2018 – Dissertation Defense for PhD in Computer-Based Music Theory and Acoustics.
Download slides here.
For performers and listeners, actively processing time during musical sequences is essential for executing and understanding the underlying expression and structure in music. In this dissertation, top-down temporal processing is manipulated in a unique paradigm designed to drive the deliberate processes that musicians regularly engage in. Musicians were required to voluntarily modulate temporally-oriented attention while listening to and anticipating accelerations, decelerations, or steady beats after visual cues. Their electroencephalograms were recorded (1) during the latter task, (2) while they continued to monitor the beat sequences for continuity and smoothness during the actual tempo changes, and (3) after each sequence finished. In the defense talk, the neural correlates of the three phases are examined in detail.