Fingers, notes and brains in harmony
Playing an instrument places the highest demands on our brain. A team from the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics in Frankfurt am Main (MPIEA) and the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig (MPI CBS) has researched how exactly it masters these coordination tasks.
Playing the piano requires complex planning: it is necessary to coordinate what is to be played, i.e. which note or chord is to follow, but also how it is to be played, i.e. which fingers exactly execute the touch. A team from the Max Planck Institutes for Empirical Aesthetics in Frankfurt am Main (MPIEA) and for Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig (MPI CBS) has now investigated where exactly these planning steps take place in the brain.
Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) generates a strong magnetic field. In cooperation with Blüthner Pianofortemanufaktur in Leipzig, the team therefore developed a piano with 27 keys that can register the keystrokes via a light line.
On this special piano, 26 test subjects played pictorial chord sequences in the MRI scanner. This showed that the two planning steps "what" and "how" activate different brain networks. It was particularly noticeable that both networks include a frontal brain region that is of great importance in the planning of all everyday actions: the left lateral prefrontal cortex.
More info:
https://www.aesthetics.mpg.de/institut/news/news-artikel/article/solo-und-duett.html
