Perception and production abilities of patients with Musician’s Dystonia
Background
Musician’s hand dystonia (MD), a form of focal dystonia, is a movement disorder that is characterized by a loss of voluntary motor control of skilled hand movements during instrumental playing. Several studies have suggested that besides these task-specific movement problems, MD patients also show impaired timing and discrimination abilities. We employed a battery of auditory-motor tasks to investigate at what stage of auditory-motor processing deficits occur. In particular, we investigate sensorimotor synchronization, which is the capacity we use all the time when we tap along to a beat, play along with a metronome, and even it plays a role during ensemble music making.
Goals
- investigate the sensorimotor synchronization-abilities of MD patients compared to a matched control-group
- explore the relations between the different sensorimotor synchronization and perceptual tasks
In particular, we want to know whether MD patients
- benefit in their tapping when the pacing sequence adapts to their timing
- adapt and or anticipate to tempo changes in the same way control participants do
- show perceptual deficits
Experiments
The test-battery includes sensorimotor synchronization and perceptual tasks. Sensorimotor synchronization is the temporal coordination of an action with events in a predictable external rhythm. Sensorimotor synchronization is a fundamental human skill that contributes to successful motor control in daily life and plays an important role during ensemble music making.
Sensorimotor synchronization tapping task with tempo changing sequences
Sensorimotor synchronization tapping task with adaptive sequences
Beat Alignment Test
Detecting timing irregularities in a beat sequence
Auditory-motor delay detection
The five tasks aim to separate the purely perceptual capacity from production abilities that are important for sensorimotor synchronization and therefore provide a picture of the timing abilities of MD patients.
Involved persons
Publications
- upcoming
Last modified: 2015-12-09
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