Search Results (66)

This study investigates the design, development, and practical exploitation of an educational ontology for classical guitar instruction, within a semantically driven and application-oriented framework. The proposed approach aims to bridge the gap between formal knowledge representation and its functional use in real educational contexts. The ontology is developed using OWL in the Protégé environment and systematically models core pedagogical elements, including learning objectives, technical skills, instructional practices, and assessment processes, in alignment with the official curriculum. The semantic model is stored and managed as an RDF graph within a GraphDB repository, where it supports consistency checking and semantic querying through SPARQL. For application development, the ontological model is subsequently translated into a structured tabular schema suitable for the AppSheet low-code environment. Thus, GraphDB functions as a semantic validation and knowledge management layer, whereas the educational application operates on an application-oriented representation derived from the ontology rather than on a live RDF backend. The proposed three-tier architecture (Ontology–GraphDB–Application) demonstrates how Semantic Web technologies can support the transformation of abstract knowledge models into functional educational systems. The results highlight the capacity of ontology-driven approaches to enhance the organization, reusability, and pedagogical coherence of instructional knowledge, while enabling scalable and accessible application development through low-code technologies. The study contributes to the field of educational technology by providing a practical framework for integrating semantic knowledge representation into music education and laying a semantic foundation for future extensions toward adaptive and intelligent learning environments. Full article

Background: Music listening is increasingly applied in medical and healthcare settings as a non-pharmacological intervention to modulate psychophysical outcomes such as anxiety, pain, stress, mood, and physiological parameters. Despite a rapidly expanding evidence base, receptive music-based interventions remain highly heterogeneous with respect to theoretical rationale, music design, and methodological rigor. Objective: The primary aim of this review was to critically examine methodological and conceptual limitations of music listening approaches (based on pre-recorded music listening, without the presence of the music therapist during the listening phase) and to map the range of such interventions across clinical domains. Methods: A systematic search of PubMed was independently conducted by two reviewers for randomized controlled trials published between January 2020 and December 2025. Eligible studies investigated psychophysical outcomes of pre-recorded music listening in clinical or medical populations. Studies involving music listening in relational settings, live music, multimodal interventions, or neuromotor rehabilitation were excluded. Results: Of 280 records initially identified, 63 studies met the inclusion criteria. Most studies employed conventional familiar music, frequently self-selected by participants. Fewer than half reported explicit musical parameters, and only five studies documented the involvement of a certified music therapist. Substantial heterogeneity was observed in music listening experiences, potentially confounding outcome interpretation. Conclusions: Although music listening interventions appear feasible and potentially beneficial across diverse clinical contexts, major methodological and conceptual limitations persist. Greater involvement of music therapy professionals, standardized reporting of musical parameters, clearer theoretical rationales linking musical structure to clinical outcomes, and improved control group design are required to enhance reproducibility, interpretability, and clinical translation. Full article

The growth of Charismatic Christianity is arguably one of the most significant religious developments of the past century. Originating as a Protestant renewal movement in the United States, it expanded throughout the twentieth century, establishing Pentecostal churches, inspiring renewal movements within traditional denominations, and fundamentally reshaping Evangelical Christianity. While its theological and social features have been widely examined, the role of worship music remains a relatively understudied aspect of Charismatic life, despite its centrality in contemporary Christian practice. Situated within the framework of international migration and based on research in Slovenia, this article explores Contemporary Christian Music (CCM), particularly contemporary worship music (CWM), as a transnational vehicle of Charismatic and Evangelical Christianity. Drawing on semi-structured interviews and a qualitative analysis of a public database of translated songs, the study surveys CWM in Slovenia and discusses the homogenization of worship styles and the marginalization of local CWM production. The article concludes by reflecting on the notion of interdenominational homogenization in worship music. Full article

Non-motor symptoms (NMSs) are highly prevalent in Parkinson’s Disease (PD) and contribute significantly to disease severity, progression, and diminished quality of life. NMSs are rooted in both physiological and psychological domains and include emotional dysfunction, autonomic dysregulation, cognitive impairment, pain exacerbation, and neural deficits. While pharmacological approaches are often employed for the alleviation of non-motor symptomology, modest efficacy and adverse side effects may limit their practical utility for individuals with PD, leaving the need for the identification of complementary approaches. Music interventions have emerged as potential adjunctive therapeutic approaches that may positively modulate NMSs in both physiological and psychological domains. Physiologically, music interventions have been shown to alter autonomic activity and pain/sensory perceptions and mediate neurotransmitter release related to arousal, physical effort, and stress. Psychologically, music interventions, both passive and active, have been shown to modulate emotional regulation, motivation, attention, and cognitive performance. Emerging evidence utilizing neuroimaging and behavioral techniques further supports this and suggests music-induced benefits even in the presence of advancing neurodegeneration. Overall, findings from this narrative review suggest music may serve as a potential non-invasive adjunctive therapeutic tool to counteract PD-induced NMSs by adaptively modulating physiological and psychological processes. This narrative review aims to gather current evidence on the physiological and psychological mechanisms underlying the benefits of music and proposes potential therapeutic translation for NMSs in PD. Furthermore, current difficulties, gaps in knowledge, and needs for future research are discussed with the goal of informing directions for clinical translation. Full article

