bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Redcliffe-Maud and its Implications
Authors: Jacobson Bernard
Published: February 2010

Apart from suggestions that such pioneering chamber orchestras as the Fires of London and the London Sinfonietta ought to receive regular grant-aid, and that ‘The Arts Council should initiate discussions between the four subsidised London orchestras and the BBC, in the light of recommendations made in the 1970 Peacock Report, of subsequent experience and of present and future shortage of funds available for music’, Lord Redcliffe-Maud's report on Support for the Arts in England and Wales contains few specific proposals calculated to have an immediate impact on the fortunes of contemporary music in Britain. It is not that sort of report. Properly enough, Maud has deployed his wide knowledge of and enthusiasm for particular arts fields not as a topic in itself, but as background and justification for a much broader consideration of how those arts are and ought to be supported in this country. So even if the immediate impact is limited, the longer-term effect of his views will be of vital interest for all of us who are concerned with the welfare of music today and of musicians today.
Person Viewpoints — notes by five composers
Authors: Smalley Roger , Goehr Alexander , Crosse Gordon , Taverner John , Ginastera Albert
Published: February 2010

What follows is a purely personal account of my speculations about composition today, in relation to a study of Stravinsky's work. Under three main headings I shall try to show the contemporary relevance of certain features of Stravinsky's musical style which have not been very frequently discussed.
György Kurtág: An Outline Study (1)
Authors: Walsh Stephen
Published: February 2010

When János Kárpáti contributed a survey of the younger Hungarian composers to the Spring 1969 issue of TEMPO, it was natural for him to include a paragraph on György Kurtág, even though Kurtág was then 43 and a composer with more than 20 years' working experience. His history at that time was curious. Born in 1926 in Lugoj, a Romanian town acquired from Hungary in the partition following the 1914–18 war, he had moved in 1946 to Budapest, where he submitted to an extended period of study with Sándor Veress and (after Veress's defection in 1949) Ferenc Farkas. According to György Króo's model entry on Kurtág in the New Grove, he gained his composition diploma only in 1955. But throughout this period he was actively composing, and although no definitive or accurate list of these early works is available it appears that they were numerous and, within the conventions of the day, expert. Some of them were published. With the end of the Rákosi era, and in the freer atmosphere which followed the autumn rising of 1956, Kurtág was able to travel to Paris to renew his studies. There he worked with Marianne Stein as well as attending classes of Messiaen and Milhaud. He returned to Budapest in 1958 artistically resurrected, as he himself acknowledged when he labelled the string quartet he completed in 1959 his opusi. But from now on composition, though rescued from unhappy limitations, was to be a laborious and often discouraging business. At the time of Kárpáti's survey Kurtág had finished only seven works, of which the most recent had taken him more than five-and-a-half years to write. Not one of these works had been publicly played in Britain.
Britten's Revisionary Practice: Practical and Creative
Authors: Mitchell Donald
Published: February 2010

Composers' revisions really fall into two main groups (though each group itself can be sub-divided many times over). The first group I should name ‘practical’, i.e., revisions or after-thoughts which are designed to make a work more viable; we constantly meet this kind of revising in the opera house, but I should also include under this heading those cases where a composer has written, say, a complete new movement to replace an existing one. More often than not, this is the revision of an early work; his intention is ‘practical’—to get rid of the one, perhaps feeble, movement that goes against the chances of the work's success and thus save what is worth preserving in the rest of the work. This is what we might call good husbandry on the part of the composer. He keeps his crops, so to speak, in the best and most marketable condition.
The World Around Britten
Authors: Keller Hans
Published: February 2010

In my experience, anniversary articles about living composers, read a few decades after the event, seem terribly stale and drab—the righter, the staler. The reason is clear. Articles which time proves wrong have, at least, a period flavour: how delightful to see how ‘great’ Spohr or Spontini used to be. (There are also those, of course, which time proves wrongly wrong, at any rate for a time: the period flavour of Mendelssohn's greatness is gradually evaporating, his timeless greatness re-emerging). But to see how right Rochlitz was about Beethoven, or how right—about 40 years too late—I was about Schoenberg, is shatteringly tedious: we don't dive into the past in order to watch how, sweat dripping from its self–righteous forehead, it laboriously discovers the obvious. The prophet's tragedy is that by the time he's right he's out of date with the noise he makes. There will never be any professional prophets, as opposed to those enthusiastic amateurs, good luck to them. It is an unrewarding occupation, a pastime in the most profoundly literal sense of the word.
A Note on the Four Chords in act II of A Midsummer Night's Dream
Authors: Roseberry Eric
Published: February 2010

