsomme, 2015). These studies confirm that the more an interval is deviated, the more the performance will be perceived as out of tune. But if this is so, where does out of tune singing end and in tune singing begin?

“Will the real Slim Shady please stand up?”

Rhythm in speech and music

“May I have your attention please?”

Do you remember back in 2000, when Marshall Mathers, better known as Eminem, tried to find out who “The Real Slim Shady” was? You might have known immediately that he was referring to his alter ego, but would you have considered yourself a Slim Shady? If so, you were right.

In their latest series of experiments, published in the journals Proceedings of the Royal Society B and Hearing Research, Manon Grube of the University of Newcastle (UK) and her team have found out it is actually not only rappers who need an understanding of rhythm in their language, we all do.

While talking, people put together sequences of rhythmic and melodic patterns to convey their intentions. If the rhythm was “wrong” in some way, the message can easily be misunderstood (Imagine Marshall Mathers asking for your attention in this way: “Ma-y-I-ha-ve-you-r-at-ten-tion-plea-se?”). This may be why many rappers tend to carry a strong sense of time, not only when spitting bars with a good flow, but also when plainly speaking.

One of the studies (Grube et al., 2012) showed how closely related the phonological skill you need to speak is to the ability to process short sequences of rhythmic patterns. 238 eleven-year-olds from a school in Newcastle were given standard language & intelligence tests and had their pitch and rhythm perception tested. Specifically, the ability to perceive isochrony violations in short sequences reveals a link between rhythm perception and speech processing, where anisochrony detection is the ability to notice when something is ‘just’ out of time (‘off-beat’). In short, if you are better at detecting whether something is just off-beat, then you will likely be better at processing language and even at producing speech. In a follow-up study (Grube et al. 2014), to test whether this was true for people with atypical development, 28 students with dyslexic traits from the same school underwent the same procedure and the results were not replicated, meaning it was only the case for typically developing children.

In a further study of 24 undergraduates (2013), Grube et al. found that the rhythm perception for longer, more complex ‘roughly regular’ sequences played a role in language processing, specifically in reading. This differed from the 11 year-olds, for whom the perception for shorter rhythmic sequences was more important. In their present work at TU Berlin, Grube and colleagues are tracing the neural time signature of the processing of more complex sequences with a ‘pseudo-rhythmic’ beat similar to that of speech.

“And every single person is a Slim Shady lurking”

If so, where is this rhythm processing taking place?

In preceding studies on these aspects of rhythm perception, Grube and colleagues showed evidence, using techniques varying from transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) (Grube et al., 2010; Teki et al., 2011), that specific brain areas play a differential role in processing different kinds of timing mechanisms. Teki et al. (2011) measured the perception of rhythmic timing in the human brain using fMRI and found what is shown in the picture (in grey yellow and green). When participants focused on the absolute duration of a series of time intervals, the cerebellum and inferior olive (marked yellow in the picture), was activated. However, when participants perceived time intervals compared to a regular beat, the putamen and the neocortex (green), were activated. In most recent work, Grube et al. (in prep.) investigated which brain structures supports rhythm processing and its relationship with speech and language skill during adolescent development. Using structural MRI on 42 participants, their initial results suggest that parts of the cerebellum are specific for rhythm, whilst an area around the left intra-parietal sulcus supports the relationship with language.

“So won’t the real Slim Shady please stand up […]?”

What can impairments tell us about these regions?

The cerebellum is one part of the brain that is involved largely in motor control. In 2010, Grube et al. found that patients with cerebellar degeneration showed a significant deficit in duration-, but not beat-based timing, supporting the existence of functionally distinct aspects of rhythm processing. The basal ganglia, a structure consisting of many nuclei including the putamen, controls our voluntary motor movements and is involved in learning and emotion processes. In 2014, Cope et al. found that patients with basal ganglia disease showed deficiencies in both duration- and beat-based tasks. This finding provides evidence for some functional link, i.e. a differential involvement of both types of perceptual timing (Teki et al., 2012) as opposed to the clear function divide suggested by Teki et al. (2011). Consistent with this, Launay et al. (2014) found that participants with dysrhythmia showed an opposite dissociation; an impairment in beat-, but not duration-based timing. In conclusion, these findings provide evidence for a more complex model of rhythm processing in humans than has been previously proposed.

This research is still very much in its early stages, and a fantastic insight into the way we understand ourselves, our faculties of action and perception and the role for timing in them. Further examination will need to be conducted in order to reveal just how the basal ganglia and cerebellum and cortex interact in rhythm perception and speech production. The finding that a strong sense of rhythm can affect our propensity for language is bound to lead on to many interesting investigations in the future. With this in mind Eminem seems to be right in saying:

“Guess there’s a Slim Shady in all of us […] let’s all stand up.”

