Brainwave Entrainment to External Rhythmic Stimuli: Interdisciplinary Research and Clinical Perspectives

Symposium Participants

Judith Becker, Ph.D., Director of Centers for SE Asian Studies & World Performance Studies & Professor of Musicology, University of Michigan

Judith Becker, an authority on the music of Southeast Asia, teaches ethnomusicology at the University of Michigan. She was director of the Center for Southeast Asian Studies, a unit of the International Institute at the University of Michigan for the past seven years. She is a co-founder of the Center for World Performance Studies at the University of Michigan and was its first director.

She has written numerous articles and is the author of three books. Her most recent book, Deep Listeners: Music, Emotion, and Trancing, received the Alan Merriam award from the Society for Ethnomusicology for the best book in ethnomusicology published during the year 2004.

Dr. Becker’s current research focuses on the relationships between music, emotion and ecstasy in institutionalized religious contexts and in secular contexts. She is exploring the common ground between humanistic, cultural, anthropological approaches and scientific, cognitive, psychological approaches.

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Research Articles

Thomas Budzynski, Ph.D., Affiliate Professor of Psychology, University of Washington

Thomas Budzynski graduated first from the University of Detroit with an Electrical Engineering degree and worked in aerospace for 7 years. He was the inertial navigation supervisor on the SR71 Blackbird project at Area 51. Later he earned a master’s and Ph.D. in psychology at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

Dr. Budzynski was one of the pioneers in the area of biofeedback, and has developed a number of biofeedback instruments along with John Picchiottino. In addition to on-going research with Johann Stoyva at the University of Colorado Medical Center, Tom started a private biofeedback clinic in Denver with Charles Adler and Kirk Peffer circa 1972. He later managed the clinic for 16 years before re-entering the academic world again as an Affiliate Professor at the University of Washington.

He continues research in the areas of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, academic performance enhancement and cognitive enhancement in the elderly with his able associate and wife Helen Kogan Budzynski, Ph.D. who is a Professor Emeritus at the university in the School of Nursing. A licensed psychologist in Washington, Dr. Budzynski sees selected patients for neurotherapy at his home office.

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Research Articles

Jon Frederick, Ph.D., Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Psychology, University of Minnesota

Jon Frederick’s dissertation research compared the EEG effects of rhythmic visual stimulation alone, auditory stimulation, and combined auditory and visual stimulation. I am currently involved in two research projects at the University of Minnesota . One study measures human perceptual acuity in introspectively discriminating between EEG states. Another study investigates the usefulness of EEG measurements in assessing disinhibitory psychopathology, such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), substance use and dependence, and antisocial behaviors in adults and children.

Brainwave entrainment is intriguing to me because it presents the possibility of decoding the meaning of the brain's rhythms by observing the perceptual or behavioral effects of stimuli that enhance or interfere with these rhythms.

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Research Articles

Robert Gatchel, Ph.D., Department Chairman & Professor of Psychology, University of Texas at Arlington*

Robert J. Gatchel has always been involved in new “cutting edge” areas of science and medicine. He published the initial text in Health Psychology with Dr. Andy Baum (An Introduction to Health Psychology), introduced the functional restoration approach to chronic pain and disability with Dr. Tom Mayer at the Productive Rehabilitation in Dallas for Ergonomics (PRIDE), and worked as a major advocate for the biopsychosocial approach to chronic pain. This approach is now viewed as the most heuristic model for better understanding the etiology, assessment, treatment and prevention of chronic pain.

Dr. Gatchel has conducted extensive evidence-based clinical research, much of it continuously funded for the past 25 years by grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). He currently holds a prestigious Senior Scientist Award from NIH. His major areas of clinical and research expertise involve the following: the biopsychosocial approach to the etiology, assessment, treatment and prevention of chronic stress and pain behavior; the comorbidity of physical and mental health disorders; and clinical health psychology. He has published over 240 journal articles, 83 book chapters and has authored or edited 23 books.

Dr. Gatchel is currently the Chair of the Department of Psychology, College of Science, at The University of Texas at Arlington, as well as the Director of Clinical Research at The Eugene McDermott Center for Pain Management, Department of Anesthesiology & Pain Management, at The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas.

*Robert Gatchel will not be in attendance due to recent extenuating circumstances but will continue to be involved with this project in its future forms.

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Emil Jovanov, Ph.D. Associate Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Alabama in Huntsville.

Emil Jovanov is an Associate Professor at Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. Dr. Jovanov’s research interests include wearable physiological monitoring, ubiquitous and mobile computing, biomedical signal processing and modeling. He serves as Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Information Technology in Biomedicine and as a member of Editorial Board of Applied Psychophysiology and Biofeedback. Dr. Jovanov served as a Program Secretary of the International Symposium and Workshop on Scientific Bases of Consciousness (Belgrade, 1997).

