Spontaneous Motor Entrainment to Music in Multiple Vocal Mimicking Species

Schachner, Adena; Brady, Timothy F.; Pepperberg, Irene M.; Hauser, Marc D.

doi:10.1016/j.cub.2009.03.061

Cited by 289 publications

(275 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…More generally, these results, along with recent work on rhythmic entrainment in animals (40,41), suggest that a number of perceptual and motor mechanisms providing the biological bases for human music may be shared with some other species and call for a reevaluation of long-held assumptions about the species-specific nature and origin of human musical preferences.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 94%

Overtone-based pitch selection in hermit thrush song: Unexpected convergence with scale construction in human music

Doolittle

Gingras

Endres

et al. 2014

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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Many human musical scales, including the diatonic major scale prevalent in Western music, are built partially or entirely from intervals (ratios between adjacent frequencies) corresponding to small-integer proportions drawn from the harmonic series. Scientists have long debated the extent to which principles of scale generation in human music are biologically or culturally determined. Data from animal "song" may provide new insights into this discussion. Here, by examining pitch relationships using both a simple linear regression model and a Bayesian generative model, we show that most songs of the hermit thrush (Catharus guttatus) favor simple frequency ratios derived from the harmonic (or overtone) series. Furthermore, we show that this frequency selection results not from physical constraints governing peripheral production mechanisms but from active selection at a central level. These data provide the most rigorous empirical evidence to date of a bird song that makes use of the same mathematical principles that underlie Western and many non-Western musical scales, demonstrating surprising convergence between human and animal "song cultures." Although there is no evidence that the songs of most bird species follow the overtone series, our findings add to a small but growing body of research showing that a preference for small-integer frequency ratios is not unique to humans. These findings thus have important implications for current debates about the origins of human musical systems and may call for a reevaluation of existing theories of musical consonance based on specific human vocal characteristics. music | birdsong | overtones M any human musical scales, including the diatonic major scale prevalent in Western music, are built partially or entirely from intervals (ratios between adjacent frequencies) corresponding to small-integer ratios drawn from the harmonic series (1). A long-running debate concerns the extent to which principles underlying the structure of human musical scales derive from biological aspects of auditory perception and/or vocal production or are historical cultural "accidents" (2-4). The songs of nonhuman animals, such as birds or whales, potentially offer a valuable perspective on this debate. On the one hand, features of human music that are culturally bound, or dependent on specific characteristics of the human voice or auditory system, should be absent in animal vocalizations. On the other hand, aspects of human music observed in the vocalizations of other species seem likely to be partially determined by general physical or biological constraints rather than solely by cultural practices. Such shared features would complement recent research suggesting that common motor constraints shape both human song and that of some bird species (5).The physical principles underlying vocal production in songbirds are well understood (6-10) and do not differ fundamentally from those of other vertebrates. Sound is produced by tissue vibrations in the syrinx, a bird-specific organ located at the b...

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 94%

Overtone-based pitch selection in hermit thrush song: Unexpected convergence with scale construction in human music

Doolittle

Gingras

Endres

et al. 2014

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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“…Although a recent study reported this ability in a variety of non-human species (Schachner et al, 2009), animals display a very limited form of the behavior. In contrast it is particularly easy for humans to achieve average synchronization to a metronome and this forms the basis of all music and dance.…”

Section: Sensorimotor Synchronizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Small perturbations in a finger-tapping task reveal inherent nonlinearities of the underlying error correction mechanism

