Papers by Birgitta Burger
Nordic Journal of Music Therapy, 2019
Introduction: Chronic pain is a worldwide issue with common comorbidities of depression and anxie... more Introduction: Chronic pain is a worldwide issue with common comorbidities of depression and anxiety, altogether inhibiting one’s personal relationships and capability to work. Music has long been used as a means to improve pain and mood, and the tactile application of music has shown promising and beneficial results for the treatment of both psychological and physical symptoms. VA treatment uses low-frequency sinusoidal sound vibration (20–120 Hz) supported by client-preferred music listening and therapeutic
interaction. Methods: Using mixed methods, this study addresses the addition of a self-care VA intervention to maintain the effects of practitioner-led VA treatments and to increase patients’ independence in managing their symptoms. After baseline measurements, VA treatment was delivered to five patients at a rehabilitation unit by a trained VA practitioner, followed by self-care at home and a washout phase with no treatments. Quantitative outcome measures included Visual Analogue Scales for pain and mood, and Beck’s Depression Inventory and the anxiety subscale of Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale. Qualitative data comprised practitioner clinical notes and participant evaluation forms.
Results: Quantitative outcomes suggest VA treatment is beneficial for pain and mood relief and that a self-care intervention has the potential to prolong positive outcomes. Qualitative findings suggest that patients found the sessions at the hospital useful and empowering but the self-care treatments comparatively weak. Discussion: Future studies may address the difficulty in conducting self-care and the importance of the client–practitioner relationship in supporting this activity for
those suffering from chronic pain and comorbid mood disorders.
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This paper describes some of the experiences the authors have had collecting continuous motion ca... more This paper describes some of the experiences the authors have had collecting continuous motion capture data on Finnish Sign Language in the motion capture laboratory of the Department of Music at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland. Monologue and dialogue data have been recorded with an eight-camera optical motion capture system by tracking, at a frame rate of 120 Hz, the three-dimensional locations of small ball-shaped reflective markers attached to the signer's hands, arms, head, and torso. The main question from the point of view of data recording concerns marker placement, while the main themes discussed concerning data processing include gap-filling (i.e. the process of interpolating the information of missing frames on the basis of surrounding frames) and the importing of data into ELAN for subsequent segmentation (e.g. into signs and sentences). The paper will also demonstrate how the authors have analyzed the continuous motion capture data from the kinematic perspective.
Approximately 33 million people worldwide survived a stroke in 2010, though most often being seve... more Approximately 33 million people worldwide survived a stroke in 2010, though most often being severely disabled afterwards. Effective acute post-stroke rehabilitation is required to treat patients adequately. Music therapy, music listening, and music-based exercises have been shown to improve cognition, mood, and motor functions of stroke patients. This paper suggests that active music therapy could be beneficial for post-stroke recovery and presents a single case investigation that is part of a larger study. After extensive observational analysis of the video material recorded during music therapy sessions, a simple djembe drum pattern was selected to investigate possible improvement in motor performance. Tests at four time points were recorded with an optical motion capture system and computationally analyzed. Results indicate that muscular strength as well as movement activity and control improved in both the left (impaired) and right (unaffected) hand during the recovery process, potentially suggesting a positive effect of active music therapy on post-stroke rehabilitation.
Journal of Research in Personality
Nine-hundred-and-fifty-two individuals completed the Big Five Inventory, and 60 extreme scorers w... more Nine-hundred-and-fifty-two individuals completed the Big Five Inventory, and 60 extreme scorers were presented with 30 music excerpts from six popular genres. Music-induced movement was recorded by an optical motion-capture system, the data from which 55 postural, kinematic, and kinetic movement features were computed. These features were subsequently reduced to five principal components of movement representing Local Movement, Global Movement, Hand Flux, Head Speed, and Hand Distance. Multivariate Analyses revealed significant effects on these components of both personality and genre, as well as several interactions between the two. Each personality dimension was associated with a different pattern of movement characteristics, with Extraversion and Neuroticism eliciting the clearest relationships. Latin, Techno, and Rock music, meanwhile, most clearly elicited different movement characteristics.
