Three Against Two: Splitting the Mind [augmented with new material]

I'm bumping this to the top of the queue with the addition of a tweet linking to a study of hemispheric timing (see last two sections below, Two Hemispheres, Splitting the Mind? You can download a slightly different version of the original post at THIS LINK).

* * * * *

Interesting new paper about the perennial question of lateralization and timing, from Chris Kell's lab in Frankfurt https://t.co/AeoVe5x9Zo Differential contributions of the two human cerebral hemispheres to action timing

— David Poeppel (@davidpoeppel) November 21, 2019

Abstract from the article: Anja Pflug, Florian Gompf, et al., Differential contributions of the two human cerebral hemispheres to action timing, eLife 2019;8:e48404 DOI: 10.7554/eLife.48404:

Abstract: Rhythmic actions benefit from synchronization with external events. Auditory-paced finger tapping studies indicate the two cerebral hemispheres preferentially control different rhythms. It is unclear whether left-lateralized processing of faster rhythms and right-lateralized processing of slower rhythms bases upon hemispheric timing differences that arise in the motor or sensory system or whether asymmetry results from lateralized sensorimotor interactions. We measured fMRI and MEG during symmetric finger tapping, in which fast tapping was defined as auditory-motor synchronization at 2.5 Hz. Slow tapping corresponded to tapping to every fourth auditory beat (0.625 Hz). We demonstrate that the left auditory cortex preferentially represents the relative fast rhythm in an amplitude modulation of low beta oscillations while the right auditory cortex additionally represents the internally generated slower rhythm. We show coupling of auditory-motor beta oscillations supports building a metric structure. Our findings reveal a strong contribution of sensory cortices to hemispheric specialization in action control.

* * * * *

Three against two is one of the most important rhythm ‘cells’ in all of music. What do I mean, three against two? You play three evenly spaced beats in one ‘stream’ in the same period of time you play two evenly spaced beats in another ‘stream.’ It sounds simple enough but, the problem is that three and two do not have a common divisor, making the ‘evenly spaced’ part of the formula a bit tricky. The two patterns coincide on the first beat, but the second and third beats of the three-beat stream happen at different times from the second beat of the two-beat stream. And if you think that’s a lot of verbiage for something that ought to be simple, when then you’re beginning to get the idea.

In some cultures, including many in Africa, young children are taught 3 against 2 at a very young age. For them it IS easy. That’s not the case, however, in European derived musical traditions. Three against two is not part of basic toddler pedagogy and, as a consequence, learning to do it is a bit more difficult when, and if, the time comes – for some, it never comes. Thus, within the context of the Western classical tradition, three against two is considered moderately difficult rather than being fundamental. Such rhythms are exceptional in classical music, but they are common enough that any moderately skilled keyboard player must know how to execute them.

Go Slow, Count it in Six

In playing percussion or a keyboard instrument it is easy to alternate notes from one hand to the other and it is easy to play notes simultaneously with both hands. It is also easy to play two or four or eight notes with one hand against one note with the other hand or, for that matter, three or six notes with one hand against one note with the other. And, of course, it is easy to repeat such figures time after time after time. It is, however, distinctly more difficult to play three notes with one hand against two with the other. The problem is that, once the first note is struck by both hands, none of the successive notes in the pattern line up nor are they equidistant from one another. The patterns are incommensurate, as we see in the following diagram:

Three Against Two

Let’s consider the advice Joseph Hoffman offered on this problem. Hoffman was a piano virtuoso whose career spanned the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In 1909 he published a book of Piano Questions, which consisted of “direct answers to two hundred fifty questions asked by piano students” which he had originally published in the Ladies’ Home Journal over a period of two years. One of the questions he answered was “How must I execute triplets played against two-eighths?” — a typical 2-against-3 pattern. Here is the first part of Hoffman’s answer:

In a slow tempo it may serve you to think of the second eighth-note of the triplet as being subdivided into two sixteenths. After both hands have played the first note of their respective groups simultaneously, the place of the aforsaid sixteenth note is to be filled by the second note of the couplet.