We know from the composer's own account that work on A Midsummer Night's Dream was by no means always easy going. Therefore when I accidentally stumbled (aurally, be it noted) upon the remarkable fact that the four chords used in Act II of the Dream were almost identical with those used in the setting of Keats's ‘Sonnet to Sleep’ in the Serenade I fully expected to learn that the composer had consciously borrowed from the earlier work, reversing the order of the first two chords (adding a B to the D major chord) and magically re-spacing and re-scoring them. As the poetic element in each piece is concerned with the properties of sleep (inducing a healing forgetfulness on the one hand, a fantastic change of identities on the other) the conscious re-working of those earlier chords of the Serenade would have seemed by no means inapt.
Prokofieff's Works for Piano Solo
Authors: Merrick Frank
Published: February 2010

For about half my professional life I have been interested in these works, securing one after another as many of them as came on the visible side of my horizon. This interest was first awakened by the study of the Ballad for Cello and Piano, Opus 13, which I was asked to play at a concert in Manchester somewhere round about 1920. The Ballad is a piece in which, for all its comparative immaturity, there are unmistakable traces of a new and highly original personality together with a good deal of fascinating intricacy. To bait the hook still more temptingly for me there was every need to practise a number of the passages both diligently and even ingeniously before it was possible to execute them with a modicum of respectability. Time has in no way staled for me the intriguing delights of this early work.
Gerald Finzi—An Appreciation
Authors: Bliss Arthur
Published: February 2010

If a foreigner new to England wished to taste the special flavour of English music, and find wherein it differed from the music of his own country, he could do no better than study first the music of Gerald Finzi. Here he would come on music that exhales the very air of England.
Stravinsky's Contribution to Chamber Music
Authors: Mason Colin
Published: February 2010

Strawinsky's interest in chamber music dates from about 1914. After the orchestral din of The Rite of Spring he suddenly turned to chamber-music textures, first in the Three Japanese Lyrics, which he quickly followed up with the Three Pieces for String Quartet and two more collections of songs with chamber instrumental accompaniment—the Pribaoutki and the Cat's Cradle Songs. Later came The Soldier's Tale, Ragtime, the Concertino for String Quartet, and the Octet. Since then his ventures into this field have been very spasmodic. After the Octet he did not return to it for nearly ten years, in the Duo Concertant, and then neglected it for a further twenty years (unless the Elegy for unaccompanied viola, written in 1944, is allowed as chamber music), when he suddenly produced the Septet, the Shakespeare songs, and the In Memoriam Dylan Thomas.
Television and Opera
Authors: Wright Kenneth A.
Published: February 2010

“We know that even in ‘lyrical’ performances in the theatre a conflict exists between the dramatic action, which must move on, and the musical composition, which by its nature holds back. How should we reconcile the conflict between the beauty of a formal medium of expression, music, with the speed which is characteristic of every type of film?”
The Magic Flute: Auden-Kallman v. Cross
Authors: Auden W. H. , Kallman Chester
Published: February 2010

”It is not easy,” writes Miss Joan Cross in her review* of our translation of The Magic Flute, ”to be scrupulously fair to a new translation.” For a singer who has studied and performed one version and neither studied nor heard the other, it may well be impossible. It is natural and proper that, out of personal affection for and loyalty to the Grand Old Man of Opera in English, Miss Cross should wish to defend the late Professor Dent against two American upstarts, but it might have occurred to her that, under the circumstances, a review were better left to a less partial judge.
Bartók's Early Violin Concerto
Authors: Mason Colin
Published: February 2010

At one of the concerts of the Bartók Festival in Basel this year, the first performance was given of the composer's early Violin Concerto. It had long been known that the first of the Two Portraits, Op. 5, was a movement from it, but the complete work was for many years believed lost. Fortunately the manuscript score had been carefully kept by the Hungarian-born violinist Stefi Geyer, for whom Bartók wrote it, and at her death she left it to Paul Sacher with the request that he and the Swiss violinist Hans-Heinz Schneeberger should perform it. They did so at Basel on 30th May, 1958.
Stravinsky and Gesualdo
Authors: Mason Colin
Published: February 2010

At the Venice Festival this year the first performance was given of Stravinsky's Monumentum pro Gesualdo Venosa ad CD Annum. This consists of three of Gesualdo's five-part madrigals, ‘re-composed for instruments’ by Stravinsky. The madrigals he has chosen are ‘Asciugate i begli occhi’ (Book V, No. 15), ‘Ma tu, cagion di quella’ (Book V, No. 18), and ‘Belta poi che t'assenti’ (Book VI, No. 2). Stravinsky's full orchestra for the work consists of two oboes, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, and strings without double basses, but he uses no trumpets or trombones in the first madrigal, and no horns or strings in the second.
Some Memorable Occasions
Authors: Beaumont Cyril W.
Published: February 2010

If one were asked to set down the names of those contemporary musical composers who had contributed most to the advancement of their art, it is more than probable that the name of Igor Strawinsky would be among the first to spring to mind. Yet I well recall the time when Strawinsky was a new and exciting word which one read and pronounced with curiosity, having no first-hand experience of what that name implied.
Nicholas Medtner: An Appreciation
Authors: Alexander Arthur
Published: February 2010

In the long history of art there are those, who, living before their time, have been mainly ignored or derided. Others, like Dussek, have all unknowing, anticipated something of the composers to come. Yet another, like Mozart (the least original Great Master), by adding to and enriching the music of his age, has brought it to a noble climax.

