Eyes robustly blink to musical beats like tapping

Abstract

Auditory-motor synchronization with musical rhythm may extend beyond overt body movements like fingers, hands, or feet. In four experiments with 123 young non-musicians, we demonstrated that spontaneous eye blinks can robustly track musical beats. Participants listened to Bach chorales with regular beat rates while their eye movements were monitored. The blinking rate consistently aligned with the beat rate across various tempi and independent of melodic cues. Blinking showed selective tuning to different beat phases, with inhibition immediately before beat onset and increased blinking afterward. EEG recordings revealed a dynamic correspondence between blink and neural beat tracking. Mechanistically, this synchronization reflects dynamic auditory attention and temporal modulation of visual sampling. Our findings introduce ‘eye tapping,’ where eye blinks track musical beats, expanding the behavioral repertoire of auditory-motor synchronization during music listening. This highlights the intricate relationship between music perception and peripheral oculomotor activity, enriching our understanding of cross-modal active sensing.