Bavassi

Tagliazucchi

Laje

2013

Human Movement Science

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Time estimation is critical for survival and control of a variety of behaviors, both in humans and other animals. Time processing in the few hundred milliseconds range, known as millisecond timing, is involved in motor control, speech generation and recognition, and sensorimotor synchronization like playing music or finger tapping to an external beat. In finger tapping, a mechanistic explanation in terms of neuronal activations of how the brain achieves average synchronization against inherent noise and perturbations in the stimulus sequence is still missing despite considerable research. In this work we show that nonlinear effects are important for the recovery of synchronization following a perturbation (a step change in stimulus period), even for perturbation magnitudes smaller than 10% of the period, which is well below the amount of perturbation needed to display other nonlinear effects like saturation. We build a mathematical model for the error correction mechanism and test its predictions, and further propose a framework that allows us to unify the description of the three common types of perturbations and all perturbation magnitudes with a single set of parameter values. While previous works have proposed that multiple mechanisms/strategies are used for correcting different perturbation conditions (based on fitting the model's parameters separately to different perturbation types and sizes), our results suggest that the synchronization behavior can be interpreted as the outcome of a single mechanism/strategy, and call for a revision of the idea of multiple strategies.

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“…Many nonhuman animals have been found to use auditory periodicities to entrain their motor behavior to an underlying beat (Schachner, Brady, Pepperberg, & Hauser, 2009). What is the effect of auditory temporal regularities on humans?…”

Section: Abstract: Attention Entrainment Rhythm Memory Word Memorymentioning

confidence: 99%

Entrainment to an auditory signal: Is attention involved?

Kunert¹,

Jongman²

2017

Journal of Experimental Psychology: General

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Many natural auditory signals, including music and language, change periodically. The effect of such auditory rhythms on the brain is unclear however. One widely held view, dynamic attending theory, proposes that the attentional system entrains to the rhythm and increases attention at moments of rhythmic salience. In support, 2 experiments reported here show reduced response times to visual letter strings shown at auditory rhythm peaks, compared with rhythm troughs. However, we argue that an account invoking the entrainment of general attention should further predict rhythm entrainment to also influence memory for visual stimuli. In 2 pseudoword memory experiments we find evidence against this prediction. Whether a pseudoword is shown during an auditory rhythm peak or not is irrelevant for its later recognition memory in silence. Other attention manipulations, dividing attention and focusing attention, did result in a memory effect. This raises doubts about the suggested attentional nature of rhythm entrainment. We interpret our findings as support for auditory rhythm perception being based on auditory-motor entrainment, not general attention entrainment. Keywords: attention, entrainment, rhythm, memory, word memorySupplemental materials: http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/xge0000246.suppMany natural auditory signals change periodically, such as cricket chirps, bird song, and human speech and music. Many nonhuman animals have been found to use auditory periodicities to entrain their motor behavior to an underlying beat (Schachner, Brady, Pepperberg, & Hauser, 2009). What is the effect of auditory temporal regularities on humans? One widely influential theory suggests that the fluctuations inherent in "attentional energy" are affected. According to this dynamic attending theory (DAT; Jones, Boltz, & Kidd, 1982;Large & Jones, 1999), rhythmic perceptual input leads to the optimal allocation of attention: attentional fluctuations peak at the right moment when important input is expected. These attentional dynamics are crucial for music (Jones & Boltz, 1989) and speech comprehension (Pitt & Samuel, 1990). In the present experiments we investigate whether an auditory rhythm indeed affects attention, an effect which should be visible on a variety of tasks. To foreshadow our results, we find an effect for entrainment during immediate judgment tasks, but no effect for memory tasks. These findings suggest that auditory entrainment is actually quite limited. We propose that rhythmic entrainment may not affect general attention as suggested by the dominant interpretation of DAT, but instead results from auditory-motor entrainment.The DAT has been very influential as evidenced by more than 800 citations for two key papers each (per a Google Scholar search in March 2016; Jones & Boltz, 1989;Large & Jones, 1999). One behavioral demonstration of auditory entrainment is reported by Bolger, Trost, & Schön (2013). They asked participants to listen to a simple rhythm while performing a simple visual judgment task in which participants are a...

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Spontaneous Motor Entrainment to Music in Multiple Vocal Mimicking Species

Cited by 289 publications

References 24 publications

Overtone-based pitch selection in hermit thrush song: Unexpected convergence with scale construction in human music

Overtone-based pitch selection in hermit thrush song: Unexpected convergence with scale construction in human music

Small perturbations in a finger-tapping task reveal inherent nonlinearities of the underlying error correction mechanism

Entrainment to an auditory signal: Is attention involved?

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