Music, Motor Control and the Brain

The motor actions that can be witnessed as a virtuoso musician performs can be so fast, so accomplished, so precise, as to seem somehow superhuman. The musician has to produce the movements, monitor those they have already made and the subsequent result, co-ordinate their hands, fingers, eyes, and perhaps throat and diaphragm. These achievements are of course the product of hundreds, even thousands of hours of practice-playing scales, studies, time and time again. But those hours of practice by no means guarantee that great musicianship will result. This technical prowess has to be combined with a range of other, perhaps, less tangible qualities. This book explores the secrets of musical virtuosity. It presents a comprehensive account of music and motor cognition, examining the neural basis of music making - our understanding of which is just starting to be enhanced by brain imaging. It considers the effect on our brains of prolonged music making. It explores the motor processes across a range of instruments (vocal, string, wind, percussion) and within different performance situations. It also considers what happens when things start to go wrong - why motor problems occur in so many professional musicians in later life, and the possible therapies for such problems. Music is a topic of considerable interest within the brain sciences. With contributions from leading psychologists, neuroscientists, and neurologists, this book makes a unique contribution to our understanding of music and the brain.

Table of Contents:
Part 1: History 1: Andreas C. Lehmann: Historical increases in expert music performance skills: optimising instruments, playing techniques and training Part 2: Psychology 2: Lutz Jäncke: From cognition to action 3: Caroline Palmer: The nature of memory for music performance skills 4: Bruno H. Repp: Musical synchronization Part 3: Movement analysis 5: Thomas E. Jerde, Marco Santello, Martha Flanders & John F. Soechting: Hand movements and musical performance 6: Hans-Christian Jabusch: Movement analysis in pianists 7: Mario Wiesendanger, Andreas Baader & Oleg Kazennikov: Fingering and bowing in violinists: a motor control approach 8: Sofia Dahl: Movements and analysis of drumming Part 4: Representation in the Brain 9: Gottfried Schlaug: Brain structures of musicians: executive functions and morphological implications 10: Lutz Jäncke: The motor representation in pianists and string players 11: Marc Bangert: Brain activation during piano playing 12: Arto Nirkko & Rumyana Kristeva: Brain activation during string playing 13: Hermann Ackermann, Dirk Wildgruber & Axel Riecker: 'Singing in the (b)rain': cerebral correlates of vocal music performance in humans 14: Reyna Leigh Gordon, Amelie Racette & Daniele Schon: Sensory motor networks in singing and speaking: a comparative approach 15: Christian Gerloff & Friedhelm Hummel: The role of inhibition in the motor control of finger function Part 5: Apollo's curse - the loss of motor control in musicians 16: Eckart Altenmüeller: The end of the song? Robert Schumann's focal dystonia 17: Hans-Christian Jabusch & Eckart Altenmüeller: Epidemiology, phenomenology and therapy of musician's cramp 18: Karin Rosenkranz: The neurophysiology of focal hand dystonia in musicians 19: Nancy Byl & Alberto Priori: The development of focal dystonia in musicians as a consequence of maladaptive plasticity: implications for intervention 20: Jurg Kesselring: Music performance anxiety

About the Author :
After graduating in Medicine and Music Eckart Altenmüller held a postdoctoral position in the department of Clinical Neurophysiology in Freiburg where he carried out research into brain activation during auditory processing of music and learning of fine motor skills. He received his clinical training in Neurology at the Department of Neurology at the University of Tübingen (Head of the Department Prof. Dr. J. Dichgans). Since 1994 he is a chair and director of the Institute of Music Physiology and Musicians' Medicine. He continues research into movement disorders in musicians and into motor and sensory learning in musicians. In his outpatient clinic he sees 500 musicians a year, mostly suffering from movement disorders such as focal dystonia, focal tremor or from chronic pain syndromes. Currently 270 patients suffering from musicians' cramp are under his supervision. During the last ten years he received 20 grants from the German Research Society (DFG).

Review :
...displays a well-balanced account of contemporary neuroscience research into music performance and the role of disordered motor control. The book also shows that new scientific approaches to the study of music and the brain are just at a stage to gain first insights into the processing of elementary aspects of music. Brain