Functional imaging in musicians

Studying professional musicians offers an ideal model to explore the effect of long term regular practice upon adaptive plasticity of the sensorimotor system. Functional studies in musicians showed an enlargement of cortical finger representations (Elbert, et al. 1995) and of auditory representation for tones (Pantev, et al. 1998; Schneider, et al. 2002). In predisposed individuals, defective motor reorganization due to musical practice can lead to uncontrolled movements such as task induced dystonia with a smearing of representational zones (Elbert, et al. 1998; Pujol, et al. 2000). Investigations of unimanual…