A similarly impressive result came from a study of pianists.7 Professional pianists were recruited to learn and perform a musical piece, but half of the pianists trained by imagining playing the music and the other half trained by actually playing it. The group who imagined playing the piece not only improved their performance so that they were almost indistinguishable from those who actually played it, but they improved in all of the same ways as the actual players, in movement velocity, movement timing, and movement-anticipation patterns. Scholars point out that imaginary practice is
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