Contemporary Rhythmic Approaches to Cognition and the Jaques-Dalcroze

Method

34th International Congrès de RhythmeGeneva 2007

About the Presenter...

•Education

• M. Mus. Piano Performance, The Juilliard School; Certified Feldenkrais Practitioner, Feldenkrais Movement Institute; Dalcroze License (in progress), Longy School of Music

•Affiliations

• Eurhythmics Instructor, Mannes College of Music, New York; Theory Faculty, Special Music School, New York; Director, Music Skills Program, Music Conservatory of Westchester

Cognitive Eurhythmics

•Combines Dalcroze & Feldenkrais to address learning and behavioral difficulties in special needs children

•Uses movement responses to music to train new behavior patterns

•Dalcroze Eurhythmics: 100-year-old method in perfect accord with contemporary theories on rhythm, movement and mind

Rhythm, Mind and Brain: 3 Nested

Levels•Rhythm in “Neurological Time”

(Prestissimo)

•Rhythm in “Psychological Time” (Andante)

•Rhythm in “Developmental Time” (Largo)

Rhythm in Neurological Time•Old Model: Identity in Neural

Architecture

•Early Electrode Experiments

•New Model: Identity = Architecture + Rhythm

•Plasticity/Indeterminacy

• Identity in firing patterns of neuronal groups

Rabbit Olfactory Bulb

• Entire bulb fires during act of smelling

• Frequency & rhythm of neuronal activity specific to particular smell

• Scientists can identify what rabbit is smelling through analyzing rhythms of olfactory bulb (not architecture)

Sawtoothed Waves

•Buzsaki Lab (Rutgers)

•During sleep, areas of brain that are learning fire occasional saw-toothed wave forms

The Resonance of Fireflies

•Numerous fireflies blink in coordination over large distances

•Fundamental biological mechanisms of resonance and entrainment

Resonance and Entrainment in the

Brain•Llinàs Lab (NYU)

•Allows distant modules/neuronal groups to keep to same “clock”

•Central “conductors” include Thalamus (40 Hz) and Inferior Olive (10 Hz)

•Identity and Action are rhythmic coordinations

Brain as Closed, Rhythmic System

•Brain often thought of as input-output machine

•Brain “closed system” like heart - mostly preoccupied with internal actions, constantly pulsating with rhythmic activity

•Most of brain’s tasks are “short-lived” acts of prediction - R. Llinàs

Rhythms in Psychological Time

•Experiences within threshold of awareness

Perception and Self-Motion

• Theory of Information Pickup/Ecological Psychology (James & Eleanor Gibson, Cornell U.)

• Perception operates in coordination with self-motion

• Perceive “ambient optic array” in which we detect invariances

• Perception is detection of pattern in movement over time - rhythmic

Rhythmic Model of Attention

•Mari R. Jones (Ohio State U.)

• Traditional model of attention: Resource Capacity

•Rhythmic Model:

•Attention Synchronizes with Dynamic Patterns of Stimuli

• Partners with Perceptual & Motor Learning to develop increasingly sophisticated rhythmic “attentional shapes”

Phrase-Based Communication

• “Naive” Approach: One Word After Another

• “the sequential elements are organized in terms of relative timing [with] the breath group, a phrase-like unit, as the domain of the pattern [...] the locus of relative timing is the accented element” (James G. Martin)

• Accented element in phrase breaks rhythmic expectations

• Model of speech perception “should include rhythmic expectancy component” (Martin)

Prosody

•Where pitch meets rhythm in human cognition

•Allows for more sophisticated predictive structures to be established

•Enables more sophisticated communication without taxing short-term memory/cognitive load (Madlyn L. Hanes, Penn State U.)

Speech Recoding

•Internal recreation of prosody/music of written words

•Required for reading; demonstrated absent in many learning disabilities (Hanes)

Resonant Kinematics

•Functional action is a resonance between rhythms inside (neurological) and rhythms outside (dynamic patterns of environment) (Roger Shepard, Stanford U.)

•Can activities from the Méthode Jaques-Dalcroze increase functional action?

Musical & Biological Rhythms:

Commensurable?•Musical and biological rhythms: different creatures? (Udo, Sanger & Will)

• Theory of Cognitive Eurhythmics - musical & biological rhythms commensurable through movement

• Through movement to music, music can train cognitive processes & patterns of action, improving learning and developmental disability

Examples: Beat

•Coordination of beat requires coordination of varied motor actions under umbrella of prediction

•Clap & Count, Step & Count

•Ball Bouncing & “Social Boundaries”

Examples: Measure

•Attention rests on establishment of hierarchy

•Attention deficit connects to lack of ability to establish hierarchy

•Measure games - demand creation of hierarchy - help attention

Examples: Phrase

•Communication in special needs children often lacking in musicality, musical diversity

•Coordinating movement with Mother Goose can develop more prosodic speaking and listening