At 2:58 AM -0400 8/1/05, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
If anybody would like to weigh in on whether they think this is science or crackpottery, I'd be interested. The journal itself is totally legit, btw.
http://www.neuropsychiatryreviews.com/sep02/npr_sep02_brainmusic.html
Oh, it's science all right, but very, very very very preliminary
science at best. A study with only 18 subjects, carefully
selected so as to avoid arbitrarily predetermined contra-indications,
is so overcontrolled that it cannot be statistically linked to the
general population. Statistics deals with groups--like the 1,200
usually used for phone surveys--and never individuals.
Without knowing more details, I also instinctively question what
seem to be totally arbitrary criteria for transforming brain waves
into "music." And the mention of "choice of 120
instruments" makes it pretty clear that they're using a MIDI
sound bank, which may mirror actual instruments but probably does
not.
This is the kind of study designed by scientists without any
input from musicians, like other studies of absolute pitch. Any
one of us--well, any one of us with a minimal background in
experimental design--could point out the problems that they have
ignored. The assumption that "music" produced by one's
own brain waves is more relaxing than "music" produced by
someone else's brain waves has NOT been established to any useful
degree of statistical reliability, and that is what--the ONLY thing
that--they were examining in this study. The crux of the matter
remains the arbitrary transform of EEG readings into
"music." At this point I'd classify their results as
strikingly less reliable than the "Mozart Effect"!
(Of course I still don't understand what "music therapy"
is or what "music therapists" do!)
John
--
John & Susie Howell
Virginia Tech Department of Music
Blacksburg, Virginia, U.S.A 24061-0240
Vox (540) 231-8411 Fax (540) 231-5034
(mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED])
http://www.music.vt.edu/faculty/howell/howell.html
Virginia Tech Department of Music
Blacksburg, Virginia, U.S.A 24061-0240
Vox (540) 231-8411 Fax (540) 231-5034
(mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED])
http://www.music.vt.edu/faculty/howell/howell.html
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