This study explores the feasibility of introducing Gregorian chant into contemporary Chinese Methodist worship in Malaysia. Using ethnographic methods including participant observation, interviews, and focus groups, this article documents a pilot study conducted at Sing Ang Tong Methodist Church in Sibu, Sarawak, where seven singers learned and performed the communion chant Gustate et videte. Three different transcription editions were created to bridge the gap between medieval square notation and modern Western notation, which is more familiar to the participants. The chant was translated into Chinese alongside the original Latin text. The majority preferred the quaver-crotchet notation edition and supported performing the chant in both Latin and Chinese to balance authenticity with accessibility. Participants found the modal melodic structure and free rhythm challenging initially but developed appreciation for the chant’s meditative qualities. The performance during Holy Communion services in October 2022 received mixed congregational responses, with many describing it as creating a “calm and prayerful atmosphere” while some expressed discomfort with the unfamiliar musical style. The study demonstrates that Gregorian chant can be successfully integrated into Chinese Methodist worship contexts, particularly during solemn liturgical occasions, when approached with appropriate liturgical sensitivity and cultural adaptation. Full article

This study explores the integration of Georgi Lozanov’s Suggestopedia with Alain Berthoz’s theory of simplexity as a pedagogical paradigm for inclusive and creative educational design. The research, conducted within the specialization courses for educational support at the University of Salerno, involved 230 trainee teachers engaged in a participatory action-research process aimed at translating suggestopedic principles, positive suggestion, music, and relational harmony into didactic planning. Through a combination of theoretical training, laboratory design activities, and reflective evaluation, participants produced 21 interdisciplinary educational projects assessed according to the properties and rules of simplexity. The results show a high degree of methodological coherence, aesthetic quality, and curricular inclusiveness, with music emerging as a key factor in fostering attention, cooperation, and emotional engagement. Data analysis indicates that the fusion of suggestopedic and simplex approaches promotes adaptive, modular, and meaning-oriented design processes that enhance teachers’ creativity and metacognitive awareness. Overall, the findings highlight the educational value of a pedagogy of resonance, in which body, mind, and environment interact harmoniously. The study concludes that the suggestopedic—simplex model represents a regenerative framework for contemporary didactics, capable of transforming complexity into harmony and restoring to education its aesthetic, relational, and human dimension. Full article

Background: We explored a new approach for increasing participation in daily life for individuals with severe movement impairments. The core of the approach is an application designed to Translate Intentions into Action (TIA) as a motivational tool for both leisure and clinical training sessions. Methods: The TIA application was developed to enable users to activate motivational feedback, like sounds, music, or videos, through movement measured with an IMU (Inertial Measurement Unit). IMUs were calibrated to user-specific thresholds based on individual movement potential. TIA was tested in two different age groups to assess applicability throughout lifespan and across different motor capacities. Results: The results indicated that TIA can be used for improved participation when positive feedback is provided during the intervention sessions. Observations demonstrated that regardless of age and motor capabilities, increased participation was achieved. TIA demonstrated the far-reaching potential to enhance the engagement and motivation of individuals with different levels of severe disabilities. Conclusions: By providing personalized, positive feedback through movement-activated outputs, TIA can be used by a wide range of people, with or without motor disabilities, to control digital outputs, such as video and audio. These findings suggest that TIA can be a valuable tool in both clinical and leisure settings to promote meaningful participation in activities. Full article

