This study explored undergraduate music majors' strategies in two-part dictation. Sixty volunteers answered a questionnaire on their musical background, learning styles, and dictation methods. They then took part in three dictation sessions. Two sessions directed attention to rhythm first or pitch first, and one session was a non-directed control dictation. Treatments were counterbalanced across 6 groups (n = 10). Dependent measures were pitch and rhythm accuracy scores on dictations. Analysis of variance showed no order effects. A repeated measures MANOVA (pitch and rhythm by 3 conditions) showed a significant effect for condition ($p < .0001$). Higher rhythm accuracy resulted from the rhythm-first condition, compared to the non-directed ($p < .05$) and pitch-first ($p < .0001$) conditions. Pitch accuracy was not affected by condition. Accuracy was unrelated to any of the covariates examined (instrumental information, years of theory and counterpoint study, keyboard skill, learning style and private strategy). Results suggest that in polyphonic dictation, attending to rhythm first and pitch afterwards may be an effective way of maximizing rhythmic accuracy.

One of the main responsibilities of a sound engineer is to control the quality of the sound during the recording process. An important qualitative aspect of a recording, besides the musicality of the performance, is its timbral content. Proper level and spectral balance between the mixed elements of the recording and the absence of extraneous noises and distortion are key elements. Therefore, timbre perception acuity is an essential skill for sound engineers. / This thesis proposes a computer-assisted system as a training tool for developing and maintaining aural skills related to timbre perception. A set of criteria for the design of such a system based on current knowledge in timbre perception is presented and an exploratory implementation is described. Limits of the current system are discussed and areas that need further investigation are identified.

Dichotic listening of auditory stimuli is a method of assessing brain lateralisation. Different stimuli are presented simultaneously to the left and right ears, with the listener reporting which stimulus is perceived most clearly. To date, several studies that have examined the effects of aging on dichotic listening performance have indicated a pronounced right ear advantage (REA) with increasing age, but few studies have considered the effects of sex, and findings to date have been inconclusive. The aim of this research was to investigate whether the effects of age and sex resulted in a difference in the magnitude of the REA in both undirected and directed attentional tasks. Forty sex-matched, right-handed subjects with normal hearing or symmetrical bilateral sensorineural hearing loss participated in a series of directed and undirected dichotic listening tasks using consonant-vowel (CV) stimuli. The interaural intensity difference (IID) was modulated randomly during the undirected attention task. Results indicated that all groups (age & sex) showed a REA for both undirected and directed dichotic listening tasks. No age or sex-related differences were found. The findings were suggestive of a task-linked effect for dichotic listening performance. The use of CV stimuli, in combination with detailed testing via manipulation of the IID, appeared to minimize any possible age or sex-related differences. These findings have implications for theories on laterality and hemispheric asymmetry for older adults.

Since the face forms over the brain in the course of embryonic development, facial anthropometry may reflect brain structure. The motor functions of each side are controlled by the side of the brain opposite the body side. The purpose of this study was to establish whether a correlation exists between handedness and the location of the external auditory meatuses, as a possible consequence of brain asymmetry. Facial photographs were taken of 78 volunteers. Straws, placed in the external ear canals, were used to mark the external auditory meatuses. The level of the top of each meatus was measured from each volunteer's visual plane, as established by connecting the center of a point of reflected light in each pupil. Each volunteer was also given the Edinburgh Laterality Inventory (Durden-Smith and DeSimone, 1984:53) to determine "true" handedness (50 right-handers and 28 left-handers). Right-handers, as determined by either writing hand or laterality inventory, were found to exhibit a greater tendency for the left auditory meatus to be lower. Specifically, 68% of the right-handers, as opposed to 39% of the left-handers, exhibited a left external auditory meatus located at a lower position on the skull than the right meatus. This was significant at the 0.05 level. The differences in external auditory meatal distances from the visual plane were greater on the left in right-handers 68% of the time, equal 10%, and greater on the right 22% of the time. A reverse correlation for the right asymmetry for left-handers was not found. Instead, for the left-handed sample a nearly even distribution for meatal location was found: 39% left asymmetry, 29% symmetry, and 32% right asymmetry.The study strongly supported the hypothesis that right-handers have a significant tendency for left asymmetry in location of the external auditory meatuses. The study did not support the hypothesis that the meatal asymmetry correlates to the side opposite the handedness of the individual. Of-perhaps greater significance is the finding that the percentages of left asymmetry of both groups match the brain asymmetry percentages found by Galaburda (1984:15) for the planum temporale, an extension on the upper surface of the temporal lobe of the brain. The level of the external auditory meatuses, as a reflection of brain asymmetry, may serve as an external measurement of the location of Wernicke's area which is located near the planum temporale and has a major role in speaking and comprehension of the spoken word and in reading and writing. Simple techniques for locating the language centers of the brain would be an advantage in developing education plans and teaching strategies for students with each of the possible hemispheric dominance patterns. / Department of Anthropology

