Music Therapy Today - World Federation of Music Therapy

Fachner, J. (2006) ‘Set and setting’ in an electrophysiological research paradigm on music perception under the influence of cannabis
and correlated brain function. Music Therapy Today (Online) Vol.VII (2) 333-374. available at http://musictherapyworld.net
and perceived consciously during perception. Perceptions and actions are
based on the particular content of these situations in environments in
which people are situated during their actions.
Situationism refers to “the inseparability of action and context, the rela-
tion between the social and materal conditions of action, the need to the-
orize the “higher psychological functioning” in relation to situated action
and the tension between the emphasis on situation and the scientific ideal
of abstraction” (Costall & Leudar, 1996, p.101).
Research on popular music stressed semiotics of signs used in artistic
context, which produce meanings for performer and audience. Thus,
music becomes a mediator of cultural symbols (Tagg, 1987). Therefore,
several issues of identity, place and performance, musical practice and
production styles, mediating experience of a certain song or classic com-
position in a specific listening, or even music production situation, are
taken into account to understand the aesthetic experience (Aldridge,
2004; Frith, 1998; Kärki et al., 2002).
MUSIC AND EEG Research on music and the EEG reflects the problem of inter-individually
different music experiences. EEG coherence analysis showed intra-indi-
vidually constant EEG-coherence profiles during music perception, but
profiles spread inter-individually over the whole cortex (H. Petsche,
1994). Music listening seems to involve many different areas, but is prag-
matically believed to have a right hemispheric dominance (Kolb &
Whishaw, 1996; Springer & Deutsch, 1987) as results in EEG research
conveyed (Auzou et al., 1995; David, 1989; F. H. Duffy et al., 1981; H.
Petsche, 1994; Walker, 1977). However, in a review on human brain
mapping methods of music perception, Sergant (1996) insisted that there
is no real evidence that music seems to be processed dominantly in the
right cerebral cortex. Even dichotic listening methods, auditory evoked
Aims of the study 343