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Papers by Eckart Altenmüller

Human Brain Mapping, Apr 26, 2004

Clinical Neurophysiology, Mar 1, 2017

Advances in Experimental Medicine and Biology, 2016

Early and extensive musical training provides plastic adaptations of the nervous system and enhan... more Early and extensive musical training provides plastic adaptations of the nervous system and enhanced sensory, motor, and cognitive functions. Over decades, neuronal mechanism underlying the plastic adaptation through musical training has been investigated using neuroimaging and transcranial stimulation techniques. Recently, plastic changes in neuroplastic functions through musical training have gradually gained some interest, so-called metaplasticity. Metaplasticity enables faster and more stable skill acquisition for individuals with a history of prior musical training. This mechanism may also serve for prevention of developing maladaptive changes in the nervous system, being pathophysiology of focal dystonia in musicians. The present chapter introduces neurophysiological mechanisms and functional significances of brain plasticity and metaplasticity of the sensory and motor systems of musicians.

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, Feb 1, 2005

Frontiers in Psychology, 2013

The Oxford Handbook of Music and the Brain, 2018

This chapter summarizes research on the effects of musical training on brain function, brain conn... more This chapter summarizes research on the effects of musical training on brain function, brain connectivity, and brain structure. First, it addresses factors inducing and continuously driving brain plasticity in dedicated musicians, arguing that prolonged goal-directed practice, multisensory–motor integration, high arousal, and emotional and social rewards contribute to these plasticity-induced brain adaptations. Subsequently, the chapter briefly reviews the neuroanatomy and neurophysiology underpinning musical activities by focusing on motor planning and motor control. A review of the literature on functional changes in brain activation and brain connectivity along with the acquisition of musical skills is provided. Structural adaptions in the gray matter of the brain and in fiber tract density associated with music learning are critically discussed. Finally, the chapter addresses the phenomenon of de-expertise, when intensive music-making induces dysfunctional changes of brain netwo...

Musique, langage, émotion, 2010

Genes, Jan 18, 2017

Mutations in RAB (member of the Ras superfamily) genes are increasingly recognized as cause of a ... more Mutations in RAB (member of the Ras superfamily) genes are increasingly recognized as cause of a variety of disorders including neurological conditions. While musician's dystonia (MD) and writer's dystonia (WD) are task-specific movement disorders, other dystonias persistently affect postures as in cervical dystonia. Little is known about the underlying etiology. Next-generation sequencing revealed a rare missense variant (c.586A>G; p.Ile196Val) in RAB12 in two of three MD/WD families. Next, we tested 916 additional dystonia patients; 512 Parkinson's disease patients; and 461 healthy controls for RAB12 variants and identified 10 additional carriers of rare missense changes among dystonia patients (1.1%) but only one carrier in non-dystonic individuals (0.1%; p = 0.005). The detected variants among index patients comprised p.Ile196Val (n = 6); p.Ala174Thr (n = 3); p.Gly13Asp; p.Ala148Thr; and p.Arg181Gln in patients with MD; cervical dystonia; or WD. Two relatives of M...

Restorative Neurology and Neuroscience, 2016

Journal of neural transmission (Vienna, Austria : 1996), Jan 29, 2016

Task-specific tremor in musicians is an involuntary oscillating muscular activity mostly of the h... more Task-specific tremor in musicians is an involuntary oscillating muscular activity mostly of the hand or the embouchure, which predominantly occurs while playing the instrument. In contrast to arm or hand tremors, which have been examined and objectified based on movement kinematics and muscular activity, embouchure tremor has not yet been investigated. To quantify and describe embouchure tremor we analysed sound production and investigated the fluctuation of the time-varying fundamental frequency of sustained notes. A comparison between patients with embouchure tremor and healthy controls showed a significantly higher fluctuation of the fundamental frequency for the patients in the high pitch with a tremor frequency range between 3 and 8 Hz. The present findings firstly provide further information about a scarcely described movement disorder and secondly further evaluate a new quantification method for embouchure tremor, which has recently been established for embouchure dystonia.