Conversely, there are others, who, fancying they can ignore the past, experiment with artificial formulae in a vain endeavour to by-pass evolution.
Concerning Music
Authors: Furtwängler William
Published: February 2010

The reaction of an audience will somehow always be commensurate with the effect created, precisely because it is subconscious. Thus there are works that release noisy and vociferous, yet meaningless and empty, applause: it echoes their own emptiness. And there are others to which the audience reacts less spontaneously, yet whose worth is not only immeasurably greater but their effect immeasurably deeper. It is definitely wrong to draw conclusions from the effect made on an audience, i.e. from the volume of the applause, as to the real strength of the impression made by a work, let alone as to its quality. The audience itself—this curious something—does not know how and why it reacts; it reacts automatically and subconsciously, more or less like a barometer. What matters is that one should know how to read this barometer aright and how to interpret that reading.
Broadcast Music
Authors: Chapman Ernest
Published: February 2010

The early repetition of new works of substance is all-important, if we are to come to grips with them. The BBC usually give us the opportunity of hearing the more interesting novelties at least once, but what they seem to lack is any guiding policy as to which works should be repeated, and which not, and the length of time that should elapse between one hearing and the next. Thus, Stravinsky's new Symphony No. 3 and Rubbra's 'cello Sonata have each had one performance to date, while the second performances of the new Bloch and Tippett Quartets were given only after an interval of many weeks. Contrariwise, Webern's last Cantata was heard twice in the same concert, while Bartók's third piano Concerto and Elizabeth Maconchy's fourth Quartet were repeated after intervals of, respectively, one and two days. It would require a more subtle intelligence than mine to discover any hint of system behind all this.
Music in Israel
Authors: Rothe Friede F.
Published: February 2010

In Israel, music is a vital, living, breathing, pulsating, throbbing, inspiring and devotional part of the lives of the people. In Israel, music seems to fulfil so much of the emotional and spiritual needs of the people, that to the outside observer, the avidity and passion with which it is absorbed, (almost visibly chewed and swallowed) makes it virtually akin to the primal hungers of man.
Schoenberg's ‘Atonality’: Fused Bitonality?
Authors: Hicken Kenneth
Published: February 2010

The early years of Arnold Schoenberg's career as a composer were marked by much opposition. Apparently very few people could tolerate his music's strange new sounds or seemingly incomprehensible organization for any length of time, and the performance of a Schoenberg work frequently resulted in scandal. Then, of course, his introduction of the so-called ‘atonal’ style of writing must have seemed to some to be an assault upon the very foundations of music itself, a blasphemy demanding the strongest condemnation.
Some Observations on Bartók's Third Piano Concerto
Authors: Suchoff Benjamin
Published: February 2010

In the correspondence between Bartók and his publisher, Ralph Hawkes, a letter to the composer, dated 22 August 1940, contains what is apparently the first mention of the Third Piano Concerto:

I do not know whether you have developed any ideas for new works during the last few months, quite possibly not, but I would like to remind you of your promise of the orchestral version of the Two Pianos and Percussion work, also to advise you that I shall expect the Third Piano Concerto by the summer of 1941. My reason for saying this is that you will be wanted as soloist with this work for the New York Philharmonic during its Centennial Season 1941–42.
1919: Suite from ‘The Soldier's Tale’
Authors: Bradshaw Susan
Published: February 2010

The five-movement suite from The Soldier's Tale is a trio for clarinet, violin and piano which was written shortly after the original stage work of 1918 (scored for clarinet, bassoon, cornet, trombone, percussion, violin, double bass, male speaker and female dancer). On musical evidence alone, it would be almost impossible to discover which version came first; and the same is true of the other works by Stravinsky which exist in two instrumental forms—including Agon, with its remarkable ‘double’ for two pianos, The Rite of Spring, with its piano duet version, and the Eight Easy Pieces for piano duet, which are also available as two suites for small orchestra.
In Search of the Historical Taverner
Authors: Josephson David
Published: February 2010

The visitor to the Cathedral Church of Christ in Oxford, the Parish Church of St. Botolph's in Boston, Lincolnshire, or the Collegiate Church of the Holy Trinity in nearby Tattershall, will find them in much the same condition as did John Taverner more than four hundred years ago. But he will find no trace in these noble piles of the man who served them so well. Nor is he likely to hear in their devotional services, or in any others in England, the music Taverner wrote for their choirs. Reasons for this neglect are not difficult to find. Very little church music composed by Taverner and his contemporaries was copied (and none printed) in score during their lifetime. Most of the part-books in which their music was inscribed were treated carelessly and later lost or destroyed. With the rapid religious and musical developments that followed the death of Henry VIII in 1547, the compositions of these men became liturgically irrelevant on the one hand and stylistically outdated on the other; compared with the melodic restraint and textural clarity of Elizabethan music, their writing sounded old-fashioned, extravagant and impenetrably thick, and it was far more difficult to sing. Therefore, from the beginning of the Elizabethan era to the end of the Victorian, the compositions of men such as Taverner, Robert Fayrfax and Nicholas Ludford remained unseen and unheard except by the occasional musical antiquarian.
Khargūshī,Tahdhīb al-asrār
Authors: Melchert Christopher
Published: January 2010

