School of Psychology, The University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand; IRTG Adaptive Minds, School of Psychology, Saarland University, Saarbruecken, Germany.
School of Psychology, The University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand.
Neuropsychologia. 2017 Sep;104:223-233. doi: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2017.08.029. Epub 2017 Aug 31.
Musical training provides an ideal platform for investigating action representation for sound. Learning to play an instrument requires integration of sensory and motor perception-action processes. Functional neuroimaging studies have indicated that listening to trained music can result in the activity in premotor areas, even after a short period of training. These studies suggest that action representation systems are heavily dependent on specific sensorimotor experience. However, others suggest that because humans naturally move to music, sensorimotor training is not necessary and there is a more general action representation for music. We previously demonstrated that EEG mu suppression, commonly implemented to demonstrate mirror-neuron-like action representation while observing movements, can also index action representations for sounds in pianists. The current study extends these findings to a group of non-musicians who learned to play randomised sequences on a piano, in order to acquire specific sound-action mappings for the five fingers of their right hand. We investigated training-related changes in neural dynamics as indexed by mu suppression and task-related coherence measures. To test the specificity of training effects, we included sounds similar to those encountered in the training and additionally rhythm sequences. We found no effect of training on mu suppression between pre- and post-training EEG recordings. However, task-related coherence indexing functional connectivity between electrodes over audiomotor areas increased after training. These results suggest that long-term training in musicians and short-term training in novices may be associated with different stages of audiomotor integration that can be reflected in different EEG measures. Furthermore, the changes in functional connectivity were specifically found for piano tones, and were not apparent when participants listened to rhythms, indicating some degree of specificity related to training.
音乐训练为研究声音的动作表现提供了一个理想的平台。学习演奏乐器需要整合感觉和运动感知-动作过程。功能神经影像学研究表明，即使经过短暂的训练，聆听训练过的音乐也会导致运动前区域的活动。这些研究表明，动作表现系统高度依赖于特定的感觉运动经验。然而，其他人则认为，由于人类自然会随着音乐移动，因此感觉运动训练并非必需，并且存在一种更通用的音乐动作表现。我们之前的研究表明，脑电图 mu 抑制（通常用于在观察运动时展示类似镜像神经元的动作表现）也可以对钢琴家的声音进行动作表现索引。当前的研究将这些发现扩展到一组非音乐家群体，他们学习在钢琴上随机演奏序列，以获得右手五个手指的特定声音-动作映射。我们通过 mu 抑制和任务相关相干性测量来研究神经动力学的训练相关变化。为了测试训练效果的特异性，我们包括了与训练中遇到的相似的声音，以及节奏序列。我们发现，训练前后 EEG 记录之间的 mu 抑制没有受到训练的影响。然而，在训练后，索引听觉运动区域之间功能连接的任务相关相干性增加了。这些结果表明，长期训练的音乐家和短期训练的新手可能与听觉运动整合的不同阶段相关联，这些阶段可以反映在不同的 EEG 测量中。此外，功能连接的变化仅在钢琴音中发现，而在参与者听节奏时则不明显，表明与训练相关的某种程度的特异性。
