Exercise helps musicians cope with the stress of performance: that is the implication of an ongoing study involving students at London's Royal College of Music, whose preliminary findings were presented to the British Association Festival of Science last month (September).

It is very common for musicians to take beta-blocking drugs (which slow down the heart rate) to help them cope with the physical manifes-tations of stage fright, which might otherwise impair performance. The RCM study aims to find out whether exercise training can achieve similar effects.

In the first of a three-year project, the researchers, from Bedford's De Montfort University, have focused on integrating physical activity into the students' lifestyle and assessing subsequent heart rate responses to simulated performance conditions.

So far the most interesting finding is that improved fitness is linked with greater heart reactivity during performance, suggesting an enhanced adaptation to performance stress.