Dr. Jovanov has been working on physiological correlates and models of altered states of consciousness for more than ten years. He investigated heart and brain activity during meditation, relaxation techniques, musicogenic states, and healer/healee interactions. Dr. Jovanov developed several environments for processing, visualization, and perceptualization of physiological signals. His recent research is focused on changes of autonomous nervous system created by yogic breathing techniques and chanting.

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Research Articles

Clete A. Kushida, M.D., Ph.D., RPSGT Director, Stanford Center for Human Sleep Research, Associate Professor, Stanford University Medical Center, Stanford University Center of Excellence for Sleep Disorders

Clete A. Kushida, M.D., Ph.D., is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Stanford University Medical Center , an Attending Physician at the Stanford Sleep Disorders Clinic, and Director of the Stanford University Center for Human Sleep Research. He received a Bachelor’s and Master’s Degree from Stanford University , and M.D. and Ph.D. Degrees from the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine. Dr. Kushida completed a neurology residency at the University of California , San Diego , and a National Institutes of Health (NIH)-sponsored fellowship in Sleep Medicine at Stanford University .

Dr. Kushida is a member of the Board of Directors of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and the American Board of Sleep Medicine, a member of the Editorial Boards of the Journal SLEEP and Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, a member of the Medical Advisory Board of the Restless Legs Syndrome Foundation, and the immediate past Chair of the Standards of Practice Committee of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine

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Edward W. Large, Ph.D., Computer and Information Science, Associate Professor, Complex Systems and Brain Sciences, Cognitive Psychology of Music, Florida Atlantic University

Edward W. Large is an Associate Professor at the Center for Complex Systems and Brain Sciences at Florida Atlantic University. He serves as Associate Editor of the journal Music Perception. He serves on the scientific advisory board of the Institute for Music and Neurologic Function. He is also the founder of Circular Logic, a music software company based in Boca Raton, FL.

Dr. Large’s research addresses the question of how the brain responds to complex, temporally structured sequences of events, such as music and speech. His research program combines dynamical systems modeling, behavioral experimentation, neurophysiology and neuroimaging. Current projects include perception of rhythm, perception of pitch, perception of tonality, perception of song, and emotional responses to music.

Recently, Dr. Large reported the discovery of human brain activity that anticipates events in rhythms such as those found in music and speech. He observed that peaks in the power of cortical brain activity predict both the timing and intensity of events such as notes (in music) and syllables (in speech). Moreover, when some events are unexpectedly left out of a sequence, the timing and power of cortical activity remains unchanged, as if an event actually appeared.

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Research Articles

Scott Makeig, Ph.D., Director, Swartz Center for Computational Neuroscience Institute for Nerual Computation, University of California, San Diego

Scott Makeig received a B.A. from Berkeley, "Self in Experience," and a Ph.D. from UCSD in "Music Psychobiology." His research has focused on application of advanced signal processing models to human brain dynamics data (EEG, MEG, fMRI, ECOG).

He and colleagues were the first to apply independent component analysis (ICA) to EEG data (1996) and, with Martin McKeown, to fMRI data (1998). He has developed, with Arnaud Delorme and colleagues, and distributes the widely-used open source EEGLAB and FMRLAB environments for electrophysiological and functional imaging data analysis.

The UCSD Swartz Center for Computational Neuroscience, which he now directs, develops and applies new computational approaches to modeling macroscopic brain dynamics, including current applications to the study of memory, emotion, attention, learning, autism, aging, epilepsy, and realtime cognitive monitoring and control.

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Research Articles

Melinda Maxfield, Ph.D., Specialist in cross-cultural healthcare methodologies and researcher on the physical effects of percussion*

Melinda C. Maxfield is an independent researcher focusing on sonic entrainment, shamanism, and healing. A former research report writer for Encyclopaedia Britannica, Dr. Maxfield’s work has lead her around the globe lecturing and demonstrating the positive benefits of applied sonic entrainment. She has presented “Journey Work”, sonic entrainment workshops in North America, South America, Asia, and Europe .

Dr. Maxfield is vice-president of the Maxfield Foundation, an organization supporting research in the fields related to the understanding and treatment of cancer, with special emphasis on leukemia. She is also on the board of the Foundation for Shamanic Studies, and executive director of the Angeles Arrien Foundation for Cross-Cultural Education and Research.

*Melinda Maxfield will not be in attendance due to recent extenuating circumstances but will continue to be involved with this project in its future forms.

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Research Articles

Harold Russell, Ph.D. Clinical Psychologist, University of Texas, Adjunct research professor in the Department of Gerontology and Health Promotion at The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston

Harold L. Russell is a clinical psychologist with a private practice in Galveston, Texas. He is an adjunct research professor in the Department of Gerontology and Health Promotion at The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston.

