Elsevier

Neuropsychologia

Volume 94, 8 January 2017, Pages 129-138
Neuropsychologia

“Lost in time” but still moving to the beat

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2016.11.022Get rights and content

Highlights

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    Some people cannot perceive the rhythm of music but can still move to its beat.

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    They can process temporal regularity when they do not pay attention to the rhythm.

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    Implicit perception of rhythm may support motor synchronization to the beat.

Abstract

Motor synchronization to the beat of an auditory sequence (e.g., a metronome or music) is widespread in humans. However, some individuals show poor synchronization and impoverished beat perception. This condition, termed “beat deafness”, has been linked to a perceptual deficit in beat tracking. Here we present single-case evidence (L.A. and L.C.) that poor beat tracking does not have to entail poor synchronization. In a first Experiment, L.A., L.C., and a third case (L.V.) were submitted to the Battery for The Assessment of Auditory Sensorimotor and Timing Abilities (BAASTA), which includes both perceptual and sensorimotor tasks. Compared to a control group, L.A. and L.C. performed poorly on rhythm perception tasks, such as detecting time shifts in a regular sequence, or estimating whether a metronome is aligned to the beat of the music or not. Yet, they could tap to the beat of the same stimuli. L.V. showed impairments in both beat perception and tapping. In a second Experiment, we tested whether L.A., L.C., and L.V.’s perceptual deficits extend to an implicit timing task, in which they had to respond as fast as possible to a different target pitch after a sequence of standard tones. The three beat-deaf participants benefited similarly to controls from a regular temporal pattern in detecting the pitch target. The fact that synchronization to a beat can occur in the presence of poor perception shows that perception and action can dissociate in explicit timing tasks. Beat tracking afforded by implicit timing mechanisms is likely to support spared synchronization to the beat in some beat-deaf participants. This finding suggests that separate pathways may subserve beat perception depending on the explicit/implicit nature of a task in a sample of beat-deaf participants.

Section snippets

1. Introduction

One of the most compelling reactions to music is to move to its beat. Humans spontaneously or intentionally tend to clap their hands, sway their body, or tap their feet to the beat of music. Synchronizing movement to the beat (Repp, 2005, Repp and Su, 2013) involves the coordination of a discrete action with a sequence of rhythmic auditory events (e.g., tones of a metronome or musical beats). This complex activity is supported by a neuronal network, including areas devoted to tracking the

2.1.1. Cases histories

L.A., L.C., and L.V. were 21-year-old female university students recruited at the University of Montpellier. L.A. and L.V. had not received any musical training. L.C., in spite of the fact that she received 5 years of non-formal piano lessons, considers herself a non-musician. She practiced less than 1 h a week during her musical training, and has rarely played the piano in the last 7 years. L.V. complained about difficulties in finding the beat in music, especially while dancing, singing, or

3.1.1. Participants

The three beat-deaf participants tested in Exp. 1 (L.A., L.C. and L.V.) participated in Exp. 2. Five age-matched participants (3 females) who did not take part in Exp. 12 formed the control group (mean age: 25 years, SD: 3.39, range: 20–28).

3.1.2. Material and procedure

The implicit timing task is an adaptation of the classical temporal orienting

4. General discussion

Here we presented two cases of beat deafness (L.A. and L.C.) showing that poor beat perception can co-occur with spared synchronization to the beat. A third case (L.V.) displayed severe timing deficits encompassing perception and action. L.A. and L.C. showed poor perception of changes in regular auditory periodic sequences, or in judging whether a metronome is aligned or not to the beat of music. In spite of poor perception, however, they could tap to the beat of the same stimulus. To the best

Acknowledgments

We thank the Editor and two anonymous Reviewers for their constructive comments on a first draft of the manuscript. The study was supported by a grant from the European Community (EBRAMUS, 7th Framework Programme, grant agreement no. 238157) to SDB and SK, and by a Junior Grant from the Institut Universitaire de France to SDB. AC and DC are supported by the Junta de Andalucía (SEJ-3054) and FPU research grant.

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