Abstract
Our aim was to address three characteristics of task-specific tremor in musicians (TSTM): First, we quantified muscular activity of flexor and extensor muscles, of coactivation as well as tremor acceleration. Second, we compared muscular activity between task-dependent and position-dependent tremor. Third, we investigated, whether there is an overflow of muscular activity to muscles adjacent to the affected muscles in TSTM. Tremor acceleration and muscular activity were measured in the affected muscles and the muscles adjacent to the affected muscles in 22 patients aged 51.5 ± 11.4 years with a task-specific tremor. We assessed power of muscular oscillatory activity and calculated the coherence between EMG activity of affected muscles and tremor acceleration as well as between adjacent muscles and tremor acceleration. This was done for task-dependent and position-dependent tremor. We found the highest power and coherence of muscular oscillatory activity in the frequency range of 3–8 Hz for affected and adjacent muscles. No difference was found between task-dependent and position-dependent tremor in neither power nor coherence measures. Our results generalize previous results of a relation between coactivation and tremor among a variety of musicians. Furthermore, we found coherence of adjacent muscles and TSTM. This indicates that overflow exists in TSTM and suggests an association of TST with dystonia.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Ariga Y, Pham HTT, Uemura M, et al. (2012) Novel equilibrium-point control of agonist-antagonist system with pneumatic artificial muscles. IEEE 1470–1475
Bain PG (2011) Task-specific tremor. Handb Clin Neurol 100:711–718. doi:10.1016/B978-0-444-52014-2.00050-1
Bain PG, Findley LJ, Britton TC et al (1995) Primary writing tremor. Brain 118(Pt 6):1461–1472
Berardelli A, Rothwell JC, Hallett M et al (1998) The pathophysiology of primary dystonia. Brain 121(Pt 7):1195–1212
Berg D, Preibisch C, Hofmann E, Naumann M (2000) Cerebral activation pattern in primary writing tremor. J Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatr 69:780–786
Byrnes ML, Mastaglia FL, Walters SE et al (2005) Primary writing tremor: motor cortex reorganisation and disinhibition. J Clin Neurosci 12:102–104. doi:10.1016/j.jocn.2004.08.004
Chen R, Wassermann EM, Caños M, Hallett M (1997) Impaired inhibition in writer’s cramp during voluntary muscle activation. Neurology 49:1054–1059
Cohen LG, Hallett M (1988) Hand cramps: clinical features and electromyographic patterns in a focal dystonia. Neurology 38:1005–1012
Daneault J-F, Carignan B, Duval C (2011) Finger tremor can be voluntarily reduced during a tracking task. Brain Res 1370:164–174. doi:10.1016/j.brainres.2010.11.047
Deuschl G, Bergman H (2002) Pathophysiology of nonparkinsonian tremors. Mov Disord 17(Suppl 3):S41–S48
Deuschl G, Bain P, Brin M (1998) Consensus statement of the Movement Disorder Society on Tremor. Ad Hoc Scientific Committee. Mov Disord 13(Suppl 3):2–23
Deuschl G, Raethjen J, Lindemann M, Krack P (2001) The pathophysiology of tremor. Muscle Nerve 24:716–735
Dresel C, Li Y, Wilzeck V et al (2014) Multiple changes of functional connectivity between sensorimotor areas in focal hand dystonia. J Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry. doi:10.1136/jnnp-2013-307127
Elble RJ (1996) Central mechanisms of tremor. J Clin Neurophysiol 13:133–144
Elble R, Deuschl G (2011) Milestones in tremor research. Mov Disord 26:1096–1105. doi:10.1002/mds.23579
Elble RJ, Moody C, Higgins C (1990) Primary writing tremor. A form of focal dystonia? Mov Disord 5:118–126. doi:10.1002/mds.870050205
Espay AJ, Morgante F, Purzner J et al (2006) Cortical and spinal abnormalities in psychogenic dystonia. Ann Neurol 59:825–834. doi:10.1002/ana.20837
Farmer SF, Bremner FD, Halliday DM et al (1993) The frequency content of common synaptic inputs to motoneurones studied during voluntary isometric contraction in man. J Physiol (Lond) 470:127–155
Furuya S, Altenmüller E (2013) Finger-specific loss of independent control of movements in musicians with focal dystonia. Neuroscience 247:152–163. doi:10.1016/j.neuroscience.2013.05.025
Furuya S, Aoki T, Nakahara H, Kinoshita H (2012) Individual differences in the biomechanical effect of loudness and tempo on upper-limb movements during repetitive piano keystrokes. Hum Mov Sci 31:26–39. doi:10.1016/j.humov.2011.01.002
Gironell A, Kulisevsky J (2009) Diagnosis and management of essential tremor and dystonic tremor. Ther Adv Neurol Disord 2:215–222. doi:10.1177/1756285609104791
Haslinger B, Altenmüller E, Castrop F et al (2010) Sensorimotor overactivity as a pathophysiologic trait of embouchure dystonia. Neurology 74:1790–1797. doi:10.1212/WNL.0b013e3181e0f784
Inoue K, Iimura T, Oku T et al (2011) An experimental study of muscle coordination and function during human locomotion. BIO Web Conf 1:00040. doi:10.1051/bioconf/20110100040
Lakie M, Vernooij CA, Osborne TM, Reynolds RF (2012) The resonant component of human physiological hand tremor is altered by slow voluntary movements. J Physiol (Lond) 590:2471–2483. doi:10.1113/jphysiol.2011.226449
Lederman RJ (2010) The tremulous bow arm: technical or neurological?
