Article Type : Research Article
Authors : Nishikiori Y, Bando H, and Yoshioka A
Keywords : Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM); Music therapy; Sensory-motor transformations; Neuroimaging; Piano-playing
In the field of Complementary and
Alternative Medicine (CAM), music therapy (MT) has been known and widely
accepted. Authors are registered music therapists (rMTs), and continued
research for MT and piano-playing. Human has five senses including hearing, sight,
smell, taste and touch. Stimuli of auditory, visual and somatosensory data
assemble into post parietal region, which are transmitted to prefrontal cortex.
This is called as sensory-motor transformations (SMT). Consequently,
neuroimaging can demonstrate several factors for activation of various brain
areas, which generate the perception of musical and emotional feeling. Further
research development is expected for brain function, SMT and piano-playing.
For patient-centered medicine, Complementary and
Alternative Medicine (CAM) and Integrative Medicine (IM) have been gradually
prevalent [1]. Among them, music therapy (MT) has been known for its acceptable
and reasonable situation [2]. Authors et al. have practiced IM, CAM, MT
sessions and research for years [3]. We have many music therapists and pianists
associated with the office of Shikoku Island division of Integrative Medicine
Japan (IMJ) [4]. In this article, some commentary about brain function
influenced by playing the piano will be introduced.
Playing the piano requires various factors. They
include reading music score, making a judgment, and pushing down the keyboard
by 10 fingers with appropriate rhythm and strength. Furthermore, it is
necessary for listening the sound, conducting adequate feedback the current
music, evaluating the performance and aiming for improved playing in the
future. Once the pianist gets used to the piece, he can play without score and
improvise freely as he likes. Thus, playing the piano would be various
high-dimensional activity [5]. Impressive musical investigation was conducted
for a renowned classical pianist in the light of listening, playing, imagining
music [6]. Methods included functional MRI and measuring of pupil size from
psychological points of view. Several situations gave the influence to pupil
size in several circumstances such as silenced playing, normal playing,
imagining and listening. Regarding this study, psychophysiological methods may
evaluate mental status associated with no awareness of the subject. Before
starting piano-playing, auditory and visual abilities are usually involved in
the initiating activities. Two types of photoreceptor cells are present, which
are cone cells and rod cells. The former can recognize colours in bright
places, but its function deteriorates in the dark. The latter is
indistinguishable in colour, but can detect even the slightest light, so it
works mainly in dark environments. The music score has been written in black on
white paper so far. In addition to printed sheet music, portable smartphone
screens will be used in the future. Then, there will be possible changes in the
role of the retina for reading the sheet music.
Human has five senses which are hearing, sight, smell,
taste, and touch [7]. Moreover, the sixth sense has been known in the
parapsychology. It is similar to telepathy or psychic power as extra-sensory
perception (ESP). When the brain receives these various data, it communicates
with other parts of the brain, analyses the information, and makes a
comprehensive judgment. This means the process of thinking. As a result, one
decides to conduct something and outputs a signal to move the body. This is the
"command to exercise", and the muscles can be moved through the motor
nerves. Summarizing the above processes, the brain can complete a series of
neural processes [8]. They include the following: i) various sensations are
input, ii) thoughts are made, iii) judgments are made comprehensively, iv)
commands are output and v) exercise is performed.
What is the process of making a decision to take action after evaluating data from the sensory organs? Visual information from the occipital lobe, auditory information from the temporal lobe, and spatial information of the body from the parietal lobe are combined together to parietal region and sent to the prefrontal cortex (Figure 1).
Figure 1: Scheme of brain function concerning sensory-motor transformations.
Consequently, it is judged that the situation is ready
to start, and then the performance will be started. For older musicians (n=30,
70.8 years), behavioural performance, brain activity, larger grey matter volume
(GMV) and functional connectivity (FC) during melodic working memory (MWM)
tasks were compared with controls [9]. The results showed that task-related FC
showed greater cerebellar-hippocampal FC in musicians, which supposed
advantages of music performance, imagery cognitive ability in musicians. When
playing a melody on the piano, the pianist sometimes sings himself. Glenn Gould
was famous for his groaning loudly while playing Bach [10]. In contrast,
humming with a small voice would be better way. Even if there is no actual
voice or no breath in and out, vocal cords expand and contract according to the
melody.
Regarding human feeling, auditory, visual and
somatosensory stimuli assemble into the brain. The region includes inferior
parietal lobule (IPL) and superior parietal lobule (SPL).Furthermore, muscle
and skin sensations will be added to IPL and SPL [11]. Then, general image of
piano-playing is made comprehensively. Finally, the created image in IPL/SPL
will be transmitted to premotor cortex (PMC), leading to actual movement. This
is sensory-motor transformations (SMT). Through this process, the image created
in the parietal area is transformed into the performance that a pianist
actually plays on the keyboard. Vigorous debate for SMT has been observed, and
cortical localization of SMT was recently investigated. The protocol included
whisker detection go/no-go task for male/female mice [12]. The results supposed
that i) sensory encoding would originate in S1, sensory amplification and
sensory-motor transformation within M1 and motor signals in anterior lateral
motor cortex (ALM) after SMT.
If there are no sensory input or motor output, it is
difficult to imagine or practice music just within the mind. For the experiment
of primates, neural activity of sensory and motor processing hierarchy was
investigated [13]. As a result, maintaining rhythm is involved in several brain
areas, such as hippocampal, visual, prefrontal, premotor and parietal regions.
In order to study corticospinal output changes, 10 professional piano players
received transcranial magnetic stimulation [14]. The results showed that
specific muscle synergy was emerged for the cross-modal elaboration in the
imagery of musical performances. From mentioned above, neuroimaging can
demonstrate several factors of musical activation of the brain areas, which
generate the perception of musical and emotional feeling [15]. When music is
adopted as the therapeutic tools, it can contribute many subjects and patients
with various problems for providing somatic and mental beneficial results as
music therapy. Further research development will be expected concerning brain
function, SMT, piano-playing and related matters.
There was no funding received for this paper.
The authors declare no conflict of interest.