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Musical expertise can lead to neural plasticity in specific cognitive domains (e.g., in auditory music perception). However, not much is known about whether the visual perception of simple musical symbols (e.g., notes) already differs between musicians and non-musicians. This was the aim of the present study. Therefore, the Familiarity Effect (FE) – an effect which occurs quite early during visual processing and which is based on prior knowledge or expertise – was investigated. The FE describes the phenomenon that it is easier to find an unfamiliar element (e.g., a mirrored eighth note) in familiar elements (e.g., normally oriented eighth notes) than to find a familiar element in a background of unfamiliar elements. It was examined whether the strength of the FE for eighth notes differs between note readers and non-note readers. Furthermore, it was investigated at which component of the event-related brain potential (ERP) the FE occurs. Stimuli that consisted of either eighth notes or vertically mirrored eighth notes were presented to the participants (28 note readers, 19 non-note readers). A target element was embedded in half of the trials. Reaction times, sensitivity, and three ERP components (the N1, N2p, and P3) were recorded. For both the note readers and the non-note readers, strong FEs were found in the behavioral data. However, no differences in the strength of the FE between groups were found. Furthermore, for both groups, the FE was found for the same ERP components (target-absent trials – N1 latency; target-present trials – N2p latency, N2p amplitude, P3 amplitude). It is concluded that the early visual perception of eighth note symbols does not differ between note readers and non-note readers. However, future research is needed to verify this for more complex musical stimuli and for professional musicians.

In jazz, the function of durational inequality at the eighth-note level is the production of anacrusis on the offbeats, thereby generating the sense of forward propulsion and drive thought to typify the rhythmic quality known as \"swing.\" The common use of relatively \"straight\" eighth notes by improvising soloists helps to sustain forward momentum, whereas the less even, triplet-like \"swing\" eighth notes used more frequently by drummers facilitate the perception of a quarter-note beat. Varying the Beat-Upbeat Ratio (BUR)—i.e., moving between straight and swing eighth notes—enables jazz musicians to manipulate the flow of motional energy across a phrase in systematic ways in conjunction with other melodic processes. Analyses of melodic phrases by John Coltrane, Lee Konitz, and Sonny Clark reveal the centrality of such aspects of microrhythmic expression to the affective power of jazz improvisation.

Discussed is a comprehensive, ecologically based paradigm applicable across cultures and created to assess the effects of abusive traumatic experiences, the Trauma Outcome Process Assessment (TOPA) model (Rasmussen, 1999, 2004, 2007; Rasmussen, Burton, & Christopherson, 1992). The TOPA model comprehensively assesses the risk and protective factors and trauma outcomes that contribute to self-destructive and/or abusive behavior in youth. TOPA interventions integrate structured cognitive-behavioral treatment exercises with expressive methods (Rasmussen, 2001). TOPA may help sexually abusive youth to decrease maladaptive behavioral responses to traumatic experiences and integrate past traumas with other life events.

It is a common article of faith that Mozart composed the most beautiful music we can know. But few of us ask why. Why does the beautiful in Mozart stand apart, as though untouched by human hands? At the same time, why does it inspire intimacy rather than distant admiration, love rather than awe? And how does Mozart's music create and sustain its buoyant and ever-renewable effects? InMozart's Grace, Scott Burnham probes a treasury of passages from many different genres of Mozart's music, listening always for the qualities of Mozartean beauty: beauty held in suspension; beauty placed in motion; beauty as the uncanny threshold of another dimension, whether inwardly profound or outwardly transcendent; and beauty as a time-stopping, weightless suffusion that comes on like an act of grace. Throughout the book, Burnham engages musical issues such as sonority, texture, line, harmony, dissonance, and timing, and aspects of large-scale form such as thematic returns, retransitions, and endings. Vividly describing a range of musical effects, Burnham connects the ways and means of Mozart's music to other domains of human significance, including expression, intimation, interiority, innocence, melancholy, irony, and renewal. We follow Mozart from grace to grace, and discover what his music can teach us about beauty and its relation to the human spirit. The result is a newly inflected view of our perennial attraction to Mozart's music, presented in a way that will speak to musicians and music lovers alike.

Alban Berg and His World is a collection of essays and source material that repositions Berg as the pivotal figure of Viennese musical modernism. His allegiance to the austere rigor of Arnold Schoenberg's musical revolution was balanced by a lifelong devotion to the warm sensuousness of Viennese musical tradition and a love of lyric utterance, the emotional intensity of opera, and the expressive nuance of late-Romantic tonal practice.

The Supreme Court decision upholding the constitutionality of the Alabama capital sentencing scheme in the case \"Harris v. Alabama\" is discussed. Garvey argues that the scheme violates the Eighth Amendment since it results in arbitrary and capricious sentences.

In \"Austin vs United States,\" the US Supreme Court unanimously held that civil in rem forfeitures must comply with the Excessive Fines Clause of the Eighth Amendment. This decision extends an important protection to defendants who face the power of the government in civil rather than criminal court.

In 'Johnson vs Texas,' the US Supreme Court held that the Texas capital sentencing statute did not violate the Eighth Amendment rights of petitioner Dorsie Lee Johnson Jr. An argument is made that the Court, by failing to recognize the importance of Johnson's moral culpability as a factor in sentencing, incorrectly held that the Texas capital sentencing statute was constitutional as applied to Johnson.