How relevant are incidentally generated movement sounds for movement learning and movement perception?

• Applicants: Dr. Alexandra Pizzera; Professor Dr. Markus Raab; Professorin Dr. Ricarda Ines Schubotz
• Subject Area: General, Cognitive and Mathematical Psychology ; Biological Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience ; Human Cognitive and Systems Neuroscience
• Term: since 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 515997569

How relevant are incidental movement sounds for movement learning and perception? Using hurdling as an example, we test in three behavioral and neurofunctional experiments the assumption that movement learning and perception are negatively influenced by deprivation and positively influenced by reinforcement of incidental movement sounds, respectively. In previous studies, we investigated short-term interfering as well as deprivation effects in active hurdle training and in the perception of hurdle runs using fMRI. We found that auditory distortion and deprivation lead to compensatory trials. It is also known that incidental movement sounds in sports are not only used by athletes to optimize performance, but also by coaches to better assess performance quality in a passive-observational manner. In contrast, long-term effects of auditory deprivation as well as those of reinforcement, their intraindividual effect on motor learning and perception, and the immediate and longer-term plastic functional and structural neural correlates of this intervention have not yet been investigated and will be the subject of the current proposal. We test the assumption that a hierarchically organized prediction mechanism efficiently organizes our motor control as well as our self- and other-perception. To this end, in the same group of subjects, the influence of incidental movement sounds on both active motor learning effects and passive perceptual appraisal ability of these movements will be investigated using functional and diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). 120 subjects complete a hurdle perception task during MRI in which auditory deprivation or auditory reinforcement is varied (Study 1). After several weeks of training, which the VPn undergo in three separate groups under auditory deprivation, auditory reinforcement, or with normal auditory feedback (Study 2), the same subjects participate again in an MRI session (Study 3). The functional and structural effects of the feedback intervention on motor training can thus be identified using pre-post comparison and studied behaviorally and neurofunctionally in relation to hypothesized modulations of perceptual capability. This project will help to examine the benefits of incidentally generated movement sounds in order to develop long-term recommendations for sports and in the rehabilitation of neurological patients.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants