title: Basic timing abilities stay intact in patients with musician's dystonia.
abstract: Task-specific focal dystonia is a movement disorder that is characterized by the loss of voluntary motor control in extensively trained movements. Musician's dystonia is a type of task-specific dystonia that is elicited in professional musicians during instrumental playing. The disorder has been associated with deficits in timing. In order to test the hypothesis that basic timing abilities are affected by musician's dystonia, we investigated a group of patients (N = 15) and a matched control group (N = 15) on a battery of sensory and sensorimotor synchronization tasks. Results did not show any deficits in auditory-motor processing for patients relative to controls. Both groups benefited from a pacing sequence that adapted to their timing (in a sensorimotor synchronization task at a stable tempo). In a purely perceptual task, both groups were able to detect a misaligned metronome when it was late rather than early relative to a musical beat. Overall, the results suggest that basic timing abilities stay intact in patients with musician's dystonia. This supports the idea that musician's dystonia is a highly task-specific movement disorder in which patients are mostly impaired in tasks closely related to the demands of actually playing their instrument.
authors.affiliation: Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Research Group "Music Cognition and Action", Leipzig, Germany; Institute of Music Physiology and Musicians' Medicine, University of Music, Drama and Media, Hanover, Germany.
authors.forename: M C
authors.initials: MC
authors.lastname: van der Steen
authors.affiliation: Institute of Music Physiology and Musicians' Medicine, University of Music, Drama and Media, Hanover, Germany; Lyon Neuroscience Research Center CNRS-UMR 5292, INSERM U1028, University Lyon-1, Lyon, France.
authors.forename: Floris T
authors.initials: FT
authors.lastname: van Vugt
authors.affiliation: Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Research Group "Music Cognition and Action", Leipzig, Germany; The MARCS Institute, University of Western Sydney, Sydney, Australia.
authors.forename: Peter E
authors.initials: PE
authors.lastname: Keller
authors.affiliation: Institute of Music Physiology and Musicians' Medicine, University of Music, Drama and Media, Hanover, Germany.
authors.forename: Eckart
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Altenmüller
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001185:Artificial Intelligence; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D020821:Dystonic Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000503:physiopathology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009068:Movement; D009146:Music; D017711:Nonlinear Dynamics; D011597:Psychomotor Performance; D055815:Young Adult