Marc Bangert

Shared networks for auditory and motor processing in professional pianists: Evidence from fMRI conjunction

To investigate cortical auditory and motor coupling in professional musicians, we compared the functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) activity of seven pianists to seven non-musicians utilizing a passive task paradigm established in a previous learning study. The tasks involved either passively listening to short piano melodies or pressing keys on a mute MRI-compliant piano keyboard. Both groups were matched with respect to age and gender, and did not exhibit any overt performance differences in the keypressing task. The professional pianists showed increased activity compared to the non-musicians in a distributed cortical network during both the acoustic and the mute motion-related task. A conjunction analysis revealed a distinct musicianship-specific network being co-activated during either task type, indicating areas involved in auditory-sensorimotor integration. This network is comprised of dorsolateral and inferior frontal cortex (including Brocas area), the superior temporal gyrus (Wernickes area), the supramarginal gyrus, and supplementary motor and premotor areas.

Specialization of the specialized in features of external human brain morphology

Recent studies have shown brain differences between professional musicians and non‐musicians with respect to size, asymmetry or gray matter density of specific cerebral regions. Here we demonstrate: (1) that anatomical differences in the motor cortex can already be detected by coarse visual inspection; and (2) that within musicians, even a discrimination of instruments with different manual dominance is possible on a gross anatomical scale. Multiple raters, blinded for subject identity and hemisphere, investigated within‐musician differences in the Omega Sign (OS), an anatomical landmark of the precentral gyrus associated with hand movement representation. The sample of 64 brains comprised matched groups of 16 expert string‐players, 16 expert pianists and 32 non‐musicians. Ratings were analysed by means of kappa statistics. Intra‐ and interobserver reliabilities were high. Musicians had a more pronounced OS expression than non‐musicians, with keyboard‐players showing a left and string‐players a right hemisphere advantage. This suggests a differential brain adaptation depending on instrument played.

Perception of emotional speech in Parkinson's disease.

Nonmotor symptoms in Parkinsons disease (PD) involving cognition and emotionality have progressively received attention. The objective of the present study was to investigate recognition of emotional prosody in patients with PD (n = 14) in comparison to healthy control subjects (HC, n = 14). Event‐related brain potentials (ERP) were recorded in a modified oddball paradigm under passive listening and active target detection instructions. Results showed a poorer performance of PD patients in classifying emotional prosody. ERP generated by emotional deviants (happy/sad) during passive listening revealed diminished amplitudes of the mismatch‐related negativity for sad deviants, indicating an impairment of early preattentive processing of emotional prosody in PD.

Classical conditioned responses to absent tones

BackgroundRecent evidence for a tight coupling of sensorimotor processes in trained musicians led to the question of whether this coupling extends to preattentively mediated reflexes; particularly, whether a classically conditioned response in one of the domains (auditory) is generalized to another (tactile/motor) on the basis of a prior association in a second-order Pavlovian paradigm. An eyeblink conditioning procedure was performed in 17 pianists, serving as a model for overlearned audiomotor integration, and 14 non-musicians. Results: During the training session, subjects were conditioned to respond to auditory stimuli (piano tones). During a subsequent testing session, when subjects performed keystrokes on a silent piano, pianists showed significantly higher blink rates than non-musicians.ConclusionThese findings suggest a tight coupling of the auditory and motor domains in musicians, pointing towards training-dependent mechanisms of strong cross-modal sensorimotor associations even on sub-cognitive processing levels.

Tempo and Loudness Analysis of a Continuous 28-Hour Performance of Erik Satie's Composition "Vexations"

This study extends the perspective of music performance research with an examination of a long-term performance. In a single case study, an uninterrupted recording of Erik Satie’s “Vexations” performed by one pianist over almost 28 hours is used as a performance of extreme length to explore new approaches in performance data analysis. The MIDI and acoustical data are analysed with linear and non-linear methods to describe changes in tempo and loudness. Additionally, the performer’s changing states of consciousness (alertness, trance, drowsiness) were observed to exert a strong influence on tempo and loudness stability. Tempo and loudness remain stable over the first 14 hours of alertness. A state of trance begins after 15 hours and shows a destabilisation of tempo followed by uncontrolled deviations in loudness. Time series analysis of loudness changes revealed periodicities of about 10 minute lengths. Non-linear analyses of tempo and loudness changes showed a complex generator pattern underlying the apparently random fluctuations throughout the performance. This pattern appears most clearly when unfolded in an 18-dimensional embedding space. Measures of fractality and chaotic behavior proved to be dependent on the states of consciousness. Results are discussed in regard to influences of psycho-physiological changes (vigilance) on sensorimotor performance and to the overall stability of an oscillating psycho-motoric system.

Apollos Gabe und Fluch – funktionelle und dysfunktionelle Plastizität bei Musikern

Zusammenfassung Untersuchungen zur Neuroplastizität haben auf Verhaltens- und zellulärer Ebene gezeigt, dass die Relevanz der Stimuli von großer Bedeutung für die Ausprägung zentralnervöser Adaptationen ist. Offensichtlich scheint das Musizieren eine derartige Relevanz zu besitzen, denn professionelle Musiker sind ideal, um Effekte der Neuroplastizität zu studieren. Zwei Gründe können dafür angeführt werden: 1.) Musizieren schließt überaus komplexe sensorische und motorische Funktionen ein und 2.) Musizieren erfordert jahrelanges Üben. In diesem Übersichtsartikel sollen die durch das Musizieren ausgelösten strukturellen und funktionellen zentralnervösen Veränderungen dargestellt werden, wobei in erster Linie die Ergebnisse bildgebender Verfahren berücksichtigt werden. Plastizität lässt sich in auditiven und sensomotorischen Arealen von Musikern darstellen. Strukturelle Veränderungen finden sich darüber hinaus im Bereich des Balkens und des Kleinhirns von Musikern. Auditiv-sensomotorische Integration führt bereits nach 20 Minuten zu Veränderungen der neuronalen Konnektivität. Als Beispiel für dysfunktionelle Plastizität gilt die Musiker-Dystonie, deren Grundlage eine Verschmelzung sensorischer Fingerrepräsentationen ist.