ELTE Research Reveals the Complexity of the Sense of Rhythm

Being in sync with music is the result of a complex process, not just the brain’s automatic adaptation to rhythm, according to a recent study by researchers at Eötvös Loránd University’s Faculty of Education and Psychology (ELTE PPK), who examined what helps people keep time while playing music or dancing.

The intricate interplay between the human brain and the rhythm of music has long intrigued researchers. “In order to move with the music, our movements need to be coordinated with the rhythm, our brain needs to sense the repetitive, accentuated points of the music, to follow the ‘pulse’,” ELTE researchers wrote in a release presenting their work. How this is done is also the basis for being able to play, dance, or even just applaud together at a concert, they added.

They noted that

people are not all the same in their musical abilities: some can easily keep time, clap or drum accurately, while others find it harder.

The research so far suggests that a process called neural entrainment is at the root of the problem, and that the quality of this entrainment is a key determinant of the brain’s ability to synchronize with the rhythm.

Researchers from ELTE PPK – Maria de Lourdes Noboa, Csaba Kertész, and Ferenc Honbolygó – recently published a study in Nature Scientific Reports, investigating the extent to which neural entrainment to rhythmic patterns predicts synchronization ability in adults. To do this, they also looked at cognitive characteristics such as working memory and musical literacy.

The study used EEG to measure the brain activity of participants while they listened to short, rhythmic musical excerpts with no task. These included rhythms with regular accents that were not syncopated, as well as rhythms with incomplete syncopation. Participants were then asked to tap their fingers to a beat played by a metronome to assess their rhythmic skills. The researchers also tested participants’ short-term memory. They had already taken into account who had musical skills.

The results were surprising: those whose brains were better at following regular, accented rhythms performed more poorly on the tapping task, meaning they were less accurately and consistently synchronized to the beat.

In contrast, those with better working memory were able to tap more accurately and consistently.

Musical training was not found to be a determinant, suggesting that music learning does not necessarily develop rhythm synchronization skills and that one can be a musician with poor rhythm skills.

This suggests that being ‘in sync’ with music is the result of a complex process, not simply the brain’s automatic adaptation to rhythm. Over-adaptation to a strong beat can even reduce the flexibility of the timing of our movements. In contrast, good memory function seems to play a more important role in successful adaptation to rhythm than previously thought, they pointed out.

The research offers a new perspective for understanding the sense of rhythm and shows that it is a complex, cross-cutting ability.

As a sense of rhythm is often impaired in some developmental disorders, such as dyslexia, stuttering, and attention deficit, a deeper understanding of it may provide an opportunity to develop not only musical skills but also other related skills through targeted rhythm development, the researchers concluded.

Via elte.hu, Featured image: Pixabay