One of the most challenging issues among experts is how to improve motor skills that have already been highly trained. Recent studies have proposed importance of both genetic predisposition and accumulated amount of practice for standing at the top of fields of sports and performing arts. In contrast to the two factors, what is unexplored is how one practices impacts on experts’ expertise. Here, we show that training of active somatosensory function (active haptic training) enhances precise force control in the keystrokes and somatosensory functions specifically of expert pianists, but not of untrained individuals. By contrast, training that merely repeats the task with provision of error feedback, which is a typical training method, failed to improve the force control in the experts, but not in the untrained. These findings provide evidence that the limit of highly trained motor skills could be overcome by optimizing training methods.

专家中最具挑战性的问题之一是如何提高已经受过高度训练的运动技能。最近的研究表明，遗传素质和积累的练习量对于站在体育和表演艺术领域的顶端都很重要。与这两个因素相比，尚未探索的是一种做法如何影响专家的专业知识。在这里，我们展示了主动体感功能的训练（主动触觉训练）增强了击键和体感功能的精确力控制，特别是专家钢琴家，但不是未经训练的个人。相比之下，仅重复任务并提供错误反馈的训练（这是一种典型的训练方法）未能改善专家的力量控制，但未训练的人却没有。