Q. Where’s Reality? A. Which One? [Howl's Moving Castle]

Back in the early days of the blog I had a lot of posts about Hayao Miyazaka. I'm boosting this one to the top on general principle. It's from August 21, 2010.

* * * * *

If a man could pass through Paradise in a dream, and have a flower presented to him as a pledge that his soul had really been there, and if he found that flower in his hand when he awoke—Aye! and what then?

— Samuel T. Coleridge

The castle in Miyazaki’s film, Howl’s Moving Castle, is a marvelous creation. I’m talking not so much about it’s steampunk funkiness, but the fact that its main door can open to any one of four different places. The castle’s master, Howl, determines what those places are, and one chooses by setting a dial above the door. Thus, one can exit the door and, for example, be in a bustling port or a mountain meadow.

I’ve more or less concluded that reality’s like that, only stranger. Howl’s castle, after all, opens to four different places in the physical world. One can, if one so wishes, journey from one of those places to another without going through the castle. That is, of course, how most people do it, because they don’t have castle privileges.

Reality, I believe, is multiple. That is, it affords each one of us multiple experiential realms. We can ‘live’ in those different realms, one by one, but experiences in one realm cannot be substituted for experience in another realm. Our minds, somehow, open into those different realms, as Howl’s castle opens into different physical spaces. What is even odder is that our minds can do this collectively as well as individually.

So, what do I mean by this vague nonsense?

Consider, for example, science. Let’s not be too fussy about what science is. Naiveté on that point is OK for my present purposes. The physicist, the chemist, the astronomer, the geologist, the biologist, and the others, they all want to ascertain objective truths about one of these realities. They’ve got procedures for doing so, and those procedures change and proliferate from time to time. They publish their ideas, go to meetings, belong to professional societies — all to keep one another sane as they search for the objective truths of this reality. Let’s call it Epsilon.

I’m trained as a literary critic, but I’ve also spent a great deal of time moonlighting and spelunking in the newer psychologies. I’m interested in understanding how literature works and I want to cloak or couch that understanding in terms that are commensurate with those used in characterizing Epsilon. I’m hardly alone in this, though we, literary scholars as a profession, are somewhat befuddled as to what Epsilon is like and how to get there. And some of us, of course, have no interest in it, at least not professionally.

At the same time I’m an ordinary human being and I like to read books and poems and plays and to watch movies and TV and so forth. Let’s say that that those experiences happen in reality Gamma. So, we’re in the movie theatre watching, say, Peter Jackson’s King Kong — I use this as an example because the theatre was packed when I saw it. We can hear one another rustle in the seats, we hear murmurs, breath intake, sighs, and so forth. We’re all in reality Gamma, watching this same movie. But the same is true for all of us who have read and still do read Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan,” though we’re not together at the same time in the same place. Still, we communicate with one another in ones and threes and so on about the poem. All of us, loosely strungout, in reality Gamma.

All literary scholars, of course, spend time in Gamma. And many of us spend a great deal of time agonizing about the relationship between Gamma and Epsilon. Such agonizing is so institutionalized that it may well be an aspect of another reality. Call it Pi. Lots of literary critics love their Pi.

So, we’ve got three realities so far: Gamma, Epsilon, and Pi.

A couple of days ago I wrote on sex and metaphysics, arguing that, for us humans, sex takes on a metaphysical character. The physiologist can study sex in Epsilon. Any of us can read erotic literature and see erotic plays and films in Gamma. And literary, film, and cultural critics can write about those Gamma-based experiences in Pi.

But my argument in that post was the sex establishes its own reality, its own metaphysic. That reality is manifest in transcendent experiences associated with orgasm, but perhaps, as my friend Tim Perper* has argued, in flirtation as well:

For Simmel, it is thus possible to flirt at each of the Ovidian stages, most intensely, perhaps, during naked sexual involvement itself. Then each orgasm hints flirtatiously that another exists in potentia, and it is the possibility that is alluring. Thus, Simmel empowers his lovers, making them not philosophically objective observers of disembodied Beauty nor Ovidian fauns and nymphs in a world of crystalline Eros. Instead, they are human beings who can invite, enter, retreat, and enter again.

