title: Durations of extended mental rehearsals are remarkably reproducible in higher level human performances.
abstract: It has been extremely difficult to quantify temporal aspects of higher level human brain function. We have found that mental rehearsals of musical performance of several minutes duration provide such a measure in that they can be highly reproducible, varying to less than 1%. These remarkable results pose fundamental neurophysiological problems. It is necessary to understand the underlying neuronal bases for this accuracy in the spatial-temporal activity of billions of neurons over minutes without sensory input. Further, they present a powerful constraint on neuronal models of brain function. Such highly reproducible (in duration) mental rehearsals might be used in conjunction with multielectrode EEG recordings to look for reproducible spatial-temporal patterns. Further, we suggest that our results may provide an extremely useful behavioural correlate for high level performance.
authors.affiliation: Neuropsychiatric Institute, University of California, Los Angeles 90024.
authors.forename: L
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Brothers
authors.forename: G L
authors.initials: GL
authors.lastname: Shaw
authors.forename: E L
authors.initials: EL
authors.lastname: Wright
mesh_terms: D004569:Electroencephalography; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008606:Mental Processes / Q000502:physiology*; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D013997:Time Factors