What is the problem/issue being addressed?
Occupational musculoskeletal disorders (WMSD) are common in professions with repetitive motor activities and abnormal postures, causing non-specific pain symptoms. Playing a musical instrument is a profession with a high prevalence of musculoskeletal pain (Playing Related Musculoskeletal Disorder - PRMD), affecting 93% of professional musicians and 68% of amateurs. Musicians with PRMD often exhibit dysfunctions in their postural stabilization system, muscular over-activities, and body-side muscular asymmetries, contributing to pain manifestation. Project TONE is aiming to develop and empirically investigate an innovative tool aimed at assisting musicians in developing preventive and pain-management strategies against musculoskeletal pain specific to instrument playing.
Why is it important for society?
The anticipated outcome of Project TONE is to yield novel research findings, advancing our understanding of the mechanisms underlying pain manifestation in work-related musculoskeletal disorders and the efficacy of non-pharmacological interventions. Given the substantial economic burden of WRMSDs costing €476 billion annually, accounting for 3.3% of the European Union's Gross Domestic Product, the imperative to develop and validate effective intervention strategies becomes increasingly significant. Thus, Project TONE represents a valuable contribution to this scientific endeavor, aiming to enhance the knowledge base and address the challenges posed by musculoskeletal pain in musicians and related professions.
What are the overall objectives?
Overall objectives of the project are the development of a tool will consisting of a virtual mirror biofeedback system, capable of providing real-time displays of musculopostural parameters on a virtual character, replicating the movements of musicians during their instrument performances. Additionally, immediate corrective feedback will be delivered in response to the detection of abnormal musculo-postural activities. To complement this system, a Virtual Reality (VR) game will be designed to assess whether attentional distraction during instrument playing can serve as an effective intervention against pain in affected musicians.
