Neural correlates of planning and monitoring during music performance

In order to produce complex auditory sequences such as language and music quickly and accurately, performers engage in the planning of upcoming sequence events, as well as the monitoring of their productions via auditory feedback. We investigated neural correlates of performers’ planning and monitoring processes by presenting altered auditory feedback during a music performance task. Altered auditory feedback has previously been shown to disrupt performance, particularly when feedback contents match planned events. Pianists performed isochronous melodies from memory at a cued production rate while EEG was recorded. Pitch feedback heard by pianists was occasionally altered to match either an immediately upcoming Near Future pitch (next sequence event) or a more distant Far Future pitch (two events ahead of current event) in the sequence. The timing of pianists’ keypresses slowed down after Near – but not Far – Future feedback, suggesting greater interference of Near Future feedback with planning processes. Greater slowing was associated with a larger feedback-related negativity (FRN), which was elicited by both feedback types. Auditory sensory potentials elicited by the pitch event immediately following the altered auditory feedback were enhanced (increased N1/decreased P2) following Near Future feedback compared to Far Future feedback; these attention-related enhancements suggest that feedback monitoring is more influenced by the perception of auditory feedback that matches immediately upcoming sequence events compared to more distant events. Overall, findings support a role of planning in the performance of complex musical sequences, but suggest that planning occurs with limited scope