Thresholds of auditory-motor coupling measured with a simple task in musicians and non-musicians: was the sound simultaneous to the key press?

The human brain is able to predict the sensory effects of its actions. But how precise are these predictions? The present research proposes a tool to measure thresholds between a simple action (keystroke) and a resulting sound. On each trial, participants were required to press a key. Upon each keys...

Descripción completa

Guardado en:
Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Floris T van Vugt, Barbara Tillmann
Formato: article
Lenguaje:EN
Publicado: Public Library of Science (PLoS) 2014
Materias:
R
Q
Acceso en línea:https://doaj.org/article/adcc2bcf89314076a2975ec0c0b7f596
Etiquetas: Agregar Etiqueta
Sin Etiquetas, Sea el primero en etiquetar este registro!
id oai:doaj.org-article:adcc2bcf89314076a2975ec0c0b7f596
record_format dspace
spelling oai:doaj.org-article:adcc2bcf89314076a2975ec0c0b7f5962021-11-18T08:34:19ZThresholds of auditory-motor coupling measured with a simple task in musicians and non-musicians: was the sound simultaneous to the key press?1932-620310.1371/journal.pone.0087176https://doaj.org/article/adcc2bcf89314076a2975ec0c0b7f5962014-01-01T00:00:00Zhttps://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/pmid/24498299/?tool=EBIhttps://doaj.org/toc/1932-6203The human brain is able to predict the sensory effects of its actions. But how precise are these predictions? The present research proposes a tool to measure thresholds between a simple action (keystroke) and a resulting sound. On each trial, participants were required to press a key. Upon each keystroke, a woodblock sound was presented. In some trials, the sound came immediately with the downward keystroke; at other times, it was delayed by a varying amount of time. Participants were asked to verbally report whether the sound came immediately or was delayed. Participants' delay detection thresholds (in msec) were measured with a staircase-like procedure. We hypothesised that musicians would have a lower threshold than non-musicians. Comparing pianists and brass players, we furthermore hypothesised that, as a result of a sharper attack of the timbre of their instrument, pianists might have lower thresholds than brass players. Our results show that non-musicians exhibited higher thresholds for delay detection (180 ± 104 ms) than the two groups of musicians (102 ±65 ms), but there were no differences between pianists and brass players. The variance in delay detection thresholds could be explained by variance i n sensorimotor synchronisation capacities as well as variance in a purely auditory temporal irregularity detection measure. This suggests that the brain's capacity to generate temporal predictions of sensory consequences can be decomposed into general temporal prediction capacities together with auditory-motor coupling. These findings indicate that the brain has a relatively large window of integration within which an action and its resulting effect are judged as simultaneous. Furthermore, musical expertise may narrow this window down, potentially due to a more refined temporal prediction. This novel paradigm provides a simple test to estimate the temporal precision of auditory-motor action-effect coupling, and the paradigm can readily be incorporated in studies investigating both healthy and patient populations.Floris T van VugtBarbara TillmannPublic Library of Science (PLoS)articleMedicineRScienceQENPLoS ONE, Vol 9, Iss 2, p e87176 (2014)
institution DOAJ
collection DOAJ
language EN
topic Medicine
R
Science
Q
spellingShingle Medicine
R
Science
Q
Floris T van Vugt
Barbara Tillmann
Thresholds of auditory-motor coupling measured with a simple task in musicians and non-musicians: was the sound simultaneous to the key press?
description The human brain is able to predict the sensory effects of its actions. But how precise are these predictions? The present research proposes a tool to measure thresholds between a simple action (keystroke) and a resulting sound. On each trial, participants were required to press a key. Upon each keystroke, a woodblock sound was presented. In some trials, the sound came immediately with the downward keystroke; at other times, it was delayed by a varying amount of time. Participants were asked to verbally report whether the sound came immediately or was delayed. Participants' delay detection thresholds (in msec) were measured with a staircase-like procedure. We hypothesised that musicians would have a lower threshold than non-musicians. Comparing pianists and brass players, we furthermore hypothesised that, as a result of a sharper attack of the timbre of their instrument, pianists might have lower thresholds than brass players. Our results show that non-musicians exhibited higher thresholds for delay detection (180 ± 104 ms) than the two groups of musicians (102 ±65 ms), but there were no differences between pianists and brass players. The variance in delay detection thresholds could be explained by variance i n sensorimotor synchronisation capacities as well as variance in a purely auditory temporal irregularity detection measure. This suggests that the brain's capacity to generate temporal predictions of sensory consequences can be decomposed into general temporal prediction capacities together with auditory-motor coupling. These findings indicate that the brain has a relatively large window of integration within which an action and its resulting effect are judged as simultaneous. Furthermore, musical expertise may narrow this window down, potentially due to a more refined temporal prediction. This novel paradigm provides a simple test to estimate the temporal precision of auditory-motor action-effect coupling, and the paradigm can readily be incorporated in studies investigating both healthy and patient populations.
format article
author Floris T van Vugt
Barbara Tillmann
author_facet Floris T van Vugt
Barbara Tillmann
author_sort Floris T van Vugt
title Thresholds of auditory-motor coupling measured with a simple task in musicians and non-musicians: was the sound simultaneous to the key press?
title_short Thresholds of auditory-motor coupling measured with a simple task in musicians and non-musicians: was the sound simultaneous to the key press?
title_full Thresholds of auditory-motor coupling measured with a simple task in musicians and non-musicians: was the sound simultaneous to the key press?
title_fullStr Thresholds of auditory-motor coupling measured with a simple task in musicians and non-musicians: was the sound simultaneous to the key press?
title_full_unstemmed Thresholds of auditory-motor coupling measured with a simple task in musicians and non-musicians: was the sound simultaneous to the key press?
title_sort thresholds of auditory-motor coupling measured with a simple task in musicians and non-musicians: was the sound simultaneous to the key press?
publisher Public Library of Science (PLoS)
publishDate 2014
url https://doaj.org/article/adcc2bcf89314076a2975ec0c0b7f596
work_keys_str_mv AT floristvanvugt thresholdsofauditorymotorcouplingmeasuredwithasimpletaskinmusiciansandnonmusicianswasthesoundsimultaneoustothekeypress
AT barbaratillmann thresholdsofauditorymotorcouplingmeasuredwithasimpletaskinmusiciansandnonmusicianswasthesoundsimultaneoustothekeypress
_version_ 1718421641577365504