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From Touch to Movement The role of central tactile suppression in the fine motor performance of expert musicians and musical novices

Year: 2026
Type: dissertation
Study design: Observational Study
Abstract: While musicians’ virtuoso displays of speed and precision have dazzled and fascinated audiences through the ages, science has not yet uncovered the mechanisms behind this extreme skill. A promising area of research involves the relationship between tactile perception and fine motor performance. While Mott and Sherrington (1895) demonstrated more than one hundred years ago that motor control of the hand relies on tactile inputs, only in recent decades has this relationship become the focus of research. The studies of this dissertation investigate this relationship through the dual lenses of expertise and central tactile suppression, or reductions in tactile sensitivity arising when the central nervous system plans and executes movement. Central suppression levels can modulate from cognitive processes, such as prediction and processing of relevance. Across the three studies comprising this dissertation, the general hypothesis was that less central tactile suppression would be beneficial to fine motor performance, both in experts and novices. Study 1 tested this relationship in young experts and novices (18-29 years). While experts showed greater tactile sensitivity than novices, only novices and the overall sample showed a relationship between less central tactile suppression and better fine motor performance. Study 2 added older expert and novice samples (30-60 years), testing whether older musicians’ ability to maintain fine motor skill related to their preservation of tactile perception. While older experts preserved fine motor skill and tactile perception from age-related decline, a relationship between fine motor skill and tactile suppression was again only found in older novices and the overall sample. Study 3 added expertise-specific tasks to the tactile perception test, examining whether a relationship between fine motor performance and tactile suppression would emerge in experts when tactile perception was tested in an expert-level task. We found a significant relationship in experts between fine motor performance and tactile suppression during expert-level task performance, confirming this hypothesis. Together, the three studies of this dissertation indicate that less central tactile suppression is beneficial to fine motor performance in both experts and novices. Evidence for this functional relationship opens the door to numerous, potential applications by clinicians, pedagogues and performers of all levels.
Author: Tom, Julia
Language: English
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7204016451
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