Listening to music makes us move in various ways. Several factors can affect the characteristics ... more Listening to music makes us move in various ways. Several factors can affect the characteristics of these movements, including individual factors, musical features, or perceived emotional content of music. Music is based on regular and repetitive temporal patterns that give rise to a percept of pulse. From these basic metrical structures more complex temporal structures emerge, such as rhythm. It has been suggested that certain rhythmic features can induce movement in humans. Rhythmic structures vary in their degree of complexity and regularity, and one could expect that this variation influences movement patterns -for instance, when moving to rhythmically more complex music, the movements may also be more irregular. To investigating this relationship, sixty participants were presented with 30 musical stimuli representing different genres of popular music. All stimuli were 30 seconds long, non-vocal, and differed in their rhythmic complexity. Optical motion capture was used to record participants' movements. Two movement features were extracted from the data: Spatial Regularity and Temporal Regularity. Additionally, 12 beat-related musical features were extracted from the music stimuli. A subsequent correlational analysis revealed that beat-related musical features influenced the regularity of music-induced movement. In particular, a clear pulse and high percussiveness resulted in small spatial variation of participants' movements, whereas an unclear pulse and low percussiveness led to greater spatial variation of their movements. Additionally, temporal regularity was positively correlated to flux in the low frequencies (e.g., kick drum, bass guitar) and pulse clarity, suggesting that strong rhythmic components and a clear pulse encourage temporal regularity.
Listening to music makes us to move in various ways. Several factors can affect the characteristi... more Listening to music makes us to move in various ways. Several factors can affect the characteristics of these movements, including individual factors and musical features. Additionally, music-induced movement may be shaped by the emotional content of the music. Indeed, the reflection and embodiment of musical emotions through movement is a prevalent assumption within the embodied music cognition framework. This study investigates how music-induced, quasi-spontaneous movement is influenced by the emotional content of music. We recorded the movements of 60 participants (without professional dance background) to popular music using an optical motion capture system, and computationally extracted features from the movement data. Additionally, the emotional content (happiness, anger, sadness, and tenderness) of the stimuli was assessed in a perceptual experiment. A subsequent correlational analysis revealed that different movement features and combinations thereof were characteristic of ea...
We consider a non-intrusive computer-vision method for measuring the motion of a person performin... more We consider a non-intrusive computer-vision method for measuring the motion of a person performing natural signing in video recordings. The quality and usefulness of the method is compared to a traditional marker-based motion capture set-up. The accuracy of descriptors extracted from video footage is assessed qualitatively in the context of sign language analysis by examining if the shape of the curves produced by the different means resemble one another in sequences where the shape could be a source of valuable linguistic information. Then, quantitative comparison is performed first by correlating the computer-vision-based descriptors with the variables gathered with the motion capture equipment. Finally, multivariate linear and non-linar regression methods are applied for predicting the motion capture variables based on combinations of computer vision descriptors. The results show that even the simple computer vision method evaluated in this paper can produce promisingly good results for assisting researchers working on sign language analysis.
Frontiers in Psychology, 2013
Music makes us move. Several factors can affect the characteristics of such movements, including ... more Music makes us move. Several factors can affect the characteristics of such movements, including individual factors or musical features. For this study, we investigated the effect of rhythm-and timbre-related musical features as well as tempo on movement characteristics. Sixty participants were presented with 30 musical stimuli representing different styles of popular music, and instructed to move along with the music. Optical motion capture was used to record participants' movements. Subsequently, eight movement features and four rhythm-and timbre-related musical features were computationally extracted from the data, while the tempo was assessed in a perceptual experiment. A subsequent correlational analysis revealed that, for instance, clear pulses seemed to be embodied with the whole body, i.e., by using various movement types of different body parts, whereas spectral flux and percussiveness were found to be more distinctly related to certain body parts, such as head and hand movement. A series of ANOVAs with the stimuli being divided into three groups of five stimuli each based on the tempo revealed no significant differences between the groups, suggesting that the tempo of our stimuli set failed to have an effect on the movement features. In general, the results can be linked to the framework of embodied music cognition, as they show that body movements are used to reflect, imitate, and predict musical characteristics.
