musical beat perception

Introduction

Moving in synchrony to a musical beat encompasses:
- beat perception and extraction
  - beat perception and production do not depend on musical training or music genre, and atypical beat synchronization is not linked to lack of music exposure
- motor periodicity
- metre perception
- auditory–motor entrainment
the cerebellum in particular plays important roles in the control of coordinated movement, balance, respiration, dance and even rhythm perception during passive listening to music
‘beat gestures’ in speech involve the cerebellum and are inextricably linked to respiration, upper limb movement and postural control, all of which may be biomechanically related to tapping or clapping to music

Beat perception

ie. how well can one clap to a beat?
there appear to be 69 separate genomic loci that relate to beat perception in a large Caucasian 2022 genomic study and this seems to show: ¹⁾
- ability to perceive beat appears to correlate with:
  - improved early childhood development
  - breathing:
    - pleiotropic effects between beat synchronization and several breathing-related phenotypes (peak expiratory flow, forced vital capacity, forced expiratory volume and shortness of breath)
    - more accurate beat synchronization task performance was related to a lower likelihood of shortness of breath
  - greater grip strength
  - faster walking pace
  - faster cognitive processing speed (faster perceptual motor speed)
  - less insomnia
  - evening chronotype trait
  - tinnitus trait
  - higher heart rate variability
  - reduced ageing traits
  - greater heaviness of smoking
- the top-associated locus (rs848293) was mapped at chromosome 2 close to VRK2, a gene previously associated with behavioural and psychiatric phenotypes (that is, depression, schizophrenia and developmental delay), suggesting a biological connection between beat synchronization and neurodevelopment.
- another strongly associated locus at chromosome 17 (rs4792891) included the Microtubule Associated Protein Tau (MAPT) gene, a locus associated with Parkinson’s disease
- the Mitogen-Activated Protein Kinase 3 (MAPK3) gene at 16p11.2, a region known to harbour rare variants that influence neurodevelopmental disorders and language-related phenotypes, was also strongly implicated

¹⁾

Nature 2022