Article Figures & Data
Figures
- Figure 1.
Action–listening illustration. A, Music performance can be viewed as a complex sequence of both actions and sounds, in which sounds are made by actions. B, The sound of music one knows how to play can be reflected, as if in a mirror, in the corresponding motor representations.
- Figure 2.
Experimental setup. A, Learning times of the trained-music are shown for individual subjects (n = 9) over five daily piano-training sessions. Learning time was influenced by the number of errors made during a session, until reaching error-free performance with the musical piece. A plateau level of performance is notable in sessions 4–5, obtaining the minimum possible learning time (12 min) set by the software. B, Examples of three fMRI experimental conditions. Sample short passages extracted from the trained-music that subjects learned how to play (blue) and two untrained control musical pieces are shown. These controls include an untrained-same-notes-music, in which the same notes were used in a different order to create a new melody (cyan) and an untrained-different-notes-music, composed of a completely different set of notes (red). C, A sample fMRI time series is shown between two imaging time points (TR, 18 s; TA, 1.75 s; red) within a single run. Images were acquired immediately after listening to short passages (5–8 s each; yellow) extracted from all three musical pieces. A behavioral control task (green) was used to control for listening attention; subjects heard three piano notes and had to press a button with their left hand if these notes had appeared as a subsequence in the preceding musical passage (yellow) they had heard. Intentionally, no images reflecting this task were acquired. We varied pause times between scans (gray) so that the TR remained fixed. D, Results of the behavioral control task are shown for all listening conditions. The graph shows the percentage of correct button presses from the group (n = 9) for each listening condition (24 trials per subject). No significant differences were found for mean correct responses across musical pieces (p = 0.489).
- Figure 3.
Action–listening activation. A, B, Extensive bilateral activation in the frontoparietal motor-related brain regions was observed when subjects listened to the trained-music they knew how to play (A), but not when they listened to the never-learned untrained-different-notes-music (B) (contrasted against rest baseline; p < 0.05, FDR corrected). C, Activation maps are shown in areas that were significantly more active during listening to the trained-music versus the untrained-different-notes-music. Surface projection of group mean activation (n = 9) are rendered onto an individual standardized brain (p < 0.05, FDR corrected). L, Left; R, right.
- Figure 4.
A,Areas activated during listening to the untrained-same-notes-music contrasted against rest (p < 0.05, FDR corrected). B, Contrasted image of group mean activation is presented in areas that were significantly more active during listening to trained-music compared with untrained-same-notes-music. This included the left premotor region as well as Broca's area and its right hemispheric homolog (green arrows), shown also in the corresponding coronal view (middle) (p < 0.05, FDR corrected). C, Parameter estimates (β values) of the left (−50, 18, 16; magenta) and right (52, 18, 16; cyan) IFG across listening conditions. Results indicate significant pick activations on the left IFG only when subjects listen to the trained-music they knew how to play (p = 0.001), whereas the right IFG remained fairly active across listening conditions (p = 0.973).
- Figure 5.
Scores of the PRP test. The percentage of correct responses is shown for individual subjects, before the initial (red) and after the last (blue) piano-training session. Mean group errors (solid line) and SEs (dashed line) are presented. An improvement trend is shown, from 24% before training (around the level of chance) to 77% after training (mean relative improvement of 209%; p < 10−4).