Khargushi (d. Nishapur, 407/1016?),Tahdhīb al-asrār, is a fairly large collection of sayings in the renunciant/Sufi tradition, comprising over twice as many items as Sarrāj,al-Lumaʿ and Sulamī,Ṭabaqāt al-sufiyya. A first printed edition appeared in 1999. Examination of theTahdhībconfirms that Khargūshī was Shāfiʿi in law, Ashʿari in theology, but mainly a preacher devoted to piety. It also tends to confirm current common wisdom about the history of Sufism: that it developed out of the earlier renunciant tradition, that Malāmatism was a distinctive Nishapuran school of mystical piety with such affinities to Baghdadi Sufism as make it easily assimilable to it, and that Khargūshī's time was still that of the teaching master, the training master not appearing till half a century later. Its similarities to Sarrāj,al-Lumaʿand Abū Nuʿaym,Ḥilyat al-awliyā’make both of those appear more mainstream than has sometimes been feared.
Social Assistance and Territorial Justice: The Example of Single Payments
Authors: Walker Robert , Lawton Dorothy
Published: January 2010

Social assistance in many countries is administered locally. Centralised, uniform schemes, such as those which operate in Britain are often assumed to guarantee, or at least to enhance, territorial equity, that is the equal treatment of individuals with identical needs irrespective of where they live. This assumption is examined with respect to the system of single payments—lump sum payments to meet exceptional needs—which existed prior to the 1988 social security reforms. Although much of the geographic variation in the volume of awards which used to exist is explicable in terms of variations in the level of need, territorial inequity is demonstrated to have occurred in what was a nationally administered and closely regulated scheme. The reasons for the inequity seem in part to have been due to variations in office work flow and working practices, welfare rights activity and unidentified processes linked in some way to the regional administrative structure of DHSS.
Précis of Gallistel'sThe organization of action: A new synthesis
Authors: Gallistel C. R.
Published: February 2010

The book describes three elementary units of action – the reflex, the oscillator, and the servomechanism – and the principles by which they are combined to make complex units. The combining of elementary units to make complex units gives behavior and the neural circuitry underlying behavior a hierarchical structure. Circuits at higher levels govern the operation of lower circuits by selective potentiation and depotentiation: by regulating the potential for operation in lower circuits – raising the potential for some and lowering it for others – a higher unit establishes the overall pattern to be exhibited in the combined operations of the lower units, while leaving it to the lower units to determine the details of the implementation of this pattern. A theory of motivation of the kind long championed by ethologists and physiological psychologists grows out of the notion of the selective potentiation and depotentiation of hierarchically structured units of behavior. The question then becomes how this conception of motivation may be integrated with a conception of a learned representation of the world to yield a theory of how animals produce novel motivated behavioral sequences based on learned representations. The representation of space, which is central to the behavior of organisms at least as lowly as the digger wasp, is a promising domain for the investigation of this question. Another promising area is the representation of skilled movements, such as handwriting. A number of issues in cognitive and developmental psychology are illumined by this theory about the organization of action. Among these are the degrees-of-freedom problem, the role of practice in development and in the learning of skilled action, and the role of mental rotation of spatial representations.
Intentional systems in cognitive ethology: The “Panglossian paradigm” defended
Authors: Dennett Daniel C.
Published: February 2010

Ethologists and others studying animal behavior in a “cognitive” spirit are in need of a descriptive language and method that are neither anachronistically bound by behaviorist scruples nor prematurely committed toparticular“information-processing models.” Just such an interim descriptive method can be found inintentional system theory. The use of intentional system theory is illustrated with the case of the apparently communicative behavior of vervet monkeys. A way of using the theory to generate data - including usable, testable “anecdotal” data - is sketched. The underlying assumptions of this approach can be seen to ally it directly with “adaptationist” theorizing in evolutionary biology, which has recently come under attack from Stephen Gould and Richard Lewontin, who castigate it as the “Panglossian paradigm.” Their arguments, which are strongly analogous to B. F, Skinner's arguments against “mentalism,” point to certain pitfalls that attend the careless exercise of such “Panglossian” thinking (and rival varieties of thinking as well), but do not constitute a fundamental objection to either adaptationist theorizing or its cousin, intentional system theory.
Neuroethology of releasing mechanisms: Prey-catching in toads
Authors: Ewert Jörg-Peter
Published: February 2010

