Many musicians rely on their hands for their livelihood and sometimes suffer the dreaded “ceiling effect,” where progress plateaus despite extensive practice or training.
To address this challenge, researchers have developed an innovative exoskeleton designed to help professionals overcome the natural limitations they often experience.
A recent study outlines how the exoskeleton passively moves pianists’ fingers on one hand faster than musicians can do with their other hand. Remarkably, after removing the device, the pianists demonstrated faster keystrokes with the newly ‘trained’ hand.
The research team behind the study also observed an unexpected benefit: the apparent improvement of motor skills in their untrained hand, which had not been subjected to robotic enhancement.
“As a control experiment, we asked another group of pianists to practice the target task on the piano. However, there was no improvement in the skill due to the ceiling effect of the skill,” lead researcher Shinichi Furuya, from Kabushiki Kaisha Sony Computer Science Kenkyujo, explained to The Debrief via email.
“We also examined that after the active practice for two weeks and the trained skill reached its ‘ceiling,’ the passive training further improved the skill, which suggests different learning mechanisms between the active and passive ones,” he added.
“For the neuroplasticity, we examined it by non-invasive brain stimulation (i.e., transcranial magnetic stimulation), but for another control group (i.e., passive training with a simple pattern of fast multi-finger movements), but not for the active-practice group,” Furuya said.
Using fast, passive hand movements as a training tool appears to hold promise for helping musicians overcome learning roadblocks. While previous studies have shown that robot-assisted passive limb movements can enhance basic motor skills, this research is the first to demonstrate the potential for such training to push musicians past their performance limits.
The Study
Furuya and his team worked with 118 trained pianists, conducting multiple experiments using a newly designed robotic device capable of independently moving fingers. Initially, participants practiced playing the piano at home for two weeks until their performance ability plateaued.
Following this phase, they underwent 30 minutes of passive training with the exoskeleton training device, which generated either fast or slow finger movements on their right hand in a complex or straightforward pattern.
Immediately after using the exoskeleton, the researchers assessed the participants’ performance. They conducted another evaluation the following day to measure retention. Pianists who passively experienced fast, complex movements demonstrated faster play with both hands and improved muscle coordination in their trained hands.
“We believe that this training will result in enhanced exploration of movements in piano practice, which will further augment creativity,” said Furuya. “This is because pianists can play faster after the training, which gives a unique opportunity for pianists to explore more musical expression than they could before the training.”
To further investigate, the researchers stimulated parts of the motor cortex to activate movements before and after the training. The findings revealed that only those who trained with the exoskeleton exhibited changes in movement patterns, indicating that passive training facilitates neuroplastic changes in the brain.
Untrained Hand Gains and Neuroplastic Insights
Interestingly, researchers observed improved motor skills in the participants’ untrained hands. While the exact mechanism behind this inter-manual transfer effect remains unclear, Furuya suggests it may involve higher brain regions.
“We couldn’t find any direct evidence explaining this inter-manual transfer effect using the non-invasive brain stimulation targeting the primary motor cortex,” he noted. “The observed inter-manual transfer effect is likely to be associated with neuroplastic changes in some ‘higher’ brain regions, such as the supplementary motor cortex responsible for this transfer.”
Furuya elaborated, “One significance of this observation of the inter-manual transfer is that the present passive training seemed to occur in the nervous system, not in the musculoskeletal system. Our interpretation is that the passive training enabled pianists to imagine ‘how to move the fingers’ precisely. For such an imagery-based learning, somatosensory information seems to play a crucial role, offering a new perspective on motor learning.”
Furuya also emphasized the importance of consent when using robotic technology to replicate one’s natural movements.
“If we experience someone’s movements by the robot, we should not do it without any permission of this person,” Furuya warned.
Furuya and his team’s study, “Surmounting the ceiling effect of motor expertise by novel sensory experience with a hand exoskeleton,” appeared in Science on January 15, 2025.
Chrissy Newton is a PR professional and founder of VOCAB Communications. She hosts the Rebelliously Curious podcast, which can be found on The Debrief’s YouTube Channel. Follow her on X: @ChrissyNewton and at chrissynewton.com.