Back to feedback: aberrant sensorimotor control in music performance under pressure.

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Cognitive Psychology
• Motor Control

Background:

• Skilled performance, like playing music or sports, can be impaired by psychological stress.
• Previous research shows stress affects cognitive and autonomic functions, but its impact on sensorimotor control is less understood.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate if degraded sensorimotor functions contribute to compromised skillful performance under psychological stress.
• To explore the underlying mechanisms of performance disruption and potential mitigation strategies.

Main Methods:

• Behavioral experiments involving piano playing with artificially delayed auditory feedback.
• Analysis of local tempo disruption and temporal stability under pressure.
• A learning experiment to test the efficacy of different practice methods.

Main Results:

• Psychological stress abnormally disrupted piano tempo, indicating degraded temporal stability of movement control.
• An increased feedback gain was suggested as the cause of instability under pressure.
• Training to ignore delayed auditory feedback alleviated temporal instability, while compensatory training did not.

Conclusions:

• Psychological stress causes an abnormal shift from feedforward to feedback control in expert piano performance.
• Specialized sensorimotor training, emphasizing ignoring delayed auditory feedback, can mitigate stress-induced performance deficits.