“Sign stimuli” elicit specific patterns of behavior when an organism's motivation is appropriate. In the toad, visually released prey-catching involves orienting toward the prey, approaching, fixating, and snapping. For these action patterns to be selected and released, the prey must be recognized and localized in space. Toads discriminate prey from nonprey by certain spatiotemporal stimulus features. The stimulus-response relations are mediated by innate releasing mechanisms (RMs) with recognition properties partly modifiable by experience. Striato-pretecto-tectal connectivity determines the RM's recognition and localization properties, whereas medialpallio-thalamo-tectal circuitry makes the system sensitive to changes in internal state and to prior history of exposure to stimuli. RMs encode the diverse stimulus conditions referring to the same prey object through different combinations of “specialized” tectal neurons, involving cells selectively tuned to prey features. The prey-selective neurons express the outcome of information processing in functional units consisting of interconnected cells. Excitatory and inhibitory interactions among feature-sensitive tectal and pretectal neurons specify the perceptual operations involved in distinguishing the prey from its background, selecting its features, and discriminating it from predators. Other connections indicate stimulus location. The results of these analyses are transmitted by specialized neurons projecting from the tectum to bulbar/spinal motor systems, providing a sensorimotor interface. Specific combinations of such projective neurons – mediating feature- and space-related messages – form “command releasing systems” that activate corresponding motor pattern generators for appropriate prey-catching action patterns.
The phylogeny and ontogeny of behavior
Authors: Skinner B. F.
Published: February 2010

Responses are strengthened by consequences having to do with the survival of individuals and species. With respect to the provenance of behavior, we know more about ontogenic than phylogenic contingencies. The contingencies responsible for unlearned behavior acted long ago. This remoteness affects our scientific methods, both experimental and conceptual. Until we have identified he variables responsible for an event, we tend to invent causes. Explanatory entities such as “instincts,” “drives,” and “traits” still survive. Unable to show how organisms can behave effectively under complex circumstances, we endow them with special abilities permitting them to do so.

Behavior exhibited by most members of a species is often accepted as inherited if all members were not likely to have been exposed to relevant ontogenic contingencies. When contingencies are not obvious, it is perhaps unwise to call any behavior either inherited or acquired, as the examples of churring in honey guides and following in imprinted ducklings show. Nor can the relative importance of phylogenic and ontogenic contingencies be argued from instances in which unlearned or learned behavior intrudes or dominates. Intrusions occur in both directions.

Behavior influenced by its consequences seems directed toward the future, but only past effects are relevant. The mere fact that behavior is adaptive does not indicate whether phylogenic or ontogenic processes have been responsible for it. Examples include the several possible provenances of imitation, aggression, and communication. The generality of such concepts limits their usefulness. A more specific analysis is needed if we are to deal effectively with the two kinds of contingencies and their products.
How we know our minds: The illusion of first-person knowledge of intentionality
Authors: Gopnik Alison
Published: February 2010

As adults we believe that our knowledge of our own psychological states is substantially different from our knowledge of the psychological states of others: First-person knowledge comes directly from experience, but third-person knowledge involves inference. Developmental evidence suggests otherwise. Many 3-year-old children are consistently wrong in reporting some of their own immediately past psychological states and show similar difficulties reporting the psychological states of others. At about age 4 there is an important developmental shift to a representational model of the mind. This affects children's understanding of their own minds as well as the minds of others. Our sense that our perception of our own minds is direct may be analogous to many cases where expertise provides an illusion of direct perception. These empirical findings have important implications for debates about the foundations of cognitive science.
Nonconsequentialist decisions
Authors: Baron Jonathan
Published: February 2010

According to a simple form of consequentialism, we should base decisions on our judgments about their consequences for achieving our goals. Our goals give us reason to endorse consequentialism as a standard of decision making. Alternative standards invariably lead to consequences that are less good in this sense. Yet some people knowingly follow decision rules that violate consequentialism. For example, they prefer harmful omissions to less harmful acts, they favor the status quo over alternatives they would otherwise judge to be belter, they provide third-party compensation on the basis of the cause of an injury rather than the benefit from the compensation, they ignore deterrent effects in decisions about punishment, and they resist coercive reforms they judge to be beneficial. I suggest that nonconsequentialist principles arise from overgeneralizing rules that are consistent with consequentialism in a limited set of cases. Commitment to such rules is detached from their original purposes. The existence of such nonconsequentialist decision biases has implications for philosophical and experimental methodology, the relation between psychology and public policy, and education.
Mathematical principles of reinforcement
Authors: Killeen Peter R.
Published: February 2010

