Losing the beat: deficits in temporal coordination

Abstract

Tapping or clapping to an auditory beat, an easy task for most individuals, reveals precise temporal synchronization with auditory patterns such as music, even in the presence of temporal fluctuations. Most models of beat-tracking rely on the theoretical concept of pulse: a perceived regular beat generated by an internal oscillation that forms the foundation of entrainment abilities. Although tapping to the beat is a natural sensorimotor activity for most individuals, not everyone can track an auditory beat. Recently, the case of Mathieu was documented (Phillips-Silver et al. 2011 Neuropsychologia 49, 961–969. (doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2011.02.00210.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2011.02.002)). Mathieu presented himself as having difficulty following a beat and exhibited synchronization failures. We examined beat-tracking in normal control participants, Mathieu, and a second beat-deaf individual, who tapped with an auditory metronome in which unpredictable perturbations were introduced to disrupt entrainment. Both beat-deaf cases exhibited failures in error correction in response to the perturbation task while exhibiting normal spontaneous motor tempi (in the absence of an auditory stimulus), supporting a deficit specific to perception–action coupling. A damped harmonic oscillator model was applied to the temporal adaptation responses; the model's parameters of relaxation time and endogenous frequency accounted for differences between the beat-deaf cases as well as the control group individuals.

Individual Differences in Rhythm Skills: Links with Neural Consistency and Linguistic Ability

“…Surprisingly, however, people vary widely in their rhythmic proficiency. Moreover, certain rhythm skills seem to be dissociable: severe congenital disruption of synchronization ability can co-occur with preserved ability to discriminate rhythms, and vice-versa (Sowinski & Dalla Bella, 2013;Launay, Grube, & Stewart, 2013;Palmer, Lidji, & Peretz, 2015). Impaired synchronization to the beat of music can also co-exist with preserved synchronization to a metronome (Phillips-Silver et al, 2011).…”

BAASTA: Battery for the Assessment of Auditory Sensorimotor and Timing Abilities

“…Nevertheless, one aim of the test battery is to capture individual differences, which will allow identifying participants with rhythm deficits (e.g., beat deaf or poor synchronizers; e.g., Palmer et al, 2014;Sowiński & Dalla Bella, 2013). Variable performance in each task was determined by pinpointing those participants who deviated from the group average by at least 2 SD (cutoff score).…”

“…However, its drawback is that it makes comparisons across paradigms, studied using different tasks, and group samples rather arduous. In addition, regarding clinical applications, confining testing to a limited set of tasks may be particularly problematic when assessing the performance of patient populations (e.g., patients with Parkinson's disease, schizophrenia, or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder; Allman & Meck, 2011;Noreika, Falter, & Rubia, 2014) or beat deafness (e.g., Palmer, Lidji, & Peretz, 2014;Phillips-Silver et al, 2011;Sowiński & Dalla Bella, 2013). As deficits are sometimes limited to specific timing processes (e.g., Grahn & Brett, 2009;Merchant, Luciana, Hooper, Majestic, & Tuite, 2008;Sowiński & Dalla Bella, 2013;Spencer & Ivry, 2005), an approach based on a restricted set of tasks may indeed fail to pinpoint and circumscribe such impairment.…”

Communicative rhythms in brain and behaviour

“…She argues that investigation of movements of the speech articulators and also of the head and hands, during pauses can shed light on the relationship between prosodic structure and the articulatory planning processes involved in speech. A dynamical approach thus forms a common thread between research in production and perception of temporally structured events, modelling simple as well as complex acoustic signals [9,13], though it remains to be seen how close the links might be.…”

“…Finally, concluding the issue, Hawkins [3] connects the domains of speech [16,17,23 and music [5,6,11,13]. Commonalities and differences across the domains are identified, taking into account both the inherent structures of each domain, and the functions that they subserve.…”