The goal of Distributed Immersive Performance (DIP) is to allow musicians to collaborate synchronously over distance. Remote collaboration over the Internet poses many challenges such as delayed auditory and visual feedback to the musicians and a reduced sense of presence of the other musicians. We are systematically studying the effects of performing under remote conditions so as to guide the ...

The smooth, coordinated fine motor movements required to play a musical instrument are not only highly valued in our society; they also predict academic success in areas that generalize beyond the motor domain, including reading and math readiness, and verbal abilities. Interestingly, motor skills that overlap with those required to play a musical instrument (e.g., sequential finger tapping) ma...

The goal of this study was to investigate how cognitive factors influence performance in a multi-talker, "cocktail-party" like environment in musicians and non-musicians. This was achieved by relating performance in a spatial hearing task to cognitive processing abilities assessed using measures of executive function (EF) and visual attention in musicians and non-musicians. For the spatial hear...

The Sound Practice Project is a 5-year study involving baseline evaluation, development, and implementation of musician-specific work health and safety initiatives. A cross-sectional population physical and psychological survey and physical assessment were conducted at the same time, with an auditory health assessment conducted later. The results were used to guide the development of a series o...

Musicians in symphony orchestras are exposed to harmful sound levels. Although research shows that industrial workers have a higher propensity to noise-induced hearing loss, musicians can also develop a hearing loss from noise exposure. Furthermore, musicians can suffer from tinnitus, hyperacusis, and distortion, among other hearing disorders, which can affect their work more severely than a he...

Background: auditory training improves the perception of complex acoustic signals as well as the perception of speech. Aim: to verify if auditory training, through the practice of music, has an influence on the ability to recognize speech in quiet and noisy situations. Method: participants of this study were 55 individuals, with no musical experience (non-musicians) and 45 professional musician...

BACKGROUND/AIMS In distinct movement disorders, transcranial sonography detects alterations of deep brain structures with higher sensitivity than other neuroimaging methods. Lenticular nucleus hyperechogenicity on transcranial sonography, thought to be caused by increased local copper content, has been reported as a characteristic finding in primary spontaneous dystonia. Here, we wanted to find...

BACKGROUND Musician's dystonia is a task-specific movement disorder that manifests itself as a loss of voluntary motor control in extensively trained movements. In many cases, the disorder terminates the careers of affected musicians. Approximately, 1% of all professional musicians are affected. The pathophysiology of the disorder is still unclear. Findings include: (i) reduced inhibition in di...

This psychophysics study used musicians as a model to investigate whether musical expertise shapes the temporal integration window for audiovisual speech, sinewave speech, or music. Musicians and non-musicians judged the audiovisual synchrony of speech, sinewave analogs of speech, and music stimuli at 13 audiovisual stimulus onset asynchronies (±360, ±300 ±240, ±180, ±120, ±60, and 0 ms). Furth...

V. A. Sluming, D. Page, J. Downe, C. Denby, A. Mayes, N. Roberts Medical Imaging, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, Merseyside, United Kingdom, Magnetic Resonance & Image Analysis Research Centre, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, Merseyside, United Kingdom, Psychology, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, Merseyside, United Kingdom It is well documented that behavioural training and skill a...