Tuesday, October 21, 2014

Spectators who score high on openness personality trait enjoy the excitement of hearing dancers breathing without music.

BACKGROUND: Strong correlations have been shown between music and personality traits, here we aim to investigate how personality traits shape the appreciation of dance when this is presented with three different music/sounds.

METHODS: Therefore, we investigated the relationship between personality traits and the subjective esthetic experience of 52 spectators watching a contemporary dance performance.

RESULTS: Spectators rated the experience of watching dance without music significantly different from with music. The higher spectators scored on the Big Five personality factor openness, the more they liked the no-music section. Spectators' physical experience with dance was not linked to their appreciation but was significantly related to high average extravert scores. Spectators who scored high on the openness personality trait enjoy the excitement of hearing dancers breathing without music.

CONCLUSION: For the first time, we showed that spectators' reported entrainment to watching dance movements without music is strongly related to their personality and thus may need to be considered when using dance as a means to investigate action observation processes and esthetic preferences.


Front Hum Neurosci. 2014;8:718

Friday, October 17, 2014

Specific music therapy techniques in the treatment of primary headache disorders in adolescents: a randomized attention-placebo-controlled trial.

BACKGROUND: Migraine and tension-type headache have a high prevalence in children and adolescents.

OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to assess the efficacy of specific music therapy techniques in the treatment of adolescents with primary headache (tension-type headache and migraine).

METHODS: A prospective, randomized, attention-placebo-controlled parallel group trial was conducted. Patients were randomized to either music therapy (n = 40) or a rhythm pedagogic program (n = 38) designed as an "attention placebo" over 6 sessions within 8 weeks.

RESULTS: Neither treatment was superior to the other at any point of measurement

CONCLUSION: Music therapy was not found to be superior to an attention placebo for migraine and tension-type headaches in children and adolescents.

J Pain. 2013 Oct;14(10):1196-207