EEG oscillatory patterns are associated with error prediction during music performance and are altered in musician's dystonia.

Skilled performance requires the ability to monitor ongoing behavior, detect errors in advance and modify the performance accordingly. The acquisition of fast predictive mechanisms might be possible due to the extensive training characterizing expertise performance. Recent EEG studies on piano performance reported a negative event-related potential (ERP) triggered in the ACC 70 ms before performance errors (pitch errors due to incorrect keypress).

The influence of social situations on music listening.

The aim of this study was to investigate whether listening to music in a group setting influenced the emotion felt by the listeners. We hypothesized that individuals hearing music in a group would experience more intense emotions than the same individuals hearing the same music on their own. The emotional reactions to 10 musical excerpts (previously shown to contain chill-inducing psychoacoustic parameters) were measured in a within-subjects design.

Chills as an indicator of individual emotional peaks.

Chills (goose bumps) have been repeatedly associated with positive emotional peaks. Chills seem to be related to distinct musical structures and the reward system in the brain. A new approach that uses chills as indicators of individual emotional peaks is discussed.

Social feedback influences musically induced emotions.

Numerous studies have shown that music is a powerful means to induce emotions. The present study investigates whether these emotional effects can be manipulated by social feedback. In an Internet-based study, 3315 participants were randomly assigned to two groups and they listened to different music excerpts.

The relation between lateralisation, early start of training, and amount of practice in musicians: a contribution to the problem of handedness classification.

This study investigates the influence of extensive bimanual training in professional musicians on the incidence of handedness in the most basic form of right-handedness (RH) and non-right-handedness (NRH), according to Annett's "right shift theory". The lateralisation coefficients (LCs) of a total sample of 128 bimanually performing music students were calculated for speed, regularity, and fatigue of tapping by using the speed tapping paradigm. Additionally, the accumulated amount of practice was recorded by means of retrospective interviews.

Etiology of musician's dystonia: familial or environmental?

Objective: To test the hypothesis that there is familial aggregation of dystonia and other movement disorders in relatives of patients with musician's dystonia (MD) and to identify possible environmental triggers.

Methods: The families of 28 index patients with MD (14 with a reported positive family history of focal task-specific dystonia [FTSD] and 14 with no known family history [FH-]) underwent a standardized telephone screening interview using a modified version of the Beth Israel Dystonia Screen. Videotaped neurologic examinations were performed on all participants who screened positive and consensus diagnoses established.

Detecting wrong notes in advance: neuronal correlates of error monitoring in pianists.

Music performance is an extremely rapid process with low incidence of errors even at the fast rates of production required. This is possible only due to the fast functioning of the self-monitoring system. Surprisingly, no specific data about error monitoring have been published in the music domain.

Defective inhibition and inter-regional phase synchronization in pianists with musician's dystonia: an EEG study.

Recent neurophysiological studies have associated focal-task specific dystonia (FTSD) with impaired inhibitory function. However, it remains unknown whether FTSD also affects the inhibition (INH) of long-term overlearned motor programs. Consequently, we investigated in a Go/NoGo paradigm the neural correlates associated with the activation (ACT) and inhibition of long-term overlearned motor memory traces in pianists with musician's dystonia (MD), a form of FTSD, during a relevant motor task under constraint timing conditions with multichannel EEG.

EMuJoy: software for continuous measurement of perceived emotions in music.

An adequate study of emotions in music and film should be based on the real-time measurement of self-reported data using a continuous-response method. The recording system discussed in this article reflects two important aspects of such research: First, for a better comparison of results, experimental and technical standards for continuous measurement should be taken into account, and second, the recording system should be open to the inclusion of multimodal stimuli. In light of these two considerations, our article addresses four basic principles of the continuous measurement of emotions: (1) the dimensionality of the emotion space, (2) data acquisition (e.

The Institute for Music Physiology and Musicians' Medicine.

The Institute of Music Physiology and Musicians' Medicine of the University of Music and Drama in Hannover, Germany, is a unique Institution in Europe whose scope includes teaching the basics of music physiology and musicians' medicine and research into the physiological and neurobiological principles of professional music performance and music perception. Furthermore, the institute conducts research into the causes of occupational injuries in musicians and provides means for prevention, diagnosis and treatment of such injuries.

Dominantly transmitted focal dystonia in families of patients with musician's cramp.

Musician's dystonia is generally considered a sporadic disorder. We present three families with the index patient affected by musician's dystonia, but other forms of upper limb focal task-specific dystonia (FTSD), mainly writer's cramp, in seven relatives. Our results suggest a genetic contribution to FTSD with phenotypic variability, including musician's dystonia.

Classical conditioned responses to absent tones.

Background: Recent 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).

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 advantage of a decreasing right-hand superiority: the influence of laterality on a selected musical skill (sight reading achievement).

In this study, the unrehearsed performance of music, known as 'sight reading', is used as a model to examine the influence of motoric laterality on highly challenging musical performance skills. As expertise research has shown, differences in this skill can be partially explained by factors such as accumulated practise and an early start to training. However, up until now, neurobiological factors that may influence highly demanding instrumental performance have been widely neglected.

Mapping perception to action in piano practice: a longitudinal DC-EEG study.

Background: Performing music requires fast auditory and motor processing. Regarding professional musicians, recent brain imaging studies have demonstrated that auditory stimulation produces a co-activation of motor areas, whereas silent tapping of musical phrases evokes a co-activation in auditory regions. Whether this is obtained via a specific cerebral relay station is unclear.