Cortical Motor Circuits after Piano Training in Adulthood: Neurophysiologic Evidence

Abstract

The neuronal mechanisms involved in brain plasticity after skilled motor learning are not completely understood. We aimed to study the short-term effects of keyboard training in music-naive subjects on the motor/premotor cortex activity and interhemispheric interactions, using electroencephalography and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). Twelve subjects (experimental group) underwent, before and after a two week-piano training: (1) hand-motor function tests: Jamar, grip and nine-hole peg tests; (2) electroencephalography, evaluating the mu rhythm task-related desynchronization (TRD) during keyboard performance; and (3) TMS, targeting bilateral abductor pollicis brevis (APB) and abductor digiti minimi (ADM), to obtain duration and area of ipsilateral silent period (ISP) during simultaneous tonic contraction of APB and ADM. Data were compared with 13 controls who underwent twice these measurements, in a two-week interval, without undergoing piano training. Every subject in the experimental group improved keyboard performance and left-hand nine-hole peg test scores. Pre-training, ISP durations were asymmetrical, left being longer than right. Post-training, right ISPAPB increased, leading to symmetrical ISPAPB. Mu TRD during motor performance became more focal and had a lesser amplitude than in pre-training, due to decreased activity over ventral premotor cortices. No such changes were evidenced in controls. We demonstrated that a 10-day piano-training was associated with balanced interhemispheric interactions both at rest and during motor activation. Piano training, in a short timeframe, may reshape local and inter-hemispheric motor cortical circuits.

The Vividness of Motor Imagery Is Correlated With Corticospinal Excitability During Combined Motor Imagery and Action Observation

“…In MI tasks with object-related movement, the vividness of MI is parametrically associated with neural activity within sensorimotor areas (Lorey et al, 2011 ). In MI tasks with finger tapping, MI quality assessment by VAS correlated with the activity of the right orbitofrontal cortex (Houdayer et al, 2016 ). These results support our findings and it is suggested that brain activity during MI could change depending on MI quality assessment, which is the degree of vividness in the task of MI.…”

“…The MI task included playing the piano with both hands. The music used in the task was partially modified concerning the piano task used in a previous study (Houdayer et al, 2016 ), considering the difficulty of playing the piano with both hands. Subjects played the piano with a music score shown in Figure 1 ( Figure 2 shows musical notes on a piano keyboard).…”

“…In the past, almost all TMS studies have recorded MEPs from the muscles of the hand or upper limb. The piano task had been adopted in many TMS studies (Houdayer et al, 2016 ; Rossi et al, 2019 ). In our opinion, playing the piano requires highly complex skills, such as orderly, sequential control of individual finger movements; therefore, the piano task was suitable for the TMS study, particularly the MEPs recording from finger muscles.…”

Quantification of Movement-Related EEG Correlates Associated with Motor Training: A Study on Movement-Related Cortical Potentials and Sensorimotor Rhythms

“…For a single session of motor training, it has been found that the power decreases during and after the training (Andres et al, 1999 ; Serrien and Brown, 2003 ; Domingues et al, 2008 ; Nakano et al, 2013 ; Kiefer et al, 2014 ); however, the opposite has also been reported (Etnier et al, 1996 ). For studies where a task is trained over several weeks, the power has been shown to both decrease (Kaiser et al, 2014 ; Borghini et al, 2016a ) and increase (Kerick et al, 2004 ; Borghini et al, 2016b ; Houdayer et al, 2016 ). The affected EEG rhythms include theta, mu/alpha and beta, but again the reported frequency bands in which changes occur are not consistent across studies.…”

Piano practice with emphasis on left hand for right handers: Developing pedagogical strategies based on motor control perspectives

“…In an MRI study, pianists were characterized by symmetrical size of the primary motor cortex while the non-pianist controls indicated left-larger-than-right asymmetry (Amunts et al, 1997 ). Houdayer et al ( 2016 ) identified balanced interhemispheric interactions along with improved piano skill proficiency. Specifically, ipsilateral silent period (ISP), a measure of callosal transmission, was asymmetric at the baseline, with the left hemisphere characterized by longer duration than the right hemisphere.…”