the glove effect

Background

Dystonia involves several sensory abnormalities and sensory stimuli may reduce the severity of motor symptoms in some forms of focal dystonia. This phenomenon is termed as sensory trick. Studies suggested that the sensory tricks play an important role in the sensorimotor integration of the modulation of the abnormal motor program, and successful sensory tricks should be regarded as a complex dynamic mechanism that corrects the perceptual dysbalance of the abnormally defined posture.

 

As a form of focal dystonia, musician's dystonia also involves sensory abnormalities, particularly in temporal judgment of somatosensory and auditory stimuli. A recent study of our institute's investigated the cutaneous sensory trick in musician’s dystonia by letting the dystonic pianists play the piano while wearing a glove showed that the dystonic symptoms can be reduced by this maneuver, which is considered comparable to the sensory tricks in other forms of dystonia.

 

 

 

Goals

  • A better understanding of sensory processing in the sensorimotor feedback loop in musician's dystonia

Experiments

Healthy professional pianists and pianists suffering from musician's dystonia participated in our study. The method is based on Scale Analysis paradigm (Jabusch et al., 2004) and synchronization-continuation paradigm. The participants were instructed to repeatedly play scales with the affected hand on a digital piano under conditions with either altered auditory feedback or with a glove on the hand. Continuous EEG signal was acquired during scale playing. Behavioural data (MIDI signal), event-related-potentials (ERPs), phase synchronization over the auditory and motor cortical areas are compared between healthy and patient groups and between different experimental conditions.

 

Involved persons

Publications

  • in proceedings
 

Announcements

If you are a professional pianist and are interested in participating in my studies, please email me at phcheng(at)gmail.com.

 

 

Last modified: 2015-12-09

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