Written by: Natalie Kohler, Sarah Charles & Connor Higgins, based on a lecture given by Dr. Manon Grube (Thursday 29th October, 2015)

References:

Eminem (2000). The Real Slim Shady. The Marshall Mathers LP, Aftermath Entertainment.

Cope, T. E., Grube, M., Singh, B., Burn, D. J. & Griffiths, T. D. (2014). The basal ganglia in perceptual timing: Timing performance in Multiple System Atrophy and Huntington’s disease. Neuropsychologia, 52, 73-81.

Grube, M., Cooper, F. E., Chinnery, P. F. & Griffiths, T. D. (2010). Dissociation of duration-based and beat-based auditory timing in cerebellar degeneration. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 107(25), 11597-11601.

Grube, M., Cooper, F. E. & Griffiths, T. D. (2013). Auditory temporal-regularity processing correlates with language and literacy skill in early adulthood. Cognitive neuroscience, 4(3-4), 225-230.

Grube, M., Kumar, S., Cooper, F. E., Turton, S. & Griffiths, T. D. (2012). Auditory sequence analysis and phonological skill. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences, 279(1746), 4496-4504.

Launay, J., Grube, M., & Stewart, L. (2014). Dysrhythmia: a specific congenital rhythm perception deficit. Frontiers in psychology, 5.

Teki S., Grube M., Griffiths T.D.. (2012) A unified model of time perception accounts for both duration-based and beat-based timing mechanisms. Front Integr Neurosci 5, 90.

Teki, S., Grube, M., Kumar, S. & Griffiths, T. D. (2011). Distinct neural substrates of duration-based and beat-based auditory timing. The Journal of Neuroscience, 31(10), 3805-3812.

Picture 1: http://www.collegedj.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Dr-Dre-Eminem.jpg (viewed: November 16, 2015).

Picture 2: Teki, S., Grube, M., Kumar, S. & Griffiths, T. D. (2011). Distinct neural substrates of duration-based and beat-based auditory timing. The Journal of Neuroscience, 31(10), 3810.

The evolution of music: how our understanding of music’s origins in group bonding may benefit us in our age of loneliness

We are told we are entering the “age of loneliness” (Monbiot, 2014). This term is utilised here to describe our apparent human social decline, caused by a combination of factors including the breakdown of communities, our ever-increasing population and most recently, the rise of social media. Huge numbers of people are reporting that they feel lonely, both young and old, with the negative effects of loneliness on our health becoming upsettingly clear (Perry, 2015).

Scientists have shown links between an absence of social relationships and deterioration in mental and physical health (Lim & Young, 2006), with recent studies suggesting that social isolation may have an impact comparable to the effects of high blood pressure, obesity and smoking (Cacioppo & Patrick, 2008). Public awareness is increasing too, as reflected in the Christmas 2015 advertising campaign led by John Lewis and Age UK, which highlighted elderly loneliness with the slogan: “show someone that they are loved this Christmas”.

A still from the 2015 John Lewis & Age UK Christmas Advertising Campaign. Watch the advert here.

Given the effect of loneliness on our health and wellbeing, it is important for us to understand the most effective ways to combat it. Increasing our ability for ‘social bonding’ is key, which is our perceived sense of closeness or connectedness to others. It has been well documented that the ability of music can impact positively on our subjective well-being (Denora, 2015; Hodges & Sebald, 2011; Sacks, 2010). It now appears that musical activity and in particular group singing may provide an effective solution to loneliness. To understand why, we look to the work of Dr Jacques Launay, a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Oxford, whose work aims to create a model comprising of research into the many aspects of music as an evolutionary tool for facilitating social bonding.

In contrast to other evolutionary theories of music, such as music and sexual selection (Miller, 2000), or music as a by-product of existing evolved traits such as language development (Honing & Ploeger, 2012; Patel, 2008; Pinker, 1997), Dr Jacques Launay suggests that music developed into an evolved ‘technology’ for social bonding. Launay points to experimental evidence that many facets of group music making, including shared attention and synchronisation, combined together are powerful tools for social bonding. In evolutionary terms, our ability to bond with others holds clear benefits in mutual cooperation, and may have been particularly important as we evolved from living in smaller groups to larger complex societies (Richerson & Boyd, 2001).

