title: The effect of musical expertise on the representation of space.
abstract: Consistent evidence suggests that pitch height may be represented in a spatial format, having both a vertical and a horizontal representation. The spatial representation of pitch height results into response compatibility effects for which high pitch tones are preferentially associated to up-right responses, and low pitch tones are preferentially associated to down-left responses (i.e., the Spatial-Musical Association of Response Codes (SMARC) effect), with the strength of these associations depending on individuals' musical skills. In this study we investigated whether listening to tones of different pitch affects the representation of external space, as assessed in a visual and haptic line bisection paradigm, in musicians and non musicians. Low and high pitch tones affected the bisection performance in musicians differently, both when pitch was relevant and irrelevant for the task, and in both the visual and the haptic modality. No effect of pitch height was observed on the bisection performance of non musicians. Moreover, our data also show that musicians present a (supramodal) rightward bisection bias in both the visual and the haptic modality, extending previous findings limited to the visual modality, and consistent with the idea that intense practice with musical notation and bimanual instrument training affects hemispheric lateralization.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Milano-Bicocca Milano, Italy.
authors.forename: Carlotta
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Lega
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Milano-Bicocca Milano, Italy ; Brain Connectivity Center, National Neurological Institute C. Mondino Pavia, Italy.
authors.forename: Zaira
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Cattaneo
authors.affiliation: The Laboratory for Visual Neuroplasticity, Department of Ophthalmology, Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, Harvard Medical School Boston, MA, USA.
authors.forename: Lotfi B
authors.initials: LB
authors.lastname: Merabet
authors.affiliation: Brain Connectivity Center, National Neurological Institute C. Mondino Pavia, Italy ; Department of Brain and Behavioural Sciences, University of Pavia Pavia, Italy.
authors.forename: Tomaso
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Vecchi
authors.affiliation: Department of Brain and Behavioural Sciences, University of Pavia Pavia, Italy.
authors.forename: Silvia
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Cucchi
keywords: line bisection; musicians; pitch; pseudoneglect; space perception