Error monitoring in musicians

Abstract

To err is human, and hence even professional musicians make errors occasionally during their performances. This paper summarizes recent work investigating error monitoring in musicians, i.e., the processes and their neural correlates associated with the monitoring of ongoing actions and the detection of deviations from intended sounds. Electroencephalography (EEG) studies reported an early component of the event-related potential (ERP) occurring before the onsets of pitch errors. This component, which can be altered in musicians with focal dystonia, likely reflects processes of error detection and/or error compensation, i.e., attempts to cancel the undesired sensory consequence (a wrong tone) a musician is about to perceive. Thus, auditory feedback seems not to be a prerequisite for error detection, consistent with previous behavioral results. In contrast, when auditory feedback is externally manipulated and thus unexpected, motor performance can be severely distorted, although not all feedback alterations result in performance impairments. Recent studies investigating the neural correlates of feedback processing showed that unexpected feedback elicits an ERP component after note onsets, which shows larger amplitudes during music performance than during mere perception of the same musical sequences. Hence, these results stress the role of motor actions for the processing of auditory information. Furthermore, recent methodological advances like the combination of 3D motion capture techniques with EEG will be discussed. Such combinations of different measures can potentially help to disentangle the roles of different feedback types such as proprioceptive and auditory feedback, and in general to derive at a better understanding of the complex interactions between the motor and auditory domain during error monitoring. Finally, outstanding questions and future directions in this context will be discussed.

Referent control of action and perception

“…This gives the nervous system suffi cient time to evaluate how movement progresses, whether or not the target will be reached and initiate, if necessary, referent corrections beforehand. As an illustration of this principle, it is interesting to note that piano players may actually detect errors before they hit the wrong piano keys (Ruiz et al 2009(Ruiz et al , 2011Maidhof 2013 ).…”

Musical training as an alternative and effective method for neuro-education and neuro-rehabilitation

“…Playing a musical instrument requires a clear motor component for a good performance. Nonetheless, the auditory dimension is also crucial in order to generate error feedback that might correct or adjust movements in case of errors ( Maidhof, 2013 ; Maidhof et al, 2013 ; Pfordresher and Beasley, 2014 ) and to accurately perceive the pertinent acoustical parameters of the auditory input. Therefore, music induced plastic modifications over auditory areas might also be expected to occur.…”

Electrophysiological evidences demonstrating differences in brain functions between nonmusicians and musicians

“…On the other hand, due to long-term music training, musicians benefit from generally enhanced cognitive processes 10 , including improved working memory 11 , emotion regulation 12 , error monitoring 13 , and cognitive control 1 . The enhancement of these higher cognitive functions resulting from long-term music training is also reasonable for some practical reasons.…”