Prof. Takako Fujioka on Cortical Signatures of Melody and Rhythm Processing
I am pleased to (re)introduce Takako Fujioka to the Hearing Seminar. She spoke a year or two ago at CCRMA, and is now the newest member of the CCRMA faculty. She's interested in studying how our brains respond to music by measuring non-invasive signals such as those from EEG and MEG.
Takako will be talking about her recent work on measuring pre-attentive signals encoding rhythmic and melodic expectations. I think this is really interesting because we want to know how expectations are encoded, and how they affect our perception. This top-down signal is important for understanding music (fun) and the cocktail party effect.
Who: Prof. Takako Fujioka (CCRMA)
What: Cortical Signatures of Melody and Rhythm Processing (and Music-Training Effects)
When: Friday October 5, 2012 at 1:15PM
Where: CCRMA Seminar Room (top floor of the Knoll)
Bring your favorite cortex to the Hearing Seminar and we'll talk about what it does with melody and rhythm.
- Malcolm
Cortical signatures of melody and rhythm processing and Music training effects
By Prof. Takako Fujioka (Stanford CCRMA)
Abstract:
Melody mainly consists of two dimensional structures: pitch and rhythm. Pitch patterns unfolding over time comprise melodies, while rhythmic patterns are interpreted according to a global context of underlying pulse and musical meter. How does our brain process these patterns and how are those processes affected by musical training experience? I will introduce our recent research projects asking these questions. Numerous studies including ours have revealed that melodic information is encoded pre-attentively in the auditory cortex to a memory template used for comparison to an incoming sound. We have shown increased amplitude of the cortical responses and its modulation based on their music training characteristics. Also preliminary data about the effects of short-term piano training in the elderly non-musicians will be discussed.
Bio:
Prof. Takako Fujioka earned Master’s degree in Electrical Enginnering in Waseda University, Tokyo Japan and Ph.D in physiology at National Institute for Physiological Sciences, Japan. Her post-doctoral and research-associate work at Rotman Research Institute in Toronto, was supported by awards from Canadian Institutes of Health Research. Her research continues to explore biological nature of human musical ability by examining brain activities with non-invasive human neurophysiological measures such as magnetoencephalography (MEG) and electroencephalography (EEG). Research topics include neural oscillations for auditory perception, auditory-motor coupling, brain plasticity in development and aging, recovery from stroke with music-supported therapy, and re-learning of speech and music after cochlear implantation.