Social bonding in action with Popchoir

Research has shown that engaging in exertive rhythmic activities, such as musical interaction through synchronised movements releases endorphins: hormones associated with social behaviour, demonstrated in laughter and synchronised sports. Endorphin release encourages social bonding, a feeling of connectivity, and positive affect – all factors that are important for health and happiness in humans. Self-other merging through synchronising dance moves with others also functions as a mechanism that encourages social bonding (Tarr et al., 2014).

Group singing, in particular, has shown to enhance social closeness. In Pearce’s (2015) study with singing, craft and creative writing groups, all activities increased the closeness that individuals felt to ‘strangers’ within their group. Interestingly, the singing group established much quicker social bonds than the non-singing activities, suggesting that singing works as an ‘ice-breaker effect’. Weinstein and colleagues (2015) focused on social bonding within choirs, indicating that larger choirs achieved greater group closeness with one another compared to smaller choirs. These findings suggest that communal singing in larger groups causes greater social closeness, as singing may bypass the need for personal knowledge concerning other individuals, which would be required in more intimate relationships. This research supports evolutionary ideas of music in establishing social bonds, and that evidently the larger the group size the larger the social network was for survival, hence why group bonding scales up (Dunbar, 2003).

The ice-breaker effect

However, achieving social bonding is not as simple as merely singing and dancing together. Although classified as ‘low-level components’, research has shown that the interaction of joint attention, shared goals and success – all involved in music making – are particularly important (Wolf et al., 2015). As shared intentions create common psychological ground, as well as enabling collaborative activities and cooperative communication (Tomasello & Carpenter 2007).

Overall, research has been suggestive in showing music facilitating social bonding. However, the exact mechanisms behind which aspects of singing encourage group bonding, and in particular, faster group bonding in the ‘ice-breaker effect’ are not yet known. In the ice-breaker study, the singing activities shared a common goal of creating a musical piece together, whereas the craft and creative writing activities worked on individual projects. Therefore, shared success, attention and goals need to be explored to understand their effects on how quickly social bonding occurs in different activities. Also, the synchronicity and the somewhat exertive behaviour of the singing group differed greatly from the other activities, thus, activities that also incorporate these behaviours should be compared (Pearce et al., 2015).

Shared goals and shared intentions impact positively on social bonding

Though it is a compelling proposition, given the multi-faceted nature of Dr Jacques Launay’s theory of music’s evolution for social bonding, the experimental evidence to support its many aspects is currently limited. Despite this, much of the supporting research highlights the benefits of music for social bonding and this, in turn, can be used to raise public awareness, fund charity work and guide future implementation into health applications.

We may have entered the age of loneliness, but such research in music psychology may provide an avenue to escape it. Breaking the ice through group singing with shared attention, goals and success with others can provide a means to improve our social bonds.

As with many other activities that can benefit closeness, including sports and dance (Mueller, Agamanolis & Picard, 2003), what is key to Launay’s research is that the origins of group music making may mean singing helps create bonds much quicker than other activities. This is a promising step in the research field and if one were to create a perfect tool for social bonding, music might be it.

If you or someone you know is suffering from loneliness, then it may be worth investigating what opportunities exist locally for group singing. There is a growing culture of community choirs and charities – including the Popchoir featured in some of Launay’s research, and the National Association of Choirs.

Blog by Saoirse Finn, Marie Raae, Thomas Baker

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This blog was written following Dr Jacques Launay’s presentation to Goldsmiths’ Music, Mind and Brain students on 6^th December 2015 as part of the ‘Invited Speaker’ series.

For more details on the Music, Mind and Brain MSc, please visit: http://www.gold.ac.uk/pg/msc-music-mind-brain/.

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References:

Cacioppo, J. T., & Patrick, W. (2008). Loneliness: Human nature and the need for social connection. WW Norton & Company.

DeNora, T. (2015). Music Asylums: Wellbeing through music in everyday life. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd..

Dunbar, R. I. (2003). The origin and subsequent evolution of language. In: M. H. Christiansen & S. Kirby (Eds.), Language Evolution (pp. 219–234). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Hodges, D. A., & Sebald, D. C. (2011). Music in the human experience: An introduction to music psychology (pp. 178-190). New York: Routledge.

Honing, H., & Ploeger, A. (2012). Cognition and the evolution of music: Pitfalls and prospects. Topics in cognitive science, 4(4), 513-524.

Lim, M. M., & Young, L. J. (2006). Neuropeptidergic regulation of affiliative behavior and social bonding in animals. Hormones and behavior, 50(4), 506-517.

Miller, G. F. (2000). Evolution of human music through sexual selection. In Wallin, N. L., & Merker, B. (2001). The origins of music. MIT press.