So let’s say that this is yet another reality, requiring another character from the Greek alphabet. Let’s go with Mu.

Now we’ve got realities Epsilon, Gamma, Pi, and Mu. How many more? Darned if I know. But let’s throw in Alpha for ordinary everyday phenomenological reality. We might even go further and say that Alpha is like the interior of Howl’s castle. It’s home base. We depart from Alpha to take excursions to Epsilon, Gamma, Pi or Mu, or, as the case may be, Beta, Delta, Zeta, Eta, Theta and so forth. And when we’re through with our current business in one of those other worlds, we return to Alpha.

But isn’t there really just one world? You know, the REAL one?

Well . . . I suppose we can talk that way. Heck, we do talk that way. Such talk is a really big deal in Epsilon and Gamma. But I’m not so much concerned about how we talk as about how we live. And as far as I can tell, we live in multiple worlds. We do so with great virtuosity and vigor, though we often get confused. Living in those various worlds entails talk, more so in some worlds than others. In some worlds we don’t talk at all. And some talk in some worlds is about what we see and did and smelled in other worlds. So their all intermingled. I figure it’s like a marble in eleventy different colors in, say, umpteen dimensional space. Very frothy.

Um, err, this isn’t very rigorous?

I know.

Doesn’t that bother you?

Yes and no.

Yes and no?

Sure, I’d like rigor. So YES. But at the moment I’m more concerned about just saying it, whatever it is, in any freakin’ form I can get it out there. So NO.

Oh.

Well, if it’s any consolation, I sometimes imagine that, when in Epsilon, we can construct a model of the human mind-in-brain that’s so comprehensive and powerful that we could account for how the mind constructs each one of these realities, Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, Zeta, Eta, Theta Pi, and so forth, and of course Epsilon. Since we’re constructing this model from within Epsilon, the model must itself be recursive, metalingual.

Why sneaky son of a snitch! You lying bastard! You put me through all this just so you can go recursive on me! %$ @#&!!!

Sorry. As I was saying, I sometimes imagine that. But imaging's one thing. Actually doing it. Ah that’s different.

And, even if one day we can do that, we can’t actually live our lives in that construction, moving about between those many and various realities. The model is but an object of contemplation. No less valuable for that. But only a model. In Epsilon.

ADDENDUM: This post is akin the modal matters I've been discussing recently, see especially this post, on basic modes, and then especially this one on specifically human modes.

* * * * *

* Timothy Perper, Will She or Won’t She: The Dynamics of Flirtation in Western Philosophy, Sexuality & Culture, Volume 14, Number 1, 33-43, DOI: 10.1007/s12119-009-9060-3.

Mindfulness and time management

Jenny Odell, Can We Slow Down Time in the Age of TikTok? NYTimes, 31 August 2019.

My students are growing up in a culture that is even more intensely individualized and fiercely competitive than it used to be, a punishing, Adderall-fueled version of my teenage years. I understand why it might be difficult for them to slow down for a class where I have them make painstaking collages, go on walking tours and take high-resolution scans of everyday objects. They are worried about their debt loads, their résumés, their careers. In my classes, they are liable to wonder why we’re spending time on something supposedly impractical. Time is precious; time is money. [...]

I can’t give my students more time in their lives; but what I try to do is change the way they think about and value it in the first place. My class typically includes students who aren’t art majors, some of whom may never have made art before. I give them the same advice every quarter: Leave yourself twice as much time as you think you need for a project, knowing that half of that may not look like “making” anything at all. There is no Soylent version of thought and reflection — creativity is unpredictable, and it simply takes time. It can be hard for them to accept that, since they are steeped in a mind-set of productivity hacks.

When I am bird watching, a favorite pastime that is, strictly speaking, “unproductive,” I have noticed that my perception of time slows down. All of my attention is collected into a single focal point, kept there by fascination and genuine, almost unaccountable interest. This is the experience of learning that I want for my students — that I want for everyone, actually — but it’s a fragile state. It requires maintenance.

