ArticleExperimental brain research2014
Playing beautifully when you have to be fast: spatial and temporal symmetries of movement patterns in skilled piano performance at different tempi.
Article in Experimental brain research, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 12 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
12 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- The biomechanics of piano playing: a systematic review of kinematic, kinetic, and electromyographic literature.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Pooled it
- Motor origins of timbre in piano performance.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Reflecting on what is "skill" in human motor skill learning.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2023Review
- The plyometric activity as a conditioning to enhance strength and precision of the finger movements in pianists.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Noncontact and High-Precision Sensing System for Piano Keys Identified Fingerprints of Virtuosity.Sensors (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Article
- Impaired feedforward control of movements in pianists with focal dystonia.Frontiers in neurology · 2022Article
- Pursuing Artful Movement Science in Music Performance: Single Subject Motor Analysis With Two Elite Pianists.Perceptual and motor skills · 2021Article
- Exhausting repetitive piano tasks lead to local forearm manifestation of muscle fatigue and negatively affect musical parameters.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- Quantitative analysis of piano performance proficiency focusing on difference between hands.PloS one · 2021Article
- On the One Hand or on the Other: Trade-Off in Timing Precision in Bimanual Musical Scale Playing.Advances in cognitive psychology · 2019Article
- Kinematic Origins of Motor Inconsistency in Expert Pianists.PloS one · 2016Article
- Relations between affective music and speech: evidence from dynamics of affective piano performance and speech production.Frontiers in psychology · 2015Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Humans are capable of learning a variety of motor skills such as playing the piano. Performance of these skills is subject to multiple constraints, such as musical phrasing or speed requirements, and these constraints vary from one context to another. In order to understand how the brain controls highly skilled movements, we investigated pianists playing musical scales with their left or right hand at various speeds. Pianists showed systematic temporal deviations away from regularity. At slow tempi, pianists slowed down at the beginning and end of the movement (which we call phrasal template). At fast tempi, temporal deviation traces consisted of three peak delays caused by a thumb-under manoeuvre (which we call neuromuscular template). Intermediate tempi were a linear combination trade-off between these two. We introduce and cross-validate a simple four-parameter model that predicted the timing deviation of each individual note across tempi (R(2) = 0.70). The model can be fitted on the data of individual pianists, providing a novel quantification of expert performance. The present study shows that the motor system can generate complex movements through a dynamic combination of simple movement templates. This provides insight into how the motor system flexibly adapts to varying contextual constraints.
Indexed as
Identifiers
25059908What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.