Mental rotation and working memory in musicians' dystonia

- Mental rotation of body parts engages brain areas that are involved in movement execution.
- Musicians' dystonia is a type of focal hand dystonia that is grouped together with writer's cramp under the rubric of “occupation dystonia”.
- Previous research has demonstrated patients with writer's cramp to have deficits in mental rotation of body parts.
- Patients with musicians' dystonia have intact abilities in mentally rotating body parts, suggesting that this disorder relies on a selective disruption of movement planning.
- We further demonstrated that mental rotation of body parts and objects engages, at least partially, different cognitive networks.

BackgroundMental rotation of body parts engages cortical-subcortical areas that are actually involved in the execution of a movement. Musicians' dystonia is a type of focal hand dystonia that is grouped together with writer's cramp under the rubric of “occupational dystonia”, but it is unclear to which extent these two disorders share common pathophysiological mechanisms. Previous research has demonstrated patients with writer's cramp to have deficits in mental rotation of body parts. It is unknown whether patients with musicians' dystonia would display similar deficits, reinforcing the concept of shared pathophysiology.MethodsEight patients with musicians' dystonia and eight healthy musicians matched for age, gender and musical education, performed a number of tasks assessing mental rotation of body parts and objects as well as verbal and spatial working memories abilities.ResultsThere were no differences between patients and healthy musicians as to accuracy and reaction times in any of the tasks.ConclusionsPatients with musicians' dystonia have intact abilities in mentally rotating body parts, suggesting that this disorder relies on a highly selective disruption of movement planning and execution that manifests only upon playing a specific instrument. We further demonstrated that mental rotation of body parts and objects engages, at least partially, different cognitive networks.