Most research on bimanual rhythmic coordination has occurred with the participants in a seated posture. Many activities of daily living, however, require the interaction of standing postural and manual tasks. A population of individuals that are ideal for studying the integration of a manual task into the ongoing control of posture are expert marching percussionists; they have learned to produce rhythmic movements accurately under a variety of temporal and postural constraints. The purpose of the current study was to investigate the integration of bimanual rhythmic movements and posture in expert marching percussionists. Participants (N=11) were recruited from the University of Massachusetts Drumline, and were asked to perform three rhythmic tasks [1:1, 2:3, and 2:3-F (2:3 rhythm played faster at a self-selected tempo)] in one of three postures: sitting, standing on one foot, and standing on two feet. Discrete relative phase, postural time-to-contact, and coherence analysis, were used to analyze the performance of the manual task, postural control, and the integration between postural and manual performance. Across all three rhythms, discrete relative phase mean and variability (SD) results showed no effects of posture on rhythmic performance. The complexity of the manual task (1:1 vs 2:3) had no effect on postural time-to-contact. However, increasing the tempo of the manual task (2:3 vs. 2:3=F) did result in a decreased postural time-to-contact in the two-footed posture). Coherence analysis revealed that the coupling between the postural and manual task significantly decreased as a function of posture (going from a two footed to a one footed posture) and rhythmic complexity (1:1 vs. 2:3). Taken together, these results demonstrate that expert marching percussionists systematically decouple postural and manual fluctuations in order to preserve the performance of the rhythmic movement task.

Tourette’s is currently considered a neurodevelopmental genetic disorder. Georges Gilles de la Tourette is given primary credit for the diagnoses of the disorder in the late 1800s. Clear answers have been elusive although modern research and improvements to neuroimaging have enabled the causal factors of Tourette’s Disorder (TD) to be examined with greater scrutiny. Currently, there is no known cure or pharmaceutical treatment that has been proven 100% effective for all patients and symptoms of Tourette’s. Anecdotally, there have been recent media and self-reports of people diagnosed with Tourette’s finding relief from their symptoms through involvement in focus-based activities such as video games, athletic endeavors and musical engagement, albeit little empirical evidence exists on these subjects. The author is seeking empirical data showing the influence of musical engagement on the symptoms of Tourette’s. This research does not focus on the receptive activity of listening to music, but engagement. This performance-based music making or engagement can be described as the body being physically involved in the creation and production of music which comes from such activities as playing a musical instrument or singing. This study seeks to answer the question, “does musical engagement influence the symptoms of Tourette’s?” A self-reported survey instrument was generated to question those claiming to be musicians who have been diagnosed with TD to explore what effect engaging in a musical activity has on their symptoms. Participants’ responses to ten questions were analyzed. The survey apex involved a Likert-type scale asking to what extent these musicians experienced changes in their symptoms. One hundred eighty-three (N = 183) respondents rated their perceptions from one to five where one equaled drastic symptoms increase by engaging in a musical activity and five equaled drastic symptoms decrease. The mean response from the scale was 4.45, clearly showing that these musicians with TD experienced a great deal of relief when engaged in their activity. This study presents evidence and support for research into neurodevelopmental and musical training correlations and a strong case for childhood music education as a means to facilitate this training.

Dans un environnement en constant changement, les fonctions exécutives (FRE) nous permettent d'organiser l'information en provenance de sources multiples, de s'adapter à des situations sociales complexes et d'inhiber les comportements inappropriés. Les recherches sur le fonctionnement exécutif ont été initiées en neuropsychologie, après avoir observé chez des patients frontaux, des difficultés à organiser leurs comportements quotidiens sans pour autant présenter de difficultés de langage ou de mémoire. Un grand nombre de tests neuropsychologiques sont disponibles afin d'évaluer les FE. Cependant, ces tests sont souvent critiqués pour leur complexité et leur manque de validité de construction. Le champ des FE manque en réalité de modèles théoriques précis qui permettraient de décrire ces fonctions et leurs potentielles interactions pour le contrôle des comportements complexes. En conséquence, les tâches sont souvent construites de manière intuitive, dans le présent travail de thèse, après revue d'un état de l'art sur les FE (Ch1), je propose une nouvelle tâche, le spatial-tapping, qui pourrait être utilisée en remplacement des tâches classiques complexes (Ch2). Je promeus également le potentiel de cette tâche à être utilisée dans des contextes cliniques (Ch3). Je présente finalement comment les analyses réalisées pour le spatial-tapping afin d'étudier les FE peuvent être transférées à des situations motrices plus complexes, comme la coordination bi-manuelle (Ch4). En conclusion, les résultats présentés dans ce travail de thèse sont en faveur de l'idée selon laquelle notre organisation mentale reflète la manière dont on organise nos mouvements. / In a constant changing environment, executive abilities allow us to organize sensory information of multiple sources and to adapt to diverse stuations while at the same time inhibiting inappropriate behaviors. research on the executive functions (EFS) have historical roots on neuropsychology, with the description of frontal patients that were showing disruptions in organizing their daily behaviors independently of any impairment in memory, language or general intelligence. A wide range of neuropsychological tools is used today to evaluate executive abilities : tower of London for planning, go-no-go for inhibition, etc. However, the classical tasks often present methodological limitations and they lack of correpondence between process and behavior. Furthermore, the field lacks of a compelling theory that make links between the EFS themselves. The present PHD work was an attempt to propose a novel task to assess the EFS in the place of the classical batteries of neuropsychological tasks. After offering an overview of the EF literature and presenting simple motor tasks that seem to target similar EFS than those described in neuropsychology (Ch1), I present the spatial-tapping task as a challenging paradigm to understand the relationships between the different EFS (Ch2), and its potential to be used in clinical settings (Ch3). The I present how a similar approach can be used to investigate how EFS intervenes in the control of more complex motor sequences, E.G. bi-manual tasks (Ch4). Overall, the results presented here support an emboided perspective of cognition with mental organization reflecting the way one plans motor sequences for adaptive behavior.