Abstract
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.
Highlights
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; whether a classically conditioned response in one of the domains is generalized to another on the basis of a prior association in a second-order Pavlovian paradigm
(page number not for citation purposes) http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2202/7/60 a slowly ascending ramp (CR) (Fig. 1, left panels). In both target and nontarget stimulus presentations, the average signal shows a small peak at a latency of about 100 ms (T1). In both the NM and professional pianists (PP) groups, the eyelid reaction curve immediately after the conditioned stimuli (CS) is identical for the target and nontarget tones, while the subsequent ramp is more pronounced in the target condition than in the nontarget condition
The build-up of a ramp preceding the unconditioned stimulus (US) was used to determine whether the auditory conditioning procedure had been successful. (An additional, separate session to check for conditioning success, i.e. CS-only presentation, was not performed after pilot experiments had shown a relatively quick 'wash-out' curve of the conditioned reaction (CR), which may not be preserved into the Silent Tapping session.)
Summary
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; 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. Few domains of skilled sensorimotor behavior involve fast integration of auditory and motor representations to a higher degree than the performance of instrumental music. Lifetime practice has been suggested and been shown even to alter macrostructural brain anatomy [1,2,3]
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