Effective conditioning requires a correlation between the experimenter's definition of a response and an organism's, but an animal's perception of its behavior differs from ours. These experiments explore various definitions of the response, using the slopes of learning curves to infer which comes closest to the organism's definition. The resulting exponentially weighted moving average provides a model of memory that is used to ground a quantitative theory of reinforcement. The theory assumes that: incentives excite behavior and focus the excitement on responses that are contemporaneous in memory. The correlation between the organism's memory and the behavior measured by the experimenter is given by coupling coefficients, which are derived for various schedules of reinforcement. The coupling coefficients for simple schedules may be concatenated to predict the effects of complex schedules. The coefficients are inserted into a generic model of arousal and temporal constraint to predict response rates under any scheduling arrangement. The theory posits a response-indexed decay of memory, not a time-indexed one. It requires that incentives displace memory for the responses that occur before them, and may truncate the representation of the response that brings them about. As a contiguity-weighted correlation model, it bridges opposing views of the reinforcement process. By placing the short-term memory of behavior in so central a role, it provides a behavioral account of a key cognitive process.
Temporal representation in the control of movement
Authors: Corcos Daniel M.
Published: February 2010

Theories of the representation of specific kinetic and spatiotem-poral features of movement range from the explicit assertion that temporal aspects of movement are not represented (Kugler et al. 1980) to the idea that they are represented and that they have neurophysiological correlates (Ivry & Corcos 1993; Ivry & Keele 1989). Jeannerod's thesis is that mental and visual images have common mechanisms and that there is a link between the image to move and the mechanisms involved with movement. The target article takes the position that certain parameters are coded in motor representations (sect. 4) but that the duration of an action is not one of them. This position is based on the work of Gottlieb et al. (1989b) and of Decety et al. (1989). Both these studies are worth considering in detail. In Note 1, Jeannerod suggests that: “in time-constrained tasks subjects control the amplitude parameter of force impulses, whereas in spatially constrained tasks the duration of the force impulse is affected by accuracy demands.” This is not exactly correct. Excitation pulse intensity (amplitude) is modulated both in tasks that require spatial and those that require temporal accuracy. Excitation pulse duration is modulated for changes in movement distance and inertial load. If subjects are required to be very accurate spatially, they will move at less than maximum speed for a given distance and this is achieved by lower levels of excitation intensity (Gottlieb et al. 1990).
On the relation between motor imagery and visual imagery
Authors: Klatzky Roberta L.
Published: February 2010

Jeannerod's target article describes support, through empirical and neurological findings, for the intriguing idea of motor imagery, a form of representation hypothesized to have levels of functional equivalence with motor preparation, while being consciously accessible. Jeannerod suggests that the subjectively accessible content of motor imagery allows it to be distinguished from motor preparation, which is unconscious. Motor imagery is distinguished from visual imagery in terms of content. Motor images are kinesthetic in nature; they are parametrized by variables such as force and time and they are potentially governed by kinematic rules. Jeannerod acknowledges, however, that motor and visual imagery may not easily be separated, because actions take place in a spatial environment. I agree; in fact, I suggest here that visualization may generally be concomitant with, and may even subjectively dominate, motor imagery.
Gene therapy for neurodegenerative disorders and malignant brain tumors
Authors: Chiang Lan , Flores Eric P. , Wen Dennis Y. , Hall Walter A. , Low Walter C.
Published: February 2010

Gene therapy approaches have great promise in the treatment of neurodegenerative disorders and malignant brain tumors. Neuwelt et al. review available viral-mediated gene therapy methods and their blood-brain-barrier (BBB) disruption delivery technique, briefly mentioning nonviral mediated gene therapy methods. This commentary discussed the BBB disruption delivery technique, viral and nonviral mediated gene therapy approaches to Parkinson's disease, and the potential use of antisense oligo to suppress malignant brain tumors.
The ethics of fetal tissue grafting should be considered along with the science
Authors: Crutcher Keith A.
Published: February 2010

In addition to the scientific and medical issues surrounding the use of fetal tissue transplants, the ethical implications should be considered. Two major ethical issues are relevant. The first of these is whether this experimental procedure can be justified on the basis of potential benefit to the patient. The second is whether the use of tissue obtained from intentionally aborted fetuses can be justified in the context of historical and existing guidelines for the protection of human subjects. The separation of ethical decisions from medical practice and scientific research is necessary to prevent the exploitation of innocent human life.
The limitations of central nervous systemdirected gene transfer
Authors: Davidson Beverly L.
Published: February 2010

Complementation and correction of a genetic defect with CNS manifestations lags behind gene therapy for inherited disorders affecting other organ systems because of shortcomings in delivery vehicles and access to the CNS. The effects of improvements in viral and nonviral vectors, coupled with the development of delivery strategies designed to transfer genetic material thoughout the CNS are being investigated by a number of laboratories in efforts to overcome these problems.
Building a rational foundation for neural transplantation
Authors: Davis Hasker P. , Volpe Bruce T.
Published: February 2010

The neural transplantation research described by Sinden and colleagues provides part of the rationale for the clinical application of neural transplantation. The authors are asked to clarify their view of the role of the cholinergic system in cognition, to address extrahippocampal damage caused by transient forebrain ischemia, and to consider the effects of delayed neural degeneration in their structure-function analysis.
Neural transplantation, cognitive aging and speech
Authors: Lynch Michael P.
Published: February 2010

