The power of listening: auditory-motor interactions in musical training.
We trained musically naive subjects to play a short piano melody by ear in a fully monitored computerized environment and tested their potential to acquire a functional linkage between actions and sounds. Individual notes that were simply acoustic pretraining signals became "physically meaningful" posttraining. In addition, we found preliminary evidence that passive listening to a newly learned musical piece can enhance motor performance in the absence of physical practice.
Lahav
Amir
A
The Music, Mind and Motion Lab, Boston University, 635 Commonwealth Ave., MA 02215, USA. lahav@bu.edu
Boulanger
Adam
A
Schlaug
Gottfried
G
Saltzman
Elliot
E
D000328:Adult; D001303:Auditory Cortex / Q000473:pathology*; D001306:Auditory Pathways; D001307:Auditory Perception; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007858:Learning; D008297:Male; D009044:Motor Cortex / Q000473:pathology*; D009146:Music; D010897:Pitch Discrimination; D010898:Pitch Perception; D013016:Sound; D013997:Time Factors