Parkinson’s disease is characterized not only by bradykinesia, rigidity, and tremor, but also by impairments of expressive and receptive linguistic prosody. The facilitating effect of music with a salient beat on patients’ gait suggests that it might have a similar effect on vocal behavior, however it …

The historically developed practice of learning to play a music instrument from notes instead of by imitation or improvisation makes it possible to contrast two types of skilled musicians characterized not only by dissimilar performance practices, but also disparate methods of audiomotor learning. In …

This essay addresses the relationship of improvisation and identity. Biographical research that was conducted by the author into professional musicians’ lifelong learning showed the huge importance of improvisation for personal expression. Musically, the concept of sound appeared to serve as a strong …

This article focuses on the role of the artistic process in connecting to the natural environment. In my research I have explored what participants experience and learn when they engage in different types of arts-based environmental education (AEE) practices that I have facilitated. The premise of AEE …

The functional and anatomical distinction between vision-for-perception and vision-for-action, the hallmark of the dual-stream Perception-Action Model, is equally applicable to the auditory domain, implying that non-conscious audition-for-action could play an important role in music performance. Ear …

Classical musicians are a unique population. Unlike other musicians, they learn their skills with the use of sheet music, right from the beginning. Investigation of brain response may help us understand how educational methods influence learning in this group of musicians. In this study, we hypothesized …

Biography, identity, improvisation, sound.

Using fMRI, cerebral activations were studied in 24 classically-trained keyboard performers and 12 musically unskilled control subjects. Two groups of musicians were recruited: improvising (n=12) and score-dependent (non-improvising) musicians (n=12). While listening to both familiar and unfamiliar music, …