Project description
Virtual reality to alleviate music-related musculoskeletal disorders
Studies show a higher prevalence of musculoskeletal disorders in musicians than many other professions. This is attributed to the repetitive motor patterns under sustained abnormal and non-ergonomic static postures. The EU-funded TONE project aims to find a way to assist musicians in overcoming or managing these disorders. To do this they plan to develop an innovative tool that will help musicians develop preventative as well as effective pain-management strategies for task-specific musculoskeletal pain. This tool will apply virtual reality (VR) technology to provide corrective feedback in real-time to assist musicians as well as study its effects in combatting musculoskeletal pains.
Objective
Performing a musical instrument requires the coordination of repetitive motor patterns under sustained abnormal and non-ergonomic static postures. As a result, it exhibits one of the highest prevalence rates in work-related musculoskeletal disorders. The aim of project TONE is to develop and test with empirical research, an innovative tool that will assist musicians in developing preventive and pain-management strategies against task-specific musculoskeletal pain. This tool will comprise of a virtual mirror biofeedback system that will display musculo-postural parameters on a virtual character simulating in real time the movement of musicians during instrument performance. Corrective feedback will also be displayed in real time when abnormal musculo-postural activities are detected. In addition, a complementary VR game will be designed to be used with the biofeedback system to evaluate whether attentional distraction during instrument playing can be an effective intervention against pain. The effectiveness of the virtual mirror biofeedback tool and the VR game in preventing and/or reducing pain symptoms from abnormal musculo-skeletal activities executed during non-ergonomic postural activities (such as playing a musical instrument), will be assessed in experimental studies with healthy musicians, as well as with musicians suffering from acute or chronic pain. Thus, TONE will contribute new research findings that will help to better understand how pain in work-related musculoskeletal disorders manifests and how it can be treated. As work-related musculoskeletal disorders exert great cost on economy -- equal to 3.3% of EU GDP – it is rather imperative to develop and validate effective non-pharmacological treatment interventions. Project TONE aspires to provide a crucial step to that direction.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
- medical and health sciencesother medical sciences
- natural sciencescomputer and information sciencessoftwaresoftware applicationsvirtual reality
- humanitiesartsmusicology
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Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
MSCA-IF - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships (IF)Coordinator
1016 NICOSIA
Cyprus