That’s why I build time into my classes for students to sit or wander outside, observing something specific — for example, how people interact with their devices.

Dr. Jerry is in – how to manage your mind

Starting at about 23:33 Seinfeld (along with his hosts) has some interesting comments on how to manage your mind. You have a daily routine, you have a place set aside for your work, and so forth. You have a system.

"You treat your brain like a schnauzer. You got your little bag of treats and tricks. And you're going to walk on hind legs. And he will. He wants those treats."

Mode & Behavior 3: Music, Language, and Beyond

Introduction and Recap

In the first post in this series I introduced the concept of behavioral mode through a brief analysis of the situation Shakespeare scrutinized in Sonnet 129, “The expense of spirit.” The central point was that our thoughts and memories are realized in neural tissue that is sensitive to neurochemical state. What you can think about and remember depends on the chemical state of the tissue that, in effect, is doing the thinking. Lust and moral reflection are facilitated by different neurochemical substrates, making it difficult to achieve a coherent and consistent point of view on one’s own activity.

In the second post I located modal control in the reticular formation , as modeled by Warren McCulloch in 1969. The reticular formation is a phylogenetically old structure, one with extensive connection to and from the rest of the brain. It is, therefore, in a position where it can affect the operational state of the entire brain. This implies, in turn, that the brain is subject to control from ‘below’ as well as from ‘above’ (in a so-called executive often located in the frontal lobes).

In McCulloch’s view behavioral mode is affects the state of the entire brain, with some areas more active than others as appropriate to the mode. David Hays and I took his conception and related it to the brain imaging studies that were then becoming more common (the late 1970s and early 1980s). Those studies showed that activities such as speaking or doing arithmetic corresponded to patterns of differential arousal across the whole brain rather than to arousal of discrete and independent cortical ‘modules.’

The human modes

But how are these specifically human modes – speech, calculating, writing, etc. – regulated? It seems unlikely that they are driven primarily from below, by the reticular system. Nor is it obvious to me that they are regulated in any simple way.

In Beethoven’s Anvil, and recounted in this review-essay, I argued that a form of proto-music making preceded speech in human phylogeny, and that it arose more or less spontaneously and fortuitously is small groups that started synchronizing their movements and so coupling their nervous systems (cf. this post on synchronized clapping). Whatever mode the group members were in, that’s the link between the specifically human and animal sociality. Perhaps such synchronization is possible from within a number of animal modes, after all, we use speech for a variety of purposes, simply reporting events, emotional expression, directing the activity of others, and so forth.

The hallmark of music-making and of speech is the fact of neural coupling between nervous systems, of synchronization. It is the fact of that coupling, I suggest, that stabilizes the brain’s mode. One brain supports another; the brains of individuals in a group become mutually reinforcing. In Chapter 9 of Beethoven’s Anvil I argued, in effect, that the specifically human aspect of our sociality is grounded in this neural coupling and so is not simply an amplification or extension of higher primate sociality. It is, rather, a new form of sociality. With the emergence of full-blown language, the entire human life-world becomes reconstructed in, inscribed in, this specifically human social realm, giving us the world of myth, folktales, ritual, taboo, and so forth.

[Subsequent to writing Beethoven’s Anvil I discovered the work of Christopher Boehm, Hierarchy in the Forest (Harvard 1999), who also argued for specifically human sociality, though he didn’t ground it in music or neuro-behavioral coupling.]

And one aspect of the life-world that receives specific attention is its modal structure. Thus we have the Winnebago Trickster tales with stories of defecation and wandering, of eating and adventuring, of courtship and childbirth (Paul Radin, The Trickster, Schocken 1972). And taboos governing what’s to be eaten, who can say what to whom, and so forth, through a long list.

The larger question is: just how many specifically human behaviors are modal in this sense, how many differentiated and stable patterns of cortical arousal are possible? I surely don’t know. Speaking and music-making appear to be modal, with some overlap in cortical involvement (cf. the review in Steven Mithen, The Singing Neanderthals). Does food preparation require its own mode? What about carving wood? Or throwing pots, weaving? All of these activities requires concentrated attention if it is to be done well, that suggests to me that they may be modal. If so, then the number of specifically human modes may be legion.

