Design and Verification of Piano Playing Assisted Hand Exoskeleton Robot.

Finger technique is a crucial aspect of piano learning, and hand exoskeleton mechanisms effectively assist novice piano players in maintaining correct finger technique consistently. Addressing current issues with exoskeleton robots, such as the inability to provide continuous correction of finger technique and their considerable weight, a novel hand exoskeleton robot has been developed to enhance finger technique through continuous correction and reduced weight. Initial data are gathered using finger joint angle sensors to analyze movements during piano playing, focusing on the trajectory and angular velocity of key strikes. This analysis informs the design of a 6-bar double-closed-loop mechanism with an end equivalent sliding pair, using analytical methods to establish the relationship between motor extension and input rod rotation. Simulation studies assess the exoskeleton's motion space and dynamics, confirming its capability to meet structural and functional demands for accurate key striking. Prototype testing validates the exoskeleton's ability to maintain correct finger positioning and mimic natural strike speeds, thus improving playing technique while ensuring comfort and safety.

Rectified Latent Variable Model-Based EMG Factorization of Inhibitory Muscle Synergy Components Related to Aging, Expertise and Force-Tempo Variations.

Muscle synergy has been widely acknowledged as a possible strategy of neuromotor control, but current research has ignored the potential inhibitory components in muscle synergies. Our study aims to identify and characterize the inhibitory components within motor modules derived from electromyography (EMG), investigate the impact of aging and motor expertise on these components, and better understand the nervous system's adaptions to varying task demands. We utilized a rectified latent variable model (RLVM) to factorize motor modules with inhibitory components from EMG signals recorded from ten expert pianists when they played scales and pieces at different tempo-force combinations. We found that older participants showed a higher proportion of inhibitory components compared with the younger group. Senior experts had a higher proportion of inhibitory components on the left hand, and most inhibitory components became less negative with increased tempo or decreased force. Our results demonstrated that the inhibitory components in muscle synergies could be shaped by aging and expertise, and also took part in motor control for adapting to different conditions in complex tasks.

Coordinating upper limbs for octave playing on the piano via neuro-musculoskeletal modeling.

Understanding the coordination of multiple biomechanical degrees of freedom in biological organisms is crucial for unraveling the neurophysiological control of sophisticated motor tasks. This study focuses on the cooperative behavior of upper-limb motor movements in the context of octave playing on the piano. While the vertebrate locomotor system has been extensively investigated, the coherence and precision timing of rhythmic movements in the upper-limb system remain incompletely understood. Inspired by the spinal cord neuronal circuits (central pattern generator, CPG), a computational neuro-musculoskeletal model is proposed to explore the coordination of upper-limb motor movements during octave playing across varying tempos and volumes. The proposed model incorporates a CPG-based nervous system, a physiologically-informed mechanical body, and a piano environment to mimic human joint coordination and expressiveness. The model integrates neural rhythm generation, spinal reflex circuits, and biomechanical muscle dynamics while considering piano playing quality and energy expenditure. Based on real-world human subject experiments, the model has been refined to study tempo transitions and volume control during piano playing. This computational approach offers insights into the neurophysiological basis of upper-limb motor coordination in piano playing and its relation to expressive features.

The role of a teacher in modern music education: can a student learn music with the help of modernized online educational technologies without teachers?