Research on neural transplantation has great potential societal importance in part because of the expanding proportion of the population that is elderly. Transplantation studies can benefit from the guidance of research on cognitive aging, especially in connection with the assessment of behavioral outcomes. Speech for example, might be explored using avian models.
Multiple obstacles to gene therapy in the brain
Authors: Sanders David Avram
Published: February 2010

Neuwelt et al. have proposed gene-transfer experiments utilizing an animal model that offers many important advantages for investigating the feasibility of gene therapy in the human brain. A variety of tissues concerning the viral vector and mode of delivery of the corrective genes need to be resolved, however, before such therapy is scientifically supportable.
Gene therapy and neural grafting: Keeping the message switched on
Authors: Svendsen C. N. , Dunnett S. B.
Published: February 2010

A major problem in developing an effective gene therapy for the nervous system lies in understanding the principles that maintain or turn off the expression of genes following their transfer into the CNS.
Behavioral effects of neural grafts: Action still in search of a mechanism
Authors: Woodruff Michael L.
Published: February 2010

This commentary reviews data supporting circuitry reconstruction, replacement neurotransmitters, and trophic action as mechanisms whereby transplants promote recovery of function. Issue is taken with the thesis of Sinden et al. that adequate data exist to indicate that reconstruction of hippocampal circuitry damaged by hypoxia with CA1 transplants is a confirmed mechanism whereby these transplants produce recovery. Sinden et al.'s and Stein & Glasier's proposal that there is definitive evidence showing that all transplants produce trophic effects is also questioned.
Local and global gene therapy in the central nervous system
Authors: Muldoon Leslie L. , Neuwelt Edward A.
Published: February 2010

For focal neurodegenerative diseases or brain tumors, localized delivery of protein or genetic vectors may be sufficient to alleviate symptoms, halt disease progression, or even cure the disease. One may circumvent the limitation imposed by the blood-brain barrier by transplantation of genetically altered cell grafts or focal inoculation of virus or protein. However, permanent gene replacement therapy for diseases affecting the entire brain will require global delivery of genetic vectors. The neurotoxicity of currently available viral vectors and the transient nature of transgene expression invivomust be overcome before their use in human gene therapy becomes clinically applicable.
Finding the true place ofHomo habilisin language evolution
Authors: Bickerton Derek
Published: February 2010

Despite some sound basic assumptions, Wilkins & Wakefield portray aHomo habilistoo linguistically sophisticated to fit in with the subsequent fossil record and thereby lose a reasoned explanation for human innovativeness. They err, too, in accepting a single-level model of conceptual structure and in deriving initial linguistic units from calls, a process far more dubious than the derivation of home-sign from naive gesture.
Single words, multiple words, and the functions of language
Authors: Catania A. Charles
Published: February 2010

Wilkins & Wakefield assign importance to motor systems but skip from anatomy to cognitive structure with little attention to behavior. Organisms, no matter how sophisticated, that do not behave in accord with what they know will fall by the evolutionary wayside. Facts about behavior can supplement the authors' theory, whose hierarchical structures can accommodate an evolutionary scenario in which a million years or more of functionally varied utterances mainly limited to single words is followed by an explosion of linguistic diversity with the development in the last 50,000 years or so of syntactically organized multiple word utterances.
Neurolinguistic models and fossil reconstructions
Authors: Donald Merlin
Published: February 2010

Hominid-like morphology in habiline cranial endocasts does not necessarily imply the presence of language capacity. The cortical zone in question is not associated exclusively with language in humans, and its emergence in habilines might indicate the evolution of other cognitive functions special to humans that were preconditions for the later evolution of language.
Manual versus speech motor control and the evolution of language
Authors: Lieberman Philip
Published: February 2010

Inferences made from endocasts of fossil skulls cannot provide information on the function of particular neocortical areas or the subcortical pathways to prefrontal cortex that form part of the neural substrate for speech, syntax, and certain aspects of cognition. The neural bases of syntax cannot be disassociated from “communication.” Manual motor control was probably a preadaptive factor in the evolution of humansyntactic ability, but neurophysiological data on living humans show that speech motor control and syntax are more closely linked. The evolution of fully modern speech occurred fairly recently; thoughHomo habilismay have had some degree of speech and syntactic ability, it was not fully modern. Stone tools are uncertain indices of language or cognition.
Stone tools and conceptual structure
Authors: Steele James
Published: February 2010

Understanding how conceptual structures inform stone tool production and use would help us resolve the issue of a pongid-hominid dichotomy in brain organisation and cognitive ability. Evidence from ideational apraxia suggests that the planning of linguistic and manipulative behaviours is not colocalized in homologous circuits. An alternative account in terms of the evolutionary expansion of the whole prefrontal-premotor area may be more plausible.
Palaeoneurology of language: Grounds for scepticism
Authors: Whitcombe Elizabeth
Published: February 2010

