Wednesday 16 April 2014

Syncopation, Body-Movement and Pleasure in Groove Music

PLoS ONE 9(4): e94446
doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0094446
Published: April 16, 2014

Maria A. G. Witek [1], Eric F. Clarke [1], Mikkel Wallentin [2,3], Morten L. Kringelbach [2,4], Peter Vuust [2,5]

[1] Faculty of Music, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom
[2] Center of Functionally Integrative Neuroscience, Aarhus University Hospital, Aarhus, Denmark
[3] Center for Semiotics, University of Aarhus, Aarhus, Denmark
[4] Department of Psychiatry, Warneford Hospital, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom
[5] The Royal Academy of Music, Aarhus/Aalborg, Denmark

Abstract

Moving to music is an essential human pleasure particularly related to musical groove. Structurally, music associated with groove is often characterised by rhythmic complexity in the form of syncopation, frequently observed in musical styles such as funk, hip-hop and electronic dance music. Structural complexity has been related to positive affect in music more broadly, but the function of syncopation in eliciting pleasure and body-movement in groove is unknown.

Here we report results from a web-based survey which investigated the relationship between syncopation and ratings of wanting to move and experienced pleasure. Participants heard funk drum-breaks with varying degrees of syncopation and audio entropy, and rated the extent to which the drum-breaks made them want to move and how much pleasure they experienced.

While entropy was found to be a poor predictor of wanting to move and pleasure, the results showed that medium degrees of syncopation elicited the most desire to move and the most pleasure, particularly for participants who enjoy dancing to music. Hence, there is an inverted U-shaped relationship between syncopation, body-movement and pleasure, and syncopation seems to be an important structural factor in embodied and affective responses to groove.

Copyright: © 2014 Witek et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0094446

tweet this reddit digg this StumbleUpon digg this digg this

Tuesday 1 April 2014

Characterization of lactic acid bacteria isolated from infant faeces as potential probiotic starter cultures for fermented sausages

Food Microbiology
Volume 38, April 2014, Pages 303–311
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.fm.2013.07.015

Highlights

Lactobacillus gasseri and Enterococcus faecalis were the main species in infant faeces.
• RAPD-PCR discriminated 60 profiles out of 109 LAB isolates.
• Six of 109 LAB isolated from infants were qualified as potential probiotics.
• Selected lactobacilli were assayed as starter cultures in model sausages.
• Three of the selected strains were effective meat starter cultures.

Abstract

A total of 109 lactic acid bacteria isolated from infant faeces were identified by partial 16S rRNA, cpn60 and/or pheS sequencing. Lactobacillus was the most prevalent genus, representing 48% of the isolates followed by Enterococcus (38%). Lactobacillus gasseri (21%) and Enterococcus faecalis (38%) were the main species detected. A further selection of potential probiotic starter cultures for fermented sausages focused on Lactobacillus as the most technologically relevant genus in this type of product. Lactobacilli strains were evaluated for their ability to grow in vitro in the processing conditions of fermented sausages and for their functional and safety properties, including antagonistic activity against foodborne pathogens, survival from gastrointestinal tract conditions (acidity, bile and pancreatin), tyramine production, antibiotic susceptibility and aggregation capacity. The best strains according to the results obtained were Lactobacillus casei/paracasei CTC1677, L. casei/paracasei CTC1678, Lactobacillus rhamnosus CTC1679, L. gasseri CTC1700, L. gasseri CTC1704, Lactobacillus fermentum CTC1693. Those strains were further assayed as starter cultures in model sausages. L. casei/paracasei CTC1677, L. casei/paracasei CTC1678 and L. rhamnosus CTC1679 were able to lead the fermentation and dominate (levels ca. 10^8 CFU/g) the endogenous lactic acid bacteria, confirming their suitability as probiotic starter cultures.

Keywords

Fermented sausages; Lactic acid bacteria; Lactobacillus; RAPD-PCR; Probiotics

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0740002013001548

tweet this reddit digg this StumbleUpon digg this digg this