Journal of neurology, Jan 12, 2016

Specific mutations in COL6A3 have recently been reported as the cause of isolated recessive dysto... more Specific mutations in COL6A3 have recently been reported as the cause of isolated recessive dystonia, which is a rare movement disorder. In all patients, at least one mutation was located in Exons 41 and 42. In an attempt to replicate these findings, we assessed by direct sequencing the frequency of rare variants in Exons 41 and 42 of COL6A3 in 955 patients with isolated or combined dystonia or with another movement disorder with dystonic features. We identified nine heterozygous carriers of rare variants including five different missense mutations and an extremely rare synonymous variant. In these nine patients, we sequenced the remaining 41 coding exons of COL6A3 to test for a second mutation in the compound heterozygous state. In only one of them, a second rare variant was identified (Thr732Met + Pro3082Arg). Of note, this patient had been diagnosed with Parkinson´s disease (with dystonic posturing) due to homozygous PINK1 mutations. The COL6A3 mutations clearly did not segregate...

Performing music at a professional level requires the integration of multimodal sensory and motor... more Performing music at a professional level requires the integration of multimodal sensory and motor information and precise monitoring of the performance via auditory feedback. In the context of western classical music, musicians are forced to reproduce highly controlled movements almost perfectly with a high reliability. These specialized sensory-motor skills are acquired during extensive training periods over many years, starting in early infancy and passing through stages of increasing physical and strategic complexities. The superior skills of musicians are mirrored in plastic adaptations of the brain on different time scales (for a review, see: Munte et al. 2002). There is a dark side to the increasing specialisation and prolonged training of modern musicians, namely loss of control and degradation of skilled hand movements, a disorder referred to as musicians’ cramp or focal dystonia. In our musicians’ clinic, we have seen 360 professional musicians with focal dystonia during the last 10 years. The disorder presents as painless muscular incoordination or loss of voluntary motor control of highly trained movements while playing the instrument. According to new research data, focal dystonia may be caused by training induced cortical dysplasticity with pathological fusion of somatosensory representations in sensory or motor cortical regions. Considering 1) the historical advent of the disorder in the nineteenth century with rapidly increasing technical demands imposed on musicians, 2) the epidemiological data with repetitive and spatiotemporally precise physical activity as a risk factor, and 3) neurobiological findings of the blurring of somato-sensory representations, one is tempted to state that focal dystonia finally marks the natural limits of a process of refinement of manual dexterity over a million years. However, a hereditary component seems to play a role, since according to a presently conducted neurogenetical study in more than 15% of our patients, (non- musician) members of the family are afflicted with other forms of focal dystonia. References Munte TF, Altenmuller E, Jancke L. The musician’s brain as a model of neuroplasticity. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 3, 473-478 (2002)

NeuroImage, Jan 14, 2015

In the last decade, several studies have investigated the neuroplastic changes induced by long-te... more In the last decade, several studies have investigated the neuroplastic changes induced by long-term musical training. Here we investigated structural brain differences in expert pianists compared to non-musician controls, as well as the effect of the age of onset (AoO) of piano playing. Differences with non-musicians and the effect of sensitive periods in musicians have been studied previously, but importantly, this is the first time in which the age of onset of music-training was assessed in a group of musicians playing the same instrument, while controlling for the amount of practice. We recruited a homogeneous group of expert pianists who differed in their AoO but not in their lifetime or present amount of training, and compared them to an age-matched group of non-musicians. A subset of the pianists also completed a scale-playing task in order to control for performance skill level differences. Voxel-based morphometry analysis was used to examine gray-matter differences at the wh...

Advances in neurology, 2004

Search by Subject Search using Medical Subject Headings ( MeSH), a controlled... more Search by Subject Search using Medical Subject Headings ( MeSH), a controlled vocabulary for indexing life sciences content. Note that some records do not have MeSH. These include Patents and the latest PubMed and PubMed Central records.

Klinische Neurophysiologie, 2009

Current Research in Systematic Musicology, 2013

Music, Health, and Wellbeing, 2012