Music education is aimed at the development of musical abilities, emotionality during the performance of musical compositions, and all-round development. The aim of the article is to determine the possibilities of schoolchildren obtaining musical knowledge with the help of modernized online technologies, as well as to determine the importance of a teacher in modern music education. The indicators were determined by a questionnaire, the data collection for which was done using a Likert scale. Initially, the paper identified approaches to teaching students prior to the study. The results showed that more emphasis was placed on the use of book-based theoretical materials (46%), which allowed only 21% of students to achieve a high level of knowledge. The use of information technology was common among 9% of students, which allowed 76% of students to achieve high results, which is based on acquiring knowledge in a shorter time. The authors concluded that it is necessary to provide improved stages of learning, which will expand the use of modernized technology. Work on the theoretical basics of piano playing can be implemented with the Vivace app; Flow app helps one to work on sound features; Functional Ear Trainer app is about developing rhythm and hearing; and Chordana Play app helps one to work on a piece of music. After training, by calculating the coefficient of effectiveness, it was found that students in group #1 (0.791), who mastered the skills of playing the piano according to the developed training stages and without a teacher, showed the quality of acquired knowledge lower than students in group #2 (0.853), who were trained under the direct influence of a teacher. The data obtained confirm the high quality of learning in the groups, as the educational process was built with the correct distribution of workload and providing opportunities for the development of musical skills. It is established that the students of group 1 to a greater extent developed independence (29%), and group 2 was good at the accuracy of musical tasks' sequence (28%). The practical significance of the work is based on the possibility of transforming the music learning system with the help of modern technology. Prospects for the study can be based on a comparison of the quality of teaching the piano and vocal training, excluding the participation of a teacher in the learning process.

Beyond tics: movement disorders in patients with Tourette syndrome.

BACKGROUND: Tics are the hallmark of Tourette syndrome (TS). However, TS patients may have a particular vulnerability to develop other movement disorders (MDs), such as dystonia, chorea, stereotypy, and other hyperkinetic disorders that may be wrongly attributed to tics. MATERIALS AND METHODS: We studied a cohort of 201 patients with motor and phonic tics associated with TS to determine if they have additional, co-existent, MDs. RESULTS: There were 67 (33.3%) patients with comorbid non-tic MDs. Phenomenology-wise, piano-playing movements resembling chorea or myoclonus, were the most common non-tic movement, observed in 11% of cases, followed by stereotypies (8.0%), tremor, dystonia and parkinsonism, 5.0% each. Drug-induced was the most common etiology (6.0%), followed by functional movement disorders (5.0%) and tardive phenomena (5.0%). No clear etiology was identified in most patients. Piano-playing movements, were associated with a younger age at onset (P = 0.004) and younger age at presentation (P < 0.001). Patients with drug-induced movements and tardive phenomena had a lower frequency of craniofacial tics. FMDs, and idiopathic MDS showed no specific associations with TS. Tic severity was not a predictor of any co-existent MD. CONCLUSION: About a third of patients with TS present with comorbid MDs which should be differentiated and distinguished from tics as their etiopathogenesis and treatment may be different.

Music Performance Anxiety: Can Expressive Writing Intervention Help?

Performance is an essential part of music education; however, many music professionals and students suffer from music performance anxiety (MPA). The purpose of this study was to investigate whether a 10-min expressive writing intervention (EWI) can effectively reduce performance anxiety and improve overall performance outcomes in college-level piano students. Two groups of music students (16 piano major students and 19 group/secondary piano students) participated in the study. Piano major students performed a solo work from memory, while group/secondary piano students took a sight-reading exam of an eight-measure piano musical selection. All students performed twice, at baseline and post-EWI, with 2 or 3 days between performances. During the EWI phase, students were randomly divided into two groups: an expressive writing group and a control group. Students in the expressive writing group wrote down feelings and thoughts about their upcoming performances, while students in the control group wrote about a topic unrelated to performing. Each student's pulse was recorded immediately before performing, and each performance was videotaped. Three independent judges evaluated the recordings using a modified version of the Observational Scale for Piano Practicing (OSPP) by Gruson (1988). The results revealed that, by simply writing out their thoughts and feelings right before performing, students who had high MPA improved their performance quality significantly and reduced their MPA significantly. Our findings suggest that EWI may be a viable tool to alleviate music performance anxiety.

When Playing Is a Problem: An Atypical Case of Alien Hand Syndrome in a Professional Pianist.

