We examined absolute-pitch (AP) and short-term musical memory abilities of five musical savants with congenital blindness, seven musicians, and seven non-musicians with good vision and normal intelligence in two experiments. In the first, short-term memory for musical phrases was tested and the savants and musicians performed statistically indistinguishably, both significantly outperforming the...

Here we investigated how music reading experience modulates visual spans in language reading. Participants were asked to identify music notes, English letters, Chinese characters, and novel symbols (Tibetan letters) presented at random locations on the screen while maintaining central fixation. We found that for music note reading, musicians outperformed non-musicians at some peripheral positio...

Five musical savants with congenital blindness, seven musicians and seven non-musicians with good vision and normal intelligence took part in two experiments. In the first, participants reproduced note strings varying in length and key; in the second, participants learnt associations between four pitches and four objects using a non-verbal paradigm. In the first experiment, the savants and musi...

Most research on musical performance anxiety has focused on musicians coming from a classical background, and performance anxiety experiences of musicians outside the western classical genre remain under-researched. The aim of this study was to investigate perceived performance anxiety experiences in undergraduate and professional musicians and to explore whether musical genre specialization (W...

The perception of music has been investigated by several neurophysiological and neuroimaging methods. Results from these studies suggest a right hemisphere dominance for non-musicians and a possible left hemisphere dominance for musicians. However, inconsistent results have been obtained, and not all variables have been controlled by the different methods. We performed a study with functional t...

The study aims to test whether the eye movements (saccades) of professional musicians differ from a corresponding nonmusician control group. It is assumed that the early commencement of instrumental practice, which is characterized by demanding "visual input" for the perceptual system (such as the reading of musical notation), can modify the way visual information is processed in professional a...

In the 1980s and 1990s a series of studies investigated musicians’ personalities using Cattell’s 16 personality factors, Eysenck’s PEN super factors, and Costa and McCrae’s Big Five. The findings hinted at some traits most musicians seemed to share, and highlighted differences between the personality traits of brass and string players. However, results were inconclusive and sometimes contradict...

This paper proposes a logical framework that visualizes musicians' conceptual structures that are acquired in skill communication processes for musical expression as rhetoric. Generally, these conceptual structures are difficult to show difference between experts and beginners. So, we first carry out a theoretical analysis of musicians' awareness for musical expression using Channel theory and ...

Background: The study investigated the incidence of chronic pain as well as causes and mechanisms of pain chronification in orchestra musicians. Aims: Chronic pain is a serious problem in the study group due to very specific playing techniques and body positions while playing, with a high impact on professional and private life. Methods: 8,645 professional musicians from 132 German cultural orc...