Category: Dystonia: Pathophysiology, Imaging
Objective: To compare the temporal discrimination threshold (TDT) between musician’s dystonia (MD) patients, healthy musicians and non-musician controls.
Background: MD is a focal, task specific dystonia characterized by loss of voluntary motor control when playing the instrument. Up to 1-2% of professional musicians are affected. As sensory processing is impaired in focal dystonia patients, the temporal discrimination threshold (TDT) – the shortest interval at which paired stimuli are perceived as being asynchronous – has been shown to be abnormal in individuals with cervical dystonia as well as MD.
Method: TDT testing was conducted using a previously described visual, tactile and visual-tactile paradigm in three different groups: MD patients with hand dystonia, healthy professional musicians and healthy non-musicians. We also compared TDT of the dystonic and non-dystonic hand and fingers in patients. Additionally, the biomarker was characterized regarding its potential influencing factors e.g. musical activity, disease variables and personality profiles.
Results: Data were collected for 20 MD patients, 20 healthy musicians and 20 non-musician controls with balanced age and gender distribution across groups. In line with previous studies, healthy musicians had significantly lower TDT scores than non-musicians (p = 0.005). However, we found neither a difference between MD patients and healthy musicians (p = 0.43) nor MD patients and non-musician controls (p = 0.47). Analysis of dystonic and non-dystonic hands (p = 0.579) and fingers (p = 0.519) revealed no difference. Also, in the patient group there were no correlations of TDTs with indices of musical activity, disease variables or personality profiles.
Conclusion: In line with the results of earlier studies we found lower TDT in healthy musicians compared to non-musician controls. In contrast, TDTs in our MD cohort did not differ from healthy musicians or non-musicians and are neither influenced by dystonic status, musical activity, disease variables nor personality profiles. Unlike other isolated focal dystonias, TDT seems not to be a reliable biomarker in MD.
To cite this abstract in AMA style:
F. Borngräber, M. Hoffmann, T. Paulus, J. Junker, T. Bäumer, E. Altenmüller, A. Kühn, A. Schmidt. Characterizing the temporal discrimination threshold in musician’s dystonia [abstract]. Mov Disord. 2021; 36 (suppl 1). https://www.mdsabstracts.org/abstract/characterizing-the-temporal-discrimination-threshold-in-musicians-dystonia/. Accessed June 7, 2025.« Back to MDS Virtual Congress 2021
MDS Abstracts - https://www.mdsabstracts.org/abstract/characterizing-the-temporal-discrimination-threshold-in-musicians-dystonia/