Alien hand syndrome (AHS) is a neurological illness characterized by limb movements which are carried out without being aware of it. Many patients describe these movements as aggressive and some perceive a strong feeling of estrangement and go so far as to deny ownership. The sense of body ownership is the perception that parts of one's body pertain to oneself, despite it is moving or not and if movement is intentional or unintentional. These anomalous self-experiences may arise in patients with focal brain lesions and provide unique opportunities to disclose the neural components underlying self-body perception. The feeling of foreignness described in AHS is often observed in post-central cortical lesions in the non-dominant hemisphere and is typical of the "posterior alien hand variant". We used Diffusion-Tensor magnetic resonance imaging (DT-MRI) in an unusual case of posterior AHS of the dominant hand in a professional pianist with corticobasal syndrome (CBS). The patient showed uncontrolled levitation with the right arm while playing the piano and perceived as if her hand had a "mind of its own" which prevented her from playing. MRI-scans show asymmetric brain atrophy, mainly involving left post-central regions and SPECT-Tc99m-ECD patterns of hypometabolism over the left parietal-occipital cortices. DT-MRI revealed extensive damage which comprised left fronto-temporal cortex and extends into the ipsilateral parietal cortex causing a disruption of corpus callosum (CC) projections from the rostrum to the splenium. Our case illustrates that posterior AHS may occur in the dominant hemisphere due to widespread damage, which exceed parietal cortex. The parietal lobe has been recognized as a multimodal association region that gets input from several networks and organizes motor output. We suggest that the disturbance to this pathway could result in disruption of motor output and associate an abnormal motor control and anomalous self-body perception.

Alexander Scriabin: his chronic right-hand pain and Its impact on his piano compositions.

Alexander Scriabin was an outstanding pianist and an avant-garde composer who influenced later generations with his innovative "multimedia" conceptions of aesthetic experience. As an adolescent, he was systematically trained as a concert pianist and received lessons from Vassily Safonoff, one of the founders of the legendary Russian Piano School. At age 20, Scriabin suffered an overuse injury of his right hand when attempting to improve the sound quality of his piano touch. This injury caused a deep crisis and influenced his later composition style in his piano works. From this time on, his works were frequently dominated by unusual virtuosic use and wide spans of his left hand. Rest, restricted repertoire, and an increased focus on composition contributed to recovery; however, he always remained anxious concerning the stamina of his right hand. The case report impressively demonstrates the stressors an aspiring young pianist had to cope with at the end of the nineteenth century. Furthermore, it is a convincing example of how resource-oriented behavior and intuition lead to the improvement of health status. Differential diagnoses and the modern concept of multimodal pain therapy in chronic overuse injury will be discussed from a historical perspective.

Patterns of muscle activity for digital coarticulation.

Although piano playing is a highly skilled task, basic features of motor pattern generation may be shared across tasks involving fine movements, such as handling coins, fingering food, or using a touch screen. The scripted and sequential nature of piano playing offered the opportunity to quantify the neuromuscular basis of coarticulation, i.e., the manner in which the muscle activation for one sequential element is altered to facilitate production of the preceding and subsequent elements. Ten pianists were asked to play selected pieces with the right hand at a uniform tempo. Key-press times were recorded along with the electromyographic (EMG) activity from seven channels: thumb flexor and abductor muscles, a flexor for each finger, and the four-finger extensor muscle. For the thumb and index finger, principal components of EMG waveforms revealed highly consistent variations in the shape of the flexor bursts, depending on the type of sequence in which a particular central key press was embedded. For all digits, the duration of the central EMG burst scaled, along with slight variations across subjects in the duration of the interkeystroke intervals. Even within a narrow time frame (about 100 ms) centered on the central EMG burst, the exact balance of EMG amplitudes across multiple muscles depended on the nature of the preceding and subsequent key presses. This fails to support the idea of fixed burst patterns executed in sequential phases and instead provides evidence for neuromuscular coarticulation throughout the time course of a hand movement sequence.