Background: Rhythmic sensory stimulation, including structured musical interventions, has gained renewed interest as a non-pharmacological strategy that may modulate cortical excitability and network stability in focal epilepsy. Although several small studies have reported changes in seizure frequency or epileptiform activity during rhythmic or music exposure, the underlying mechanisms and translational relevance remain insufficiently synthesized. Objective: This narrative review summarizes clinical evidence on music-based and rhythmic sensory interventions in focal epilepsy, outlines plausible neurophysiological mechanisms related to neural entrainment and large-scale network regulation, and discusses emerging opportunities for digital delivery of rhythmic protocols in everyday self-management. Methods: A structured search of recent clinical, neurophysiological, and rehabilitation literature was performed with emphasis on rhythmic auditory, tactile, and multimodal stimulation in epilepsy or related conditions. Additional theoretical and translational sources addressing oscillatory dynamics, entrainment, timing networks, and patient-centered digital tools were reviewed to establish a mechanistic framework. Results: Existing studies—although limited by small cohorts and heterogeneous methodology—suggest that certain rhythmic structures, including specific musical compositions, may transiently modulate cortical synchronization, reduce epileptiform discharges, or alleviate seizure-related symptoms in selected patients. Evidence from neurologic music therapy and rhythmic stimulation in other neurological disorders further supports the concept that externally delivered rhythms can influence timing networks, attentional control, and interhemispheric coordination. Advances in mobile health platforms enable structured rhythmic exercises to be delivered and monitored in real-world settings. Conclusions: Music-based and rhythmic sensory interventions represent a promising but underexplored adjunctive approach for focal epilepsy. Their effectiveness likely depends on individual network characteristics and on the structure of the applied rhythm. Digital integration may enhance personalization and adherence. Rigorous clinical trials and mechanistic studies are required to define optimal parameters, identify responders, and clarify the role of rhythmic stimulation within modern epilepsy care. Full article

Music is a near-universal anthropological and sensory phenomenon that engages distributed brain networks and peripheral physiological systems to shape emotion, cognition, sociality, and bodily regulation. Evidence from electrophysiology, neuroimaging, endocrinology, randomized controlled trials, and longitudinal training studies indicates that both receptive and active musical experiences produce experience-dependent neural and systemic adaptations. These include entrainment of neural oscillations, modulation of predictive and reward signaling, autonomic and neuroendocrine changes, and long-term structural connectivity alterations that support affect regulation, cognition, social functioning, motor control, sleep, and resilience to neuropsychiatric illness. This narrative review integrates mechanistic domains with clinical outcomes across major conditions, such as depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, dementia, and selected neurodevelopmental disorders, by mapping acoustic and procedural parameters onto plausible biological pathways. We summarize how tempo, beat regularity, timbre and spectral content, predictability, active versus passive engagement, social context, dose, and timing influence neural entrainment, synaptic and network plasticity, reward and prediction-error dynamics, autonomic balance, and immune/endocrine mediators. For each condition, we synthesize randomized and observational findings and explicitly link observed improvements to mechanistic pathways. We identify methodological limitations, including heterogeneous interventions, small and biased samples, sparse longitudinal imaging and standardized physiological endpoints, and inconsistent acoustic reporting, and translate these into recommendations for translational trials: harmonized acoustic reporting, pre-specified mechanistic endpoints (neuroimaging, autonomic, neuroendocrine, immune markers), adequately powered randomized designs with active controls, and long-term follow-up. Contextual moderators including music education, socioeconomic and cultural factors, sport, sleep, and ritual practices are emphasized as critical determinants of implementation and effectiveness. Full article

Romanian popular music has had a storied history across the last century and a half. Incorporating different influences at different times, today it boasts a wide range of both autochthonous and imported genres, such as traditional folk music, rock, rap, pop, and manele, to name a few. We aim to trace the linguistic differences between the lyrics of these genres using natural language processing and a computational linguistics approach by studying the prosodic, stylistic, syntactic, and sentiment-based features of each genre. For this purpose, we have crawled a dataset of ~14,000 Romanian songs from publicly available websites along with the user-provided genre labels, and characterized each song and each genre, respectively, with regard to these features, discussing similarities and differences. We improve on existing tools for Romanian language natural language processing by building a lexical analysis library well suited to song lyrics or poetry which encodes a set of 17 linguistic features. In addition, we build lexical analysis tools for profanity-based features and improve the SentiLex sentiment analysis library by manually rebalancing its lexemes to overcome the limitations introduced by it having been machine translated into Romanian. We estimate the accuracy gain using a benchmark Romanian sentiment analysis dataset and register a 25% increase in accuracy over the SentiLex baseline. The contribution is meant to describe the characteristics of the Romanian expression of autochthonous as well as international genres and provide technical support to researchers in natural language processing, musicology or the digital humanities in studying the lyrical content of Romanian music. We have released our data and code for research use. Full article

Generative models can generate art within a single modality with high fidelity. However, translating a work of art from one domain to another (e.g., painting to music or poem to painting) in a meaningful way remains a longstanding, interdisciplinary challenge. We propose a novel approach combining a multi-agent system (MAS) architecture with an ontology-guided semantic representation to achieve cross-domain art translation while preserving the original artwork’s meaning and emotional impact. In our concept, specialized agents decompose the task: a Perception Agent extracts symbolic descriptors from the source artwork, a Translation Agent maps these descriptors using shared knowledge base, a Generator Agent creates the target-modality artwork, and a Curator Agent evaluates and refines the output for coherence and style alignment. This modular design, inspired by human creative workflows, allows complex artistic concepts (themes, moods, motifs) to carry over across modalities in a consistent and interpretable way. We implemented a prototype supporting translations between painting and poetry, leveraging state-of-the-art generative models. Preliminary results indicate that our ontology-driven MAS produces cross-domain translations that preserve key semantic elements and affective tone of the input, offering a new path toward explainable and controllable creative AI. Finally, we discuss a case study and potential applications from educational tools to synesthetic VR experiences and outline future research directions for enhancing the realm of intelligent agents. Full article