There is no abstract available for this dissertation. / School of Music

Jazz musicians traditionally learned jazz improvisation by transcribing other musicians they admired in order to absorb, assimilate and retain important stylistic elements of jazz. Indeed, many famous jazz musicians have testified to the importance of transcribing as part of their jazz education. By the latel960's, jazz increasingly gained acceptance as a legitimate American genre within academia. As jazz studies programs became more formalized in colleges and universities, a plethora of methods and materials have followed suit. Lately, critics of these programs claim that many of the procedures, methods and materials used have abandoned the aural-imitative tradition. This study examines the current use of and the viability of future jazz education methods based primarily on aural-imitative procedures.Forty-one jazz faculty from universities and colleges throughout the United States participated in an interview process. An open-ended questionnaire survey was used to elicit responses. Each was asked a series of questions directly related to transcribing. The responses were recorded via cassette and were transcribed verbatim. In addition, four music teachers at schools at four schools for the blind were asked a similar series of questions. Their interviews responses were analyzed for similarities and differences.The results suggest that current methods do not contain adequate aural representations and that transcription could be a viable alternative to current methods. A practical system based on the transcription paradigm could and should be developed. Current digital technologies and Internet developments may help facilitate an all-transcription based methodology. Certain recordings and solos have become recognized as `masterpieces' that deserve to be transcribed and studied. The insights gained from school for the blind suggest that certain musical aspects may be beet gained from an aural-centric perspective. / School of Music

Subtilisin-like proteases form a large group of serine proteases with diverse functions, including the specific processing of a variety of proproteins and prohormones, and are found in prokaryotic and eukaryotic organisms. The work in this thesis focuses mainly on the Aral2 subtilisin-like protease following its discovery in the filtrate of Arabidopsis cell suspension cultures. Evidence obtained by Southern blotting and database searching is presented for the existence of a large gene family encoding subtilisin-like proteases in the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana. There may be more than fifty members in this gene family. Three of the corresponding DNA sequences have been cloned by RT-PCR and used as probes in Northern analysis to investigate the tissue specificity of the gene transcripts. These three genes appear to be expressed to varying degrees in Arabidopsis leaf, stem, root and silique tissues. A 650bp cDNA fragment encoding the C-terminal portion of the Aral2 protease has been obtained by RT-PCR, ligated to the malE gene and overexpressed as a fusion protein in E. coli cells. Polyclonal antisera have been raised against a combination of the fusion protein and the Aral2 C-terminal protein purified after cleavage from the fusion protein using Factor Xa protease. Aral2 protein has been detected in Arabidopsis tissues, particularly in siliques and stems, by Western blotting using these antibodies. An apoplastic location has been ascribed to Aral2 protease by immunocytochemistry using electron microscopy. The mature Aral2 subtilisin-like protease has been purified to homogeneity from Arabidopsis cell suspension culture filtrate by ion exchange chromatography and hydrophobic interaction chromatography. The purified enzyme has an acidic pH optimum of approximately pH5.5, which is unusual for a plant subtilisin-like protease. Aral2 protease is relatively thermostable and is activated in the presence of Ca(^2+) ions. The known serine protease inhibitors phenylmethanesulphonyl fluoride (PMSF), 4-(2- aminoethyl) benzenesulphonyl fluoride (AEBSF) and diisopropyl fluorophosphates (DFP) have an inhibitory effect on the proteolytic activity of Aral2. Substrate specificity studies have been performed using artificial peptide substrates, native proteins and cell wall protein extracts from Arabidopsis cells.

