Академический Документы
Профессиональный Документы
Культура Документы
and techniques.
Perfecto Herrera
Aims of scientific research
Hypothesis
confirmation
Hypothesis
rejection
Steps in research
Search for an idea. They don’t come out of
the blue! You have to do brain gym,
observe, read, read, observe, think, read
again...
It is usually the case that your topic, problem
or idea has been previously worked or
developed. Don’t reinvent the wheel! No
inventes la sopa de ajo!
Talking and asking to other researchers and
students can be crucial. Ask!
Do a search for relevant literature. Literature
search is a must.
Once you have set the main ideas, google
around and start building your conceptual map
about the selected problem.
Take advantage of the resources to be found in
the UPF Library.
Do not fall in love with your original idea (yet): be
ready to reshape it a lot!
Talk to other people. If your idea can be understood
by other people not working in the field, then you are
on the right track.
People is useful to comment, critizize or transform your
original idea.
If you have experts at hand they can finally assess on
the references, constraints, required materials and
devices, and other technicalities you should take into
account.
Prepare an action plan. Organize the plan to get
your goals and be able to write a report and do a
public presentation of the work.
Take Hofstadter’s law very seriously. It states that it
always takes longer than you expect, even if you
take Hofstadter's Law into account.
Your supervisor will help you to set a realistic plan:
ask him/her!!! Do not wait to be in a rush in order to
ask for her/his help. The plan is a serious compromise
between you both!!!
Run a pilot test. Don’t wait to get all the required
data, all the code smoothly running and everything
perfected.
It always happen that when you start your experiments
something unexpected happens.
Minimize your risks by running some trials with a
small amount of data, subjects or under simplified
conditions.
Your closest friends and family are good candidates
for you to get feedback from them and from the setup
that you have devised.
Then, modify your original ideas and setup
accordingly.
Design the study. You have to identify the independent
and dependent variables, other factors to be controlled in
order them not to confound the results.
How many subjects? Which “type” of subjects? What will
be the instructions given to them? Which stimuli will be
used? Which task will be asked to perform? Which
devices will be required?
It is very useful to “copy” most of them from successful
similar experiments to be found in the literature.
Before starting running the experiment, write down the
questions you would like to answer when the data start to
be arriving to your computer.
You can even start writing a report at this point, as you
have reviewed literature, advancing hypotheses,
designing the experiment and imagine possible
outcomes.
Now “DO” the study.
A Pilot test is advisable before the real “GO!”
When you use subjects it is important to store
demographical and some personal data that
could be of relevance. But you should grant
them the confidentiality of them (consent
form).
When hearing is involved, it is also important
to check that their audition is somehow in good
shape.
Analyse your data.
Start with simple counts, averages,
deviations, correlations
Plot, plot, plot. And ask yourself
questions for the data to answer them
Then ask if more complex modelling
would be feasible (e.g. Time Series,
Discriminant Analysis, ANOVA, PCA…)
Explain data and possible conclusions to
other people.
Are them clear or contradictory?
Do they point towards something you forgot to
control?
Do them bring you towards more research,
towards a different study?
Can you elaborate explanations for them?
Can you plot them in a way that they speak by
themselves? Plot and plot, but also read
Edward Tufte!!!
Write a report and prepare a public
presentation. They should include the
typical sections you find in articles:
Introduction
Method (including stimuli, materials, subjects, and
procedure)
Results (including tables and graphs)
Discussion
Conclusions
Acknowledgements
References
Appendixes (optionally)
How to “measure”
(music) perception and cognition?
Surveys (not an experimental procedure)
Behavioural measures
Physiological measures
Electro-Encephalography (EEG):
Event-Related Potentials (ERP)
Magneto-Electro-Encephalography (MEG):
Positron Emission Tomography (PET)
Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging
(fMRI)
Physiological measures
Heart rate
Skin conductance
Blood pressure
Temperature
Movement, activity
Behavioural measures
Errors solving a task
Reaction time (indicator of the availability
and complexity of the processing operations
in the brain (you can quickly estimate if 2
sounds have the same pitch or loudness
(<150ms), but need more time to decide if
they belong to the same instrument, genre
or tonality)
Relatedness, similarity (5 or 7 point Likert-
type scale)
Choice (forced, not forced, 2, 3, 4 choices)
Eye-fixation
Yes
No
Event-Related potentials (ERP)
Psychoacoustics
Music
Cognition
Koelsch & Siebel (2005). Towards a neural basis of music perception, Trends in Cognitive Sciences Vol.9 No.12.
fMRI
fMRI detects changes in blood flow to particular areas of the brain,
when performing a given task (e.g., it provides structural +
“f”unctional information)
Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is based on the absorption and
emission of energy in the radio frequency range of the
electromagnetic spectrum
Oxygen nuclei have nuclear magnetic resonance, i.e., their spins
act as small magnetic fields and can be aligned according to a
magnetic field
Depending on the metabolism, the spins misalign and then this
process can be “plotted”
Excellent spatial resolution, bad temporal resolution Mental
It is totally uninvasive and innocuous paper
Is there any brain listening to Beethoven? And to Mozart?
cut &
And to Stockhausen?
Beethoven’s Fur Elise) Mozart Sonata (K.448) fold
puzzles
PET
It produces an image of the distribution of a
previously administered radioactively
labeled compound in any desired section of
the body
A wide variety of compounds have been
labeled permitting measurements of local
blood flow, metabolism, neuro-receptor
bindings...
Good spatial resolution, poor temporal
resolution