Movements are capable of conveying emotions, as shown for instance in studies on both non-verbal ... more Movements are capable of conveying emotions, as shown for instance in studies on both non-verbal gestures and music-specific movements performed by instrumentalists or professional dancers. Since dancing/moving to music is a common human activity, this study aims at investigating whether quasi-spontaneous musicinduced movements of non-professional dancers can convey emotional qualities as well. From a movement data pool of 60 individuals dancing to 30 musical stimuli, the performances of four dancers that moved most notably, and four stimuli representing happiness, anger, sadness, and tenderness were chosen to create a set of stimuli containing the four audio excerpts, 16 video excerpts (without audio), and 64 audio-video excerpts (16 congruent music-movement combination and 48 incongruent combinations). Subsequently, 80 participants were asked to rate the emotional content perceived in the excerpts according to happiness, anger, sadness, and tenderness. The results showed that target emotions could be perceived in all conditions, although systematic mismatches occurred, especially with examples related to tenderness. The audio-only condition was most effective in conveying emotions, followed by the audio-video condition. Furthermore in the audiovideo condition, the auditory modality dominated the visual modality, though the two modalities appeared additive and self-similar.
The MoCap Toolbox is a set of functions written in Matlab for analyzing and visualizing motion ca... more The MoCap Toolbox is a set of functions written in Matlab for analyzing and visualizing motion capture data. It is aimed at investigating music-related movement, but can be beneficial for other research areas as well. Since the toolbox code is available as open source, users can freely adapt the functions according to their needs. Users can also make use of the additional functionality that Matlab offers, such as other toolboxes, to further analyze the features extracted with the MoCap Toolbox within the same environment. This paper describes the structure of the toolbox and its data representations, and gives an introduction to the use of the toolbox for research and analysis purposes. The examples cover basic visualization and analysis approaches, such as general data handling, creating stick-figure images and animations, kinematic and kinetic analysis, and performing Principal Component Analysis (PCA) on movement data, from which a complexity-related movement feature is derived. 2
The tendency to move to music seems to be built into human nature. Previous studies have shown a ... more The tendency to move to music seems to be built into human nature. Previous studies have shown a relationship between movement and the degree of spectral flux in music, particularly in the lower sub-bands. In this study, listeners' perceptions of a range of frequency-restricted musical stimuli were investigated in order to find relationships between perceived musical aspects (rhythm, melody, and fluctuation) and the spectral flux in three different frequency bands. Additionally, the relationship between the perception of features in specific frequency bands and participants' desire to move was studied. Participants were presented with clips of frequency-restricted musical stimuli and answered four questions related to musical features. Both perceived strength of the rhythm and the propensity to move were found to correlate highly with low-frequency spectral flux. Additionally, a lower but still significant correlation was found between these perceived musical features and high-frequency spectral flux. This suggests that the spectral flux of both low and high frequency ranges can be utilized as a measure of perceived rhythm in music, and that the degree of spectral flux and the perceived rhythmic strength in high and low frequency bands are at least partly responsible for the extent to which listeners consciously desire to move when listening to music.
Listening to music makes us to move in various ways. The characteristics of these movements can b... more Listening to music makes us to move in various ways. The characteristics of these movements can be affected by several aspects, such as individual factors, musical features, or the emotional content of the music. In a study in which we presented 60 individuals with 30 musical stimuli representing different genres of popular music and recorded their movement with an optical motion capture system, we found significant correlations 1) between musical characteristics and the exhibited movement, 2) between the perceived emotional content of the music and the movement, and 3) between personality traits of the dancers and the movement. However, such separate analyses are incapable of investigating possible relationships between the different aspects. We describe two multivariate analysis approaches -mediation and moderation -that enable the simultaneous analysis of relationships between more than two variables. The results of these analyses suggest mediation effects of the perceived emotional content of music on the relationships between different features of music and movement. It can therefore be assumed that musical emotions can (partly) account for the effect of music on movements. However, using personality as moderator between music and movement failed to show a moderation effect in most cases, suggesting that personality does not generally affect existing relationships between music and movement. Hence it can be assumed that musical characteristics and personality are in-dependent factors in relation to music--induced movement.