Dr. Russell’s current research is focused on investigating the use of EEG-driven auditory and visual stimulation as a safe, effective and inexpensive means of improving brain functioning in children, adolescents or adults at different socioeconomic levels.

About the potential outcomes of the symposium, Dr. Russell writes, "Combining current technology with the creativity, musical and scientific knowledge available at this symposium could result in the finding of increasingly effective and inexpensive ways of using music on an everyday basis as a practical and widely acceptable tool to improve brain functioning."

*Harold Russell will not be in attendance due to recent extenuating circumstances but will continue to be involved with this project in its future forms.

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Research Articles

David Spiegel, M.D., Jack, Lulu & Sam Willson Professor in the School of Medicine, Associate Chair: Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University

David Spiegel is the Jack, Lulu & Sam Willson Professor in the School of Medicine and Associate Chair of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University School of Medicine in Stanford, California, where he is also Director of the Center on Stress and Health. In addition, he is Medical Director of the Stanford Center for Integrative Medicine at Stanford Medical Center, which provides supportive care for medically ill patients.

Dr. Spiegel is Immediate Past President of the American College of Psychiatrists and Past President of the Society for Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis. A Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, he has received the 2004 Marmor Award from the American Psychiatric Association for research in biopsychosocial psychiatry, the Edward A. Strecker, M.D. Award from the Institute of Pennsylvania Hospital for his contributions to clinical psychiatry in the U.S., and the Hilgard Award from the International Society of Hypnosis for his research contributions to the field of medical hypnosis.

He serves on the editorial boards of numerous journals and was Editor of the American Psychiatric Press’ Progress in Psychiatry series. He is the author of 8 books and 394 journal articles and book chapters on stress, trauma, dissociation, psycho-oncology, hypnosis, psychotherapy, and mind/body medicine. Dr. Spiegel received his B.A. from Yale and his M.D. from Harvard Medical School. He completed his residency training in psychiatry at the Massachusetts Mental Health Center and Cambridge Hospital and a fellowship at the Laboratory of Community Psychiatry, all at Harvard Medical School in Boston.

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Research Articles

M. Barry Sterman, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus, Departments of Neurobiology and Biobehavioral Psychiatry, at the David Geffen School of Medicine, UCLA

Dr. M. Barry Sterman is Professor Emeritus in the departments of Neurobiology and Bio-Behavioral Psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine. He launched the field of clinical neurotherapy with his pioneering studies of EEG operant conditioning in animals and humans for the treatment of seizures. His major research interests have included; neural and behavioral mechanisms in epilepsy, neural substrates and cognitive correlates of EEG rhythms, self-regulation of the EEG, basic neural mechanisms of sleep regulation, and quantitative EEG Assessment. Papers written by Dr. Sterman have been published in the journals Science, Brain Research, EEG and Clinical Neurophysiology, Experimental Neurology, Journal of Internal Medicine, Clinical Electroencephalography, Biofeedback and Self-Regulation, Brain Topography, Clinical Neurophysiology, Journal of Neurotherapy, and in the Handbook of Electroencephalography and Clinical Neurophysiology.

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Research Articles

Patrick Suppes, Ph.D., Lucie Stern Professor of Philosophy, Emeritus, Stanford University

Patrick Suppes is the Lucie Stern Professor of Philosophy, Emeritus at Stanford University. He has published widely in philosophy and the social sciences, especially psychology. He is currently conducting research on the brain, with emphasis on language and visual images.

The focus of his research is on brain-wave recognition of words, in analogy to speech recognition. The sound-pressure waves of spoken words are transformed in complex ways as they pass through the outer ear, cochlea, etc., to auditory nerve fibers on up to the auditory cortex. It is not yet possible to track the mathematical transformations that take place in any detail. Comparable complexity holds for visual words. The work done jumps over these pathways and looks at EEG recordings directly in the auditory or visual cortex. No cognitive recognition of a word occurs earlier, so essential information must be encoded in the brain-wave. The job is to find it, and headway is being made, as reflected in papers published with colleagues since 1997.

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Research Articles

Concetta Tomaino, D.A. MT-BC, Director of the Institute for Music and Neurologic Function and Vice President for Music Therapy at Beth Abraham Family of Health Services, Bronx, New York

Concetta “Connie” Tomaino is the Director of the Institute for Music and Neurologic Function, and Vice President for Music Therapy at Beth Abraham Family of Health Services, Beth Abraham Hospital, New York.

Dr. Tomaino is internationally recognized for her research in the clinical applications of music and neurologic rehabilitation. She has lectured on music therapy throughout the world, and received the Award of Accomplishment from Music Therapists for Peace at the United Nations.