Damage to one vestibular apparatus (unilateral vestibular deafferentation, UVD) results in severe postural and ocular motor disturbances (such as spontaneous nystagmus, SN) that recover over time in a process known as vestibular compensation. However, the underlying neurochemical mechanisms of vestibular compensation are poorly understood. While UVD affects many areas in the CNS, attention has focused upon the partially deafferented second order neurons in the vestibular nuclei complex (VNC). Several converging lines of evidence suggest that Ca�⁺-permeable ion channels (N-methyl-D-aspartate receptors and L-type voltage-gated Ca�⁺-channels) and intracellular Ca�⁺-dependent protein kinases play an important role in vestibular compensation. However, the nature of this involvement and the locus of these changes are unknown. The aim of this thesis was to investigate the role of Ca�⁺ signalling pathways in the VNC during vestibular compensation in guinea pig. These issues were investigated in three separate experiments that utilised two methodological approaches: i) in vitro assays were used to determine the nature and extent of protein phosphorylation within the VNC at various stages of compensation; and ii) ion channel blockers or cell-permeable kinase inhibitors were injected directly into the VNC immediately before UVD to determine whether or not these systems were causally involved in compensation. The results of experiment 1 (Chapter 5) showed that a bolus intra-VNC injection of an uncompetitive NMDA receptor antagonist, but not an L-type voltage-gated Ca�⁺ channel antagonist, temporarily reduced SN frequency at the earliest measurement time (6 hours post-UVD). These results suggested that the initial expression of SN required, in part, the activation of NMDA receptors in the VNC on the side of the UVD, and by inference, Ca�⁺ entry through the ion channel. The results of experiment 2 (Chapter 6) revealed that the medial VNC contains abundant Ca�⁺/calmodulin-dependent and Ca�⁺/phospholipid-dependent protein kinase activities. The same VNC tissue removed from animals at various times after UVD, showed that vestibular compensation is accompanied by specific changes in the phosphorylation of several major protein kinase C substrates. These included an unidentified 46-kDa band, and a 75-kDa band with similar characteristics to the myristoylated alanine-rich C kinase substrate (MARCKS). These results suggest that protein kinase C signalling pathways may be involved in vestibular compensation. The results of experiment 3 (Chapter 7) are consistent with these results showing that intra-VNC infusion of a protein kinase C inhibitor, but not a Ca�⁺/calmodulin-dependent protein kinase II inhibitor, significantly increased SN at the earliest measurement times (6 and 8 hours), but had no effect upon the time taken to achieve compensation or on postural compensation. These results suggest that the induction of SN compensation involves protein kinase C activity in the VNC. Taken together, these findings suggest that the mechanisms underlying the expression of SN (e.g., Ca�⁺ influx via NMDA receptors) are possibly distinct from those that initiate its compensation (e.g., PKC activation). The downstream effects of raised intracellular Ca�⁺ may involve protein kinase C-dependent phosphorylation of key intracellular proteins that initiate long-lasting changes in cellular function within the VNC.

Diss. Umeå : Umeå universitet, 2005.

Diss. (sammanfattning) Stockholm : Karol. inst., 2003. / Härtill 5 uppsatser.