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 2014
Music has the capacity to induce movement in humans. Such responses during music listening are us... more Music has the capacity to induce movement in humans. Such responses during music listening are usually spontaneous and range from tapping to full-body dancing. However, it is still unclear how humans embody musical structures to facilitate entrainment. This paper describes two experiments, one dealing with period locking to different metrical levels in full-body movement and its relationships to beat-and rhythm-related musical characteristics, and the other dealing with phase locking in the more constrained condition of sideways swaying motions. Expected in Experiment 1 was that music with clear and strong beat structures would facilitate more period-locked movement. Experiment 2 was assumed to yield a common phase relationship between participants' swaying movements and the musical beat. In both experiments optical motion capture was used to record participants' movements. In Experiment 1 a window-based period-locking probability index related to four metrical levels was established, based on acceleration data in three dimensions. Subsequent correlations between this index and musical characteristics of the stimuli revealed pulse clarity to be related to periodic movement at the tactus level, and low frequency flux to mediolateral and anteroposterior movement at both tactus and bar levels. At faster tempi higher metrical levels became more apparent in participants' movement. Experiment 2 showed that about half of the participants showed a stable phase relationship between movement and beat, with superior-inferior movement most often being synchronized to the tactus level, whereas mediolateral movement was rather synchronized to the bar level. However, the relationship between movement phase and beat locations was not consistent between participants, as the beat locations occurred at different phase angles of their movements. The results imply that entrainment to music is a complex phenomenon, involving the whole body and occurring at different metrical levels.
Music Perception: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 2013
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, a... more JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].
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Papers by Birgitta Burger
interaction. Methods: Using mixed methods, this study addresses the addition of a self-care VA intervention to maintain the effects of practitioner-led VA treatments and to increase patients’ independence in managing their symptoms. After baseline measurements, VA treatment was delivered to five patients at a rehabilitation unit by a trained VA practitioner, followed by self-care at home and a washout phase with no treatments. Quantitative outcome measures included Visual Analogue Scales for pain and mood, and Beck’s Depression Inventory and the anxiety subscale of Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale. Qualitative data comprised practitioner clinical notes and participant evaluation forms.
Results: Quantitative outcomes suggest VA treatment is beneficial for pain and mood relief and that a self-care intervention has the potential to prolong positive outcomes. Qualitative findings suggest that patients found the sessions at the hospital useful and empowering but the self-care treatments comparatively weak. Discussion: Future studies may address the difficulty in conducting self-care and the importance of the client–practitioner relationship in supporting this activity for
those suffering from chronic pain and comorbid mood disorders.
interaction. Methods: Using mixed methods, this study addresses the addition of a self-care VA intervention to maintain the effects of practitioner-led VA treatments and to increase patients’ independence in managing their symptoms. After baseline measurements, VA treatment was delivered to five patients at a rehabilitation unit by a trained VA practitioner, followed by self-care at home and a washout phase with no treatments. Quantitative outcome measures included Visual Analogue Scales for pain and mood, and Beck’s Depression Inventory and the anxiety subscale of Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale. Qualitative data comprised practitioner clinical notes and participant evaluation forms.
Results: Quantitative outcomes suggest VA treatment is beneficial for pain and mood relief and that a self-care intervention has the potential to prolong positive outcomes. Qualitative findings suggest that patients found the sessions at the hospital useful and empowering but the self-care treatments comparatively weak. Discussion: Future studies may address the difficulty in conducting self-care and the importance of the client–practitioner relationship in supporting this activity for
those suffering from chronic pain and comorbid mood disorders.