Dr. Tomaino holds a Masters and Doctor of Arts in Music Therapy from New York University, and graduated from SUNY at Stony Brook with a BA in Music Performance (her instrument is the trumpet), a minor in psychology and sciences, and a commitment to the emerging field of music therapy.

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Research Articles

Udo Will, Ph.D., Musicology and Neurobiology, Associate Professor, Ohio State University

Udo Will studied music, sociology, and neuroscience. He holds PhDs in both musicology and neurobiology and is professor of cognitive ethnomusicology at Ohio State University. He currently leads research projects on cognitive aspects of music performances in oral cultures, on rhythm and melody processing by the human brain, and on a comparison of the cognitive architecture of music and language production.

He is co-founder, together with M. Clayton (Milton Keynes) and I. Cross ( Cambridge )) of the ‘Music and Entrainment’ Network, an international research group sponsored by a 3-year grant from the British Academy.

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Research Articles

Musicántica

Musicántica focuses mainly on the music from Southern Italy’s oral tradition at the same time outreaching for a more contemporary musical idea that can be indicated as Mediterranean World-Music. By oral tradition it is intended music, poetry, and ritual passed on from generation to generation by untrained musicians belonging to generally less known segments of Italian society such as the peasant’s world, fishermen, or street vendors. Musicántica finds a remarkable freshness in traditional music and believes in its contemporary continuation despite various attempts by Italian artist’s to crystallize it or confine it in more or less faithful renditions or misuse it in popular music cultural operations.

Continuity is possible because each musical process in time is historical, part of a relentless process of development, productive confrontation with every day life and a continuous discourse between current innovation and past sedimentation. Musicántica’s repertoire includes, therefore, both traditional as well as original compositions. The connection between the southern Italian tradition, the individual experiences as immigrants in Southern California, and the symbolic remembrance of the sounds of their respective birthplaces is evident in the artists’ various improvisations and re-adaptations of older material.

Several of the instruments used by Musicántica are native Italian. These include the tamburieddhru, a frame drum used for the pizzica tarantata dance; the putipù, a friction drum; the chitarra battente, a 10 strings guitar from the Renaissance; percussion such as castanets, animal jingle collars, sheep copper bells; the benas, a single and double Sardinian reed clarinet or the marranzanu, or jaw’s harp. The rest of the instrumentation includes classical guitars, the mandolin, the mandola, the Greek bouzouki, the oud, the harmonica, the fina, a lamellaphone inspired by the African mbira exclusively created by Maestro Enzo Fina, and several other, mostly homemade, sound effects.

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Roberto Catalano, Musicántica Instrumentalist: guitar, chitarra battente, mandolin, bouzouki, oud, jaw’s harp, benas, putipù, frame drum, percussion, vocals.

Roberto Catalano was born in Catania, Sicily, where he began his music career as a self-taught guitarist in 1973. He is a scholar, a teacher, a composer, and a multi-instrumentalist. He holds a Ph.D. in Ethnomusicology from UCLA and his main interests include Mediterranean music cultures, popular music, jazz, organology, and music from the Near East.

As a guitarist he has performed with different ensembles in major cities such as Rome, London, Vancouver, Seattle and Los Angeles. He has opened shows for major jazz artists such as guitarist Jim Hall and pianist Michel Petrucciani and played with accomplished musicians such as jazz guitarist John Scofield.

As an arranger he has written scores in several contemporary styles, among these the most notable is a piece taken from the Sardinian vocal tradition known as “canto a tenores” and arranged it for the four strings of Grammy Award winner, Kronos Quartet. Roberto Catalano is a collector and maker of musical instruments. His collection includes, thus far, about one hundred seventy instruments from the world over.

Enzo Fina, Musicántica Instrumentalist: frame drums, fina, guitar, mandolin, percussion, putipù, jaw’s harp, harmonica, flutes, vocals.

Enzo Fina was born in Salice, Lecce, Italy. He holds a degree in painting at the State Institute of Art and Painting of the Academy of Fine Arts in Lecce. Since his early days as a musician he has always been fascinated by the nature of sound. Such interest has brought him to develop an interdisciplinary approach to art, creating relationships between musical and visual arts.

Fina extended his musical studies of acoustic properties of sound in instrument making as he was able to synthesize his findings in acoustics in the creation of his own instrument. In 1983, after studying the structure of an African mbira (thumb piano), he created a personal version of that instrument calling it most simply, fina.

In addition, Fina has been trained also in various arts such as dance, mime, puppeteering, construction and use of masks. He has worked with a variety of art groups and ensembles of diverse character and goals ranging from traditional music research to animation theater, film scoring, anthropological theater, and puppet shows in Italy, Spain, Portugal, Holland, Morocco, Canada and the United States. Currently, he works as musician in residence at the Children Hospital in Los Angeles.