Wilkins & Wakefield's identification of anatomical features in the Koobi Fora endocast, which may be thought to carry some functional significance in relation to organization for language, raises fundamental problems of method: attention is drawn to some limitations of the evidence, of endocasts and of the neuroanatomical map used to interpret them.
Breakthrough on the consciousness front or much ado about nothing?
Authors: Dixon N. F.
Published: February 2010

Propositions as to the nature of consciousness, based on disorders of perception that result from brain damage, and taking insufficient account of the numerous ways in which normal subjects may deviate from that “usual” sequence of events (input → subjective awareness → output) risk increasing rather than diminishing any existing confusion about the function of consciousness.
Is consciousness of perception really separable from perception?
Authors: Farah Martha J.
Published: February 2010

Although not the main point of his target article, Block defends the view that perception and awareness of perception could be functions of different brain systems. I will argue that the available data do not support this view, and that Block's defense of the view rests on problematic eonstruals of the “executive system” and of the components of information-processing models.
Blocking out the distinction between sensation and perception: Superblindsight and the case of Helen
Authors: Humphrey Nicholas
Published: February 2010

Block's notion of P-consciousness catches too much in its net. He would do better to exclude all states that do not have a sensory component. I question what he says about my work with the “blind” monkey, Helen.
How access-consciousness might be a kind of consiousness
Authors: Natsoulas Thomas
Published: February 2010

In response to the objection that his “access-consciousness” is not really consciousness but a matter of the availability of certain information for certain kinds of processing, Block will probably have to argue that consciousness in a more basic, familiar, traditional sense is an essential component of any instance of access-consciousness and thus justifies the name.
Is attention an appropriate concept for explaining brain processes?
Authors: Dalenoort G. J.
Published: February 2010

In interpreting measurements of brain processes it is necessary to make the model used explicit. A concept such as attention cannot be used in the description of brain activities without a model of the relation of mental and neural processes.
The three attentional networks and the two hemispheric mechanisms
Authors: Fidelman Uri
Published: February 2010

A methodological problem may distort the implications derived from the metabolism scans of the brain, but Posner & Raichle may have found neural networks which underlie the analytical and synthetical hemispheric data processing mechanism. This methodological problem is that a large regional consumption of energy, detected by the PET technique, is not necessarily related to more data processing. It may be related to the inefficiency of the neural system at this region.
Brain imaging the psychoses
Authors: Frith C. D. , Dolan R. J.
Published: February 2010

The approach adopted by Posner & Raichle in this book, with its strong emphasis on the cognitive level of description, is ideally suited to the study of psychotic illnesses. However, their discussion of depression and schizophrenia is based on a very small number of studies and involves ad hoc arguments derived largely from neuroanatomy. Their conclusions are almost certainly wrong.
Images in search of a theory
Authors: Goertzel Ben
Published: February 2010

Images of mindis an exciting book, well-written and wellorganized, but many of the connections the authors draw between PET scan results and more general psychological issues are somewhat strained.
Tracking brain functions in space and time
Authors: Hari Riitta
Published: February 2010

The authors ofImages of mindhave been highly successful in unravelling the neural basis of complex brain functions. Their emphasis on top-down processingin experimental neuroscience is especially important and, it is hoped, influential. Tracking brain activation accurately botli in space and in time would benefit from studiesofindividual subjects without relying on grand average data.
Multiple scales of brain-mind interactions
Authors: Ingber Lester
Published: February 2010

Posner & Raichle'sImages of mindis an excellent educational book and very well written. Some flaws as a scientific publication are: (a) the accuracy of the linear subtraction method used in PET is subject to scrutiny by further research at finer spatial-temporal resolutions; (b) lack of accuracy of the experimental paradigm used for EEG complementary studies.
Looking for images of memory
Authors: Kapur Narinder
Published: February 2010

This is an excellent book but it lacks a detailed presentation and formulation of images of memory. Positron emission tomography (PET) findings sometimes raise more enigmatic questions than they answer, with differences between studies and differences with established lesion evidence. Perhaps the book could have been more critical in its analysis of these enigmas, covering more of the basic issues and assumptions underlying PET research.
When is it sensible to use PET to study brain function?
Authors: O'Mara Shane M.
Published: February 2010

Posner & Raichle's book is a superbly presented and wellwritten overview of a fast-developing and important field in contemporary neuroscience. It suffers from being an overview, however, because it does not go into sufficient detail or depth in many of the issues that it raises. It also neglects many other important areas of current research, for example, technical advances in other areas, learning and memory, and lesion analysis of brain function.
Images of mind: A window to the brain
Authors: Solso Robert L.
Published: February 2010

The authors ofImages of the Mindhave made a significant contribution to our understanding of the brain through imaging technology. The book is well written, timely, beautifully illustrated and conveys a sense of history. It will appeal to alay audience as well as a professional audience.