Note that only some of these modes require neural coupling with others. One can prepare a meal or throw a pot alone. Though such activities are often done in the company of others, and that may often involve chatting, the company and the chatting don’t seem intrinsic to the activity itself.

Musician's Journal: On Learning to Play the Cowbell

Yes, a cowbell, a standard Latin Percussion timbale cowbell. It’s 8” long, and the mouth measures 4 1/2” by 2 3/8”. It’s painted matte black and has a mounting bracket for attaching it to a drum kit. But I don’t have a drum kit. I hold it in my left hand and beat it with a drum stick.

I’ve been learning to play this bell for, say, 25 years. With any luck I’ll still be learning the day I die. Why so long to learn to play the bell? That’s probably not quite the right question.

Let me explain. In the first place, when I set out to learn a musical instrument five decades ago, the cowbell wasn’t what I set out to play. I set out to play trumpet. The musical role I cherished as a trumpet-player was that of improvising soloist. In time I became quite good in that role, good enough to open for BB King in one band, and for Dizzy Gillespie in another.

The soloist role is very up-front. It’s a role that allows for, and often calls for, a lot of flash and dash. You’re the center of attention, and you have to deliver.

The cowbell isn’t like that. Oh, I suppose it can be, if you’ve got more technical skill than I’ve got. But percussionists with the skill to solo generally don’t do so on cowbells. They’re more likely to use a jazz-type drum kit, or timbales, congas, bongos, djembe, or some other drum. Cowbell solos are rare.

The cowbell is an anchor instrument, a foundation instrument. It’s responsible to the basic rhythmic framework, whether a simple regular beat in rock and jazz or the more subtle 3/2 clave in Latin and African musics. The foundation has to be rock solid, unwavering, there.

And that, the role, is what I’ve been learning above all else. The foundational role is entirely different from the solo role. The soloist is a peacock, spreading his tail and strutting for the peahens. The bell is the ground on which the peacock and the peahens walk. The soloist needs good time, but that time can flex and change quite a bit – ever listen to Louis Armstrong? The cowbell’s time cannot flex and change, for it is the background against which, the framework within which, any flexing and changing is done.

By the time I’d started to play cowbell I’d been flexing and changing for 25 years. Learning NOT to do that, learning to be rock steady, that’s a process.

A tricky process. For you see, the time of a group is not mechanically perfect. It’s a steadiness built on a shifting framework of micro-, no nano-, flexing. There are little perturbations that give life to the time. Those perturbations exist in relation to the time of everyone playing. You’ve got to absorb all those time streams and drive your own time down the middle.

Moffett on Ants 2: Photography as thinking and Conceptual calibration

Another in my series of notes on Mark Moffett’s Adventures Among Ants.

In the first note, written before I began reading the book, I set up an analogy between a swarm of bees and the human brain. In my second note, I continued with the brain analogy, specifically the reticular formation, and considered Marks thoughts about the emergence of coordinated collective behavior in the ant colony. Now I want to go “meta,” first with a note on photography, and then with some thoughts about conceptual calibration.

Photography as thinking

On page 41 Moffett has this nice little paragraph:

Such thoughts reflect how caught up I was in the drama of the moment, pressing the button of my camera each time a surprising event happened. I saw that the minor workers were able to stretch the legs of the termite soldier until she was spread-eagled (click). By this time the raid front had advanced beyond the victim, who was now deep within the swarm. Here the media and major workers roamed in numbers (click). The large ants were as plucky as the minors, and they had the size and mandibular power to be worthy of the designation “soldier”: but by dint of their location, most of them joined the fray at the termite only after the prey was felled (click).

Taking photographs, of course, is a way of documenting what you see. But, as this paragraph makes clear, it’s not necessarily the case that one first sees, then one goes out and searches for the appropriate shot to illustrate what one has seen. Rather, the act of taking photographs is deeply embedded in the basic process of observing and thinking.