This article reimagines Hispanidad as a flexible cultural repertoire rather than a fixed ideology, examining how Francoism, after 1945, staged official doctrine as public spectacle that then served as “evidence” of its own legitimacy. Through a combined lens of political theology (Schmitt on decision and secularization) and media theory (Benjamin on the aestheticization of politics; Agamben on glory and acclamation), it analyzes Juan de Orduña’s Alba de América (1951) and its paratexts to show how National-Catholic principles—unity of faith and language, providential destiny, and obedience-based authority—were translated into affect through narrative voice, emblematic staging, liturgical music, and choreographed acclamation. Although the film underperformed commercially, it thrived institutionally, excerpted in newsreels and rebroadcast annually on October 12 as a ritual object of state culture. The article argues that spectacle in Francoist Spain functioned not only as propaganda but also as a mechanism for stabilizing power by shaping collective memory and everyday habits, revealing how aesthetic form can naturalize political authority and offering a model for analyzing the everyday workings of power across media and regimes. Full article

Purpose: The present study aimed to describe the adaptation and validation process of the MuRQoL (Music Related Quality of Life questionnaire) from English to Hebrew and to describe normative data from a cohort of adults with normal hearing versus those with hearing aids or cochlear implants. Methods: After thoroughly translating and adapting to Hebrew, the participants completed the questionnaire online. We calculated the Cronbach’s alpha and McDonald’s omega scores for all scales and subscales. The construct validity of the questionnaire was evaluated using Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) and the “known group” method. A total of 310 adults participated in this study. Fifty-four participants were deaf or hard of hearing, and 256 had normal hearing. Results: Internal consistency of the MuRQoL-He scales and subscales demonstrated good-to-excellent reliability. The goodness-of-fit indices for the frequency and importance scales were within acceptable standards. We found a significant difference in the frequency scale, where the normal-hearing group scores were significantly higher than those of the deaf and hard-of-hearing groups. Conclusions: The validity and reliability of the MuRQoL-He have been confirmed, indicating that it is suitable for guiding music rehabilitation for Hebrew-speaking deaf and hard-of-hearing adults. Full article

The objective of this article is to present an original approach for modern composers to construct their musical work regarding its structural and dramaturgical aspects. The concept of Expressive circles originated primarily in inspirations taken from the movement in art called Surrealism and from music composed by Hanna Kulenty (which she describes as musique surrealistique). There are also parallels to other concepts (unism in music, surconventional deconstruction of the musical material) or to other composers (Witold Lutosławski). In the article, I present three types of Expressive circles (i.e., three form models)—closed structure, open structure and inverted structure. Each model is characterised by different approach to the musical theme and to its development in the musical piece. Considering the dramaturgical aspects of the work, the trance-like character of the music is important and there are two types of musical trances that I distinguish in Expressive circles, logarithm and drive; both are achieved differently in the musical work. The theoretical assumptions of the concept presented in the article are illustrated by chosen fragments from the score of my composition (EXPRESSIVE CIRCLES—Three pieces for piano trio) and by colourful schemes showing how the concept translates from theory to music. Full article

In response to the stress commonly experienced by young people in high-pressure daily environments, a music-based stress-relief interactive system was developed by integrating music-assisted care with emotion-sensing technology. The design principles of the system were established through a literature review on stress, music listening, emotion detection, and interactive devices. A prototype was created accordingly and refined through interviews with four experts and eleven users participating in a preliminary experiment. The system is grounded in a four-stage guided imagery and music framework, along with a static activity model focused on relaxation-based stress management. Emotion detection was achieved using a wearable EEG device (NeuroSky’s MindWave Mobile device) and a two-dimensional emotion model, and the emotional states were translated into visual representations using seasonal and weather metaphors. A formal experiment involving 52 users was conducted. The system was evaluated, and its effectiveness confirmed, through user interviews and questionnaire surveys, with statistical analysis conducted using SPSS 26 and AMOS 23. The findings reveal that: (1) integrating emotion sensing with music listening creates a novel and engaging interactive experience; (2) emotional states can be effectively visualized using nature-inspired metaphors, enhancing user immersion and understanding; and (3) the combination of music listening, guided imagery, and real-time emotional feedback successfully promotes emotional relaxation and increases self-awareness. Full article