Resting-state basal ganglia network codes a motor musical skill and its disruption From dystonia

Musician's dystonia critically impacts professional musicians' careers as they may lose musical skills, which have been acquired through long and intensive training. Yet the pathophysiology of musician's dystonia and its link to the neural mechanisms supporting musical skills is poorly understood. We tested if resting-state functional connectivity might reflect an aspect of musical skill linked to the pathophysiology of musician's dystonia. We also tested a second hypothesis that the region with altered resting-state functional connectivity might be correlated with a quantitative measure of musical skills.

We studied 21 patients with musician's dystonia affecting their hands and 34 healthy musicians, using resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging and behavioral assessment. We tested between-group differences of resting-state functional connectivity throughout the whole brain using independent component analysis.

We found abnormal basal ganglia resting-state functional connectivity in the putamina of patients with musician's dystonia compared with those of healthy musicians (P = 0.035 corrected for multiple comparisons). We also found that the temporal precision of keystrokes was correlated with basal ganglia functional connectivity in the putamina of healthy pianists (r = 0.72, P = 0.0005), but not in pianists with musician's dystonia (r = -0.11, P = 0.64).

We show that abnormalities of the putamen exist even at rest in musician's dystonia, whereas putaminal abnormality has previously been reported during a task. Moreover, basal ganglia resting-state functional connectivity in the putamen represented training levels in healthy musicians, and its disruption was associated with musician's dystonia. This novel finding hints at the pathophysiological mechanisms by which musician's dystonia follows extensive musical training. © 2018 The Authors. Movement Disorders published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of International Parkinson and Movement Disorder Society.