Remember, ants are small and cameras have lenses that magnify small things. Looking through the camera is one of the ways Moffett sees what’s going on. He observes through the camera and must, perforce, think about what it is that he is seeing. What’s going on now? Do I need a photo? And I rather suspect that clicking the shutter does two things: 1) it causes the photograph to be taken and 2) it helps register the scene in Moffett’s mind.

Conceptual Calibration

What do I mean by conceptual calibration? There was a time when we believed that only humans made and used tools. And then someone observed chimps stripping twigs of leaves and poking the twigs into termite nests to fish out the termites. Tool use, no longer exclusively human. Well, there’s language, right? Then chimps learned to sign in American sign language. Language, no longer exclusively human. But, culture, there’s culture, no? Then a band of macaques learned to wash potatoes and the adults taught the young how to do this. Whoops, now monkeys have culture. We have elephants making paintings. And birdsong is learned, not genetic. Culture, no longer exclusively human.

Musician’s Journal: Awareness and Balance

I’ve been a musician most of my life. Though I’ve never made my living as a musician, there have been times when it’s put food on the table, though not paid the rent. And there have been times when I’ve hardly picked up the horn.

That’s how it’s been for the past three or four years. I’ve jammed every week or three with some friends, and maybe play the horn for a minute or three every other day. But I’ve not played enough to keep my chops in shape – and the trumpet is a physically demanding instrument.

I’m now getting back to a routine of daily practice. And I’m finding, almost for the first time in my life, that technical exercises are no longer quite so boring. You know, the same scales and arpeggios, repeated time and again, and again, and ... again. Same old same old.

Nothing like it to get the fingers and lips moving in concert. But, it’s not like a hot blues in the early morning when the lights are low and spirits high. No sirree, not like that at all. The exercises are necessary, but ...

If you pay attention, those repetitive exercises can be interesting too. It’s about awareness, mindfulness. What you’ve got to pay attention to is what’s not so repetitive. You must pay attention to your body, while also hearing the sound. What you’re attending to, above all else, is the relationship between what you’re hearing and what you’re doing.

Sounds simple, no? Not so simple.

 

It’s easy to think that the trumpet is about lips and fingers, because it is. But not only. The lips do two things: 1) they vibrate and thus produce the sound, 2) they act as a valve to regulate the air flow. The air flow, in turn, is produced by the respiratory system, which involves the lungs and the large muscles of the trunk. Those muscles, in turn, are supported by the pelvis and legs and their musculature. So, the lips are connected to all that, and you need to be aware of all that when you practice – when you perform, of course, you don’t want to be aware of any of that.

I find that, in particular, I am aware of my buttocks. They affect tension in the trunk and thus the air stream. Sometimes I relax my buttocks, sometimes I tense them. All according to what the situation requires.

Then there’s the fingers. The muscles controlling your fingers are in your arms, forearms mostly. The big issue, of course, is the independence of the fingers for the second and third valves (ring finger and middle finger). Training them to move independently of one another is a bitch. When the fingers don’t move where they should when they should, you tend to tense up, which makes things worse.

And not just the muscles in your arms. The tension can easily spread to your whole body. This came home to me with particular strength when I was watching a young boy who’s taking occasional lessons from me. When he has to concentrate on finger movements his whole body gets tense and jerky and his lower legs start flailing about (he’s sitting on a chair) with the effort of bringing his fingers into line. Why is that? Why should concentrating on finger movement recruit the entire body?

I don’t know, though I suppose I could guess at an explanation if I wanted to. The point is simply that telling your fingers what to do will activate your whole body if you’re too insistent.

In that situation my immediate objective is to get the fingers to move properly without, however, inducing tension throughout the body. That requires active relaxation, being aware of overall tension, but not forcing it. And that while you are regulating your breath, another whole body activity. It’s all a matter of balance, of loosening up, of differentiating one’s movements so that each component of one’s effort can move freely on its own, rather than being strapped to everything else.

You play simple repetitive patterns so you don’t have to think about what notes you’re going to play. Put that on autopilot so you can be aware of your body and of the sound itself. As your body functions more efficiently the sound becomes cleaner and more even. Sound and body, body and sound.

Or is it body and soul?