Monbiot, G. (2014). The age of loneliness is killing us. 14 October 2014.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/oct/14/age-of-loneliness-killing-us

Mueller, F., Agamanolis, S., & Picard, R. (2003). Exertion interfaces: sports over a distance for social bonding and fun. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems (pp. 561-568). ACM.

Patel, A.D. (2008). Music, Language, and the Brain. NY: Oxford Univ. Press.

Pearce, E., Launay, J., & Dunbar, R. I. (2015). The ice-breaker effect: singing mediates fast social bonding. Royal Society open science, 2(10), 150221.

Perry, P. (2015). Loneliness is dangerous: ignore it at your peril. http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/oct/23/loneliness-health-dangerous-old-age-death

Pinker, S. (1997). How the Mind Works. London: Allen Lane.

Richerson, P. J., & Boyd, R. (2001). Institutional evolution in the Holocene: the rise of complex societies. In Proceedings – British Academy (Vol. 110, pp. 197-234). Oxford University Press Inc.

Sacks, O. (2010). Musicophilia: Tales of music and the brain. Vintage Canada.

Tarr, B., Launay, J., & Dunbar, R. I. (2014). Music and social bonding:“self-other” merging and neurohormonal mechanisms. Frontiers in psychology, 5.

Tomasello, M., & Carpenter, M. (2007). Shared intentionality. Developmental science, 10(1), 121-125.

Weinstein, D., Launay, J., Pearce, E., Dunbar, R. I., & Stewart, L. (2015). Singing and social bonding: changes in connectivity and pain threshold as a function of group size. Evolution and Human Behavior.

Wolf, W., Launay, J., & Dunbar, R. I. (2015). Joint attention, shared goals, and social bonding. British Journal of Psychology.

Ritchie,S. (2015). Intelligence: All that matters. London: John Murray Learning.

Surely, being a full-time academic in a psychology department I shouldn’t be reading a teeny-tiny book on intelligence like this 115-page introduction. Instead you would think that I was  equipped to take on one of the many massive and excellent textbooks that are out there on the topic. But I’ve discovered that reading short books can generate a different kind of satisfaction (you can pat yourself on the back if you finish it within a week!) that thick books can hardly provide, especially if the short one is as well-written and entertaining as this little book by Stuart Ritchie.

What I was hoping to get out of it when I ordered the book for Goldsmiths Library was a quick overview of the current state of the debate on some of the thorny issues that surround the psychological construct of intelligence and questions of how to test for it. For example, how strong is the evidence for the general intelligence factor (‘very strong’), how heritable is intelligence (‘about 50% heritability’), what does the genetic basis of intelligence look like (‘it is polygenic, i.e. at least several hundreds of genes can contribute it’), what are the brain correlates of intelligence (‘strong connections between frontal and parietal parts of the brain’), is there any effective training to increase your intelligence (‘for a while it looked like  working memory training with n-back tasks would make you generally smarter but the initial findings don’t seem to replicate well’) or how many different tests does a comprehensive test battery need to include (not really answered). Of course you could get these answers from individual research or review papers or indeed form the big textbooks but you would have to wade through a lot of pages to find these answers. Naturally, there is a danger that a very short book leaves out a lot of the complexity and controversy of the actual scientific discourse and over-simplifies matters, just to make a neat story fit into 115 pages.

But Stuart Ritchie does not make this mistake. I think this is one of the greatest strengths of this short book: that it provides answers to all those interesting questions around intelligence based on the scientific evidence currently available, but at the same time he also tells the reader how certain or shaky the current evidence is – whether we are talking about results that have been replicated dozens of times (e.g. brain volume correlates with intelligence positively but the correlation is very small) or whether evidence is only building up currently or could be confounded by other factors (e.g. potential positive link between breast-feeding and intelligence).

Obviously, given the size of the book, Ritchie had to compromise somehow and he does so by not even attempting to give exhaustive views on any of the questions. Instead he uses the results of only one or two studies to demonstrate research findings in an exemplary way. Therefore, many of the chapters read like cliff-hangers where you really want to know the full story now. But that is good and probably the best effect that Ritchie could have hoped to achieve.

In this respect the final section of the book ‘100 idea to help you explore intelligence more’ is truly effective. The section doesn’t just contain lists of important papers,  textbooks and living as well as dead intelligence researchers, but also gives links to a list of very active research websites as well as for example fictional characters known for high v. low intelligence (e.g. ‘Marvin the robot from Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy v. ‘Homer Simpson’). Finally, the list that took me completely, was the ’surprising things that correlate with higher intelligence’ which lists facebook-liking of the 70s gangster drama The Godfather, where I felt very much vindicated for all these long hours in front of the screen. Now, who said intelligence research didn’t matter?

Daniel Müllensiefen