Music-evoked Brain Plasticity
Introduction:
Our research in the Music-evoked Plasticity Group focuses on the pivotal role of music in stimulating emotional experiences. We hypothesise that controlling musical sounds combined with high effort engages emotional motor control resources, which work in concert with voluntary motor control. This interventional stimulation can be advantageous for:
- Compensating for voluntary motor control deficits after neurodegeneration
- Maximizing physical functioning during strenuous tasks
- Allowing individuals with emotional processing disorders to experience emotions in a defined/safe scenario
- Enhancing aspects of cognitive processing
Core Research Hypothesis:
Our core research hypothesis posits that carefully guided embodiment of musical actions leads to effective neuro-scientifically informed music therapy interventions.
We believe that activities combining musical agency (modulation of musical sounds as the goal) increasingly involve emotional processing. In defined circumstances, this is beneficial to cognitive function, motor control, and learning. This benefit likely stems from musical expression drawing on communication processes that are not exclusively under deliberate control, but substantially involve emotional motor control (Holstege et al., 1996).
The repetitive nature of musical sound structure and its inherent pleasantness make music an ideal tool for repetitively stimulating new associations between bodily movement and acoustic effect.
Key Research Areas:
Our research agenda at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig has primarily concentrated on the following areas:
- Understanding the neurology and neurochemistry of music processing along different stages of the auditory pathway
- Measuring the effect of musical agency on motor learning and cognition
- Investigating differences in physiological signatures between motor control with and without musical agency
- Development of new types of music-supported rehabilitation and learning technologies
- Research with clinical populations, testing if effects of the novel musical embodiment technologies transfer to medical rehabilitation
Research Objectives:
Our current and future research objectives aim to further our understanding of music-evoked plasticity and its therapeutic applications:
- Understanding the level setting system determining arousal and coordinating the interplay of voluntary and emotional motor control
- Investigating parameters that lead to stronger emotional engagement in the interaction of arousal and musical activities
- Optimising interventions for clinical populations suffering from neurodegeneration, disorders of consciousness, and emotional disorders
Cooperations:
- Institute for Psychoacoustics and Electronic Music, University of Ghent
- Department of Statistics and Operations Research, Institute of Mathematics, University of Granada, Granada, Spain
- Department of Data Analysis, University of Ghent, Ghent, Belgium
- Department of Human-Centered Information Systems, Technical University Clausthal
- Department for Human Machine Interaction and New Media, University of Siegen
- Department of Nuclear Medicine, University of Leipzig
- Clinic for Cognitive Neurology, Leipzig University Hospital
- Neurologisches Rehabilitationszentrum Leipzig
- Department of Medicine, University of Dresden
Additional Information:
The activities of Music-evoked Brain Plasticity group in optimizing the effects of music in rehabilitation has led to creating two patent families around the JYMMiN technology, and the Max Planck science spinoff JYMMiN GmbH, which provides products to rehabilitation clinics. See also the JYMMiN website.
