Action expertise reduces brain activity for audiovisual matching actions: An fMRI study with expert drummers

When we observe someone perform a familiar action, we can usually predict what kind of sound that action will produce. Musical actions are over-experienced by musicians and not by non-musicians, and thus offer a unique way to examine how action expertise affects brain processes when the predictability of the produced sound is manipulated. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to scan 11 drummers and 11 age- and gender-matched novices who made judgments on point-light drumming movements presented with sound. In Experiment 1, sound was synchronized or desynchronized with drumming strikes, while in Experiment 2 sound was always synchronized, but the natural covariation between sound in…