Lederman RJ (2012) Primary bowing tremor: a task-specific movement disorder of string instrumentalists. Med Probl Perform Art 27:219–223
Lee A, Altenmüller E (2012) Primary task-specific tremor: an entity of its own? Med Probl Perform Art 27:224–226
Lee A, Chadde M, Altenmüller E, Schoonderwaldt E (2013a) Characteristics of Task-specific Tremor in String Instrument Players. Tremor Other Hyperkinet Move (NY) (in press)
Lee A, Tominaga K, Furuya S et al (2013b) Task-specific tremor in violinists: evidence of coactivation in the 3 to 8 Hz frequency range. Mov Disord 28:1890–1892. doi:10.1002/mds.25569
Lee A, Schoonderwaldt E, Chadde M, Altenmüller E (2014a) Analysis of dystonic tremor in musicians using empirical mode decomposition. Clin Neurophysiol. doi:10.1016/j.clinph.2014.04.013
Lee A, Tominaga K, Furuya S et al (2014b) Coherence of coactivation and acceleration in task-specific primary bowing tremor. J Neural Transm. doi:10.1007/s00702-014-1177-3 (Epub ahead of print)
Ljubisavljevic M, Kacar A, Milanovic S et al (2006) Changes in cortical inhibition during task-specific contractions in primary writing tremor patients. Mov Disord 21:855–859. doi:10.1002/mds.20807
McAuley J, Rothwell J (2004) Identification of psychogenic, dystonic, and other organic tremors by a coherence entrainment test. Mov Disord 19:253–267. doi:10.1002/mds.10707
McAuley JH, Rothwell JC, Marsden CD (1997) Frequency peaks of tremor, muscle vibration and electromyographic activity at 10 Hz, 20 Hz and 40 Hz during human finger muscle contraction may reflect rhythmicities of central neural firing. Exp Brain Res 114:525–541
Modugno N, Nakamura Y, Bestmann S et al (2002) Neurophysiological investigations in patients with primary writing tremor. Mov Disord 17:1336–1340. doi:10.1002/mds.10292
Odergren T, Stone-Elander S, Ingvar M (1998) Cerebral and cerebellar activation in correlation to the action-induced dystonia in writer’s cramp. Mov Disord 13:497–508. doi:10.1002/mds.870130321
Reynolds R, Lakie M (2010) Postmovement changes in the frequency and amplitude of physiological tremor despite unchanged neural output. J Neurophysiol 104:2020–2023. doi:10.1152/jn.00513.2010
Roberts K, Mahon B, O’Rourke K, Lynch T (2013) “Club-cutting” dystonic tremor: a case report. Tremor Other Hyperkinet Mov (N Y) 3
Rosenbaum F, Jankovic J (1988) Focal task-specific tremor and dystonia: categorization of occupational movement disorders. Neurology 38:522–527
Sohn YH, Hallett M (2004) Disturbed surround inhibition in focal hand dystonia. Ann Neurol 56:595–599. doi:10.1002/ana.20270
Torres-Russotto D, Perlmutter JS (2008) Task-specific dystonias. Ann N Y Acad Sci 1142:179–199. doi:10.1196/annals.1444.012
Van der Kamp W, Berardelli A, Rothwell JC et al (1989) Rapid elbow movements in patients with torsion dystonia. J Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatr 52:1043–1049
Conflict of interest
Authors declare no conflict of interest.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
A. Lee and K. Tominaga contributed equally to the work and are co-first authors.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Lee, A., Tominaga, K., Furuya, S. et al. Electrophysiological characteristics of task-specific tremor in 22 instrumentalists. J Neural Transm 122, 393–401 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00702-014-1275-2
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00702-014-1275-2