title: Classical conditioned responses to absent tones.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Recent evidence for a tight coupling of sensorimotor processes in trained musicians led to the question of whether this coupling extends to preattentively mediated reflexes; particularly, whether a classically conditioned response in one of the domains (auditory) is generalized to another (tactile/motor) on the basis of a prior association in a second-order Pavlovian paradigm. An eyeblink conditioning procedure was performed in 17 pianists, serving as a model for overlearned audiomotor integration, and 14 non-musicians.
  
  
  RESULTS
  During the training session, subjects were conditioned to respond to auditory stimuli (piano tones). During a subsequent testing session, when subjects performed keystrokes on a silent piano, pianists showed significantly higher blink rates than non-musicians.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  These findings suggest a tight coupling of the auditory and motor domains in musicians, pointing towards training-dependent mechanisms of strong cross-modal sensorimotor associations even on sub-cognitive processing levels.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Music Physiology and Musicians Medicine, Hanover University of Music and Drama, Hohenzollernstrasse 47, D-30161 Hanover, Germany. bangert@gmx.com
authors.forename: Marc
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Bangert
authors.forename: Uwe
authors.initials: U
authors.lastname: Jürgens
authors.forename: Udo
authors.initials: U
authors.lastname: Häusler
authors.forename: Eckart
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Altenmüller
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D000818:Animals; D001307:Auditory Perception; D001767:Blinking / Q000502:physiology; D003214:Conditioning, Classical / Q000502:physiology*; D006309:Hearing / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D009146:Music; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity