Born to dance but beat deaf: A new form of congenital amusia

doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2011.02.002

Neuropsychologia

Volume 49, Issue 5, April 2011, Pages 961-969

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2011.02.002 Get rights and content

Abstract

Humans move to the beat of music. Despite the ubiquity and early emergence of this response, some individuals report being unable to feel the beat in music. We report a sample of people without special training, all of whom were proficient at perceiving and producing the musical beat with the exception of one case (“Mathieu”). Motion capture and psychophysical tests revealed that people synchronized full-body motion to music and detected when a model dancer was not in time with the music. In contrast, Mathieu failed to period- and phase-lock his movement to the beat of most music pieces, and failed to detect most asynchronies of the model dancer. Mathieu's near-normal synchronization with a metronome suggests that the deficit concerns beat finding in the context of music. These results point to time as having a distinct neurobiological origin from pitch in music processing.

Research highlights

▸ Almost everyone, but beat deaf individuals, can feel the beat in music and move in time to it. ▸ Novel motion capture and psychophysical techniques can measure dance. ▸ Musical time has a distinct neurobiological origin from pitch. ▸ Beat deafness presents a new form of congenital amusia related to time and not to pitch. ▸ Beat deafness may unlock a key principle specific to the human genotype. ▸ Strict periodicity might be unique to music.

Section snippets

Case history

Mathieu was discovered through a recruitment of subjects who felt they could not keep the beat in music, such as in clapping in time at a concert or dancing in a club. Mathieu was the only clear-cut case among volunteers who reported these problems. Despite a lifelong love of music and dancing, and musical training including lessons over several years in various instruments, voice, dance and choreography, Mathieu complained that he was unable to find the beat in music. Participation in music

Synchronization tasks

We studied full-body motion in time with a popular Merengue song, compared to motion with a metronome. The synchronization responses of Mathieu were compared to the performance of a group of adults with variable ages and musical backgrounds. In follow-up experiments, we tested whether the deficit was related to the type of body movement performed, the type of music presented, or the tempo. Synchronization is typically considered to be accurate when movements match with the musical beat in both

Detection task

Mathieu's disorder may arise from a perceptual or motor disorder, or from a failure of sensorimotor integration. In order to assess his beat perception abilities without associated action, we created a task that required no movement while similar in perceptual demands to the synchronization task. In this detection task, subjects watched 5 s video clips of the experimenter moving to the Merengue or to the metronome; viewers judged whether the dancer was “in time” with the auditory soundtrack. The

General discussion

Here we report the first case of beat deafness in a university student, Mathieu, who exhibits a remarkable difficulty to synchronize with music. Despite intact motor and auditory systems, Mathieu is “out of time” when he synchronizes his movements with most music; furthermore, he cannot detect normally whether someone else is moving in time with the same music. These deficiencies stand in sharp contrast with the precise synchronization of full-body motion of the general (untrained) population.

Acknowledgments

We wish to thank Mathieu for his collaboration, Frances Spidle for help with the figures and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on a previous draft. This work was supported by grants from Fonds de Recherche en Santé du Québec to JPS, from the Academy of Finland to PT, and from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, the Canada Institute of Health Research and a Canada Research Chair to IP and to CP.

References (52)

P. Bertelson
Ventroloquism: A case of crossmodal perceptual grouping
M. Di Pietro et al.
Amusia: Selective rhythm processing following left temporoparietal lesion in a professional musician with conduction aphasia
Brain and Language
(2003)
J.M. Foxton et al.
Rhythm deficits in ‘tone deafness’
Brain Cognition
(2006)
W. Fries et al.
Disturbance of rhythm sense following right hemisphere damage
Neuropsychologia
(1990)
J.A. Grahn et al.
Impairment of beat-based rhythm discrimination in Parkinson's disease
Cortex
(2009)
S. Kirschner et al.
Joint drumming: Social context facilitates synchronization in preschool children
Journal of Experimental Child Psychology
(2009)
E.W. Large et al.
Perceiving temporal regularity in music
Cognitive Science
(2002)
P. Loui et al.
Action-perception mismatch in tone-deafness
Current Biology
(2008)
B.H. Merker et al.
On the role and origin of isochrony in human rhythmic entrainment
Cortex
(2009)
A.D. Patel et al.
Experimental evidence for synchronization to a musical beat in a nonhuman animal
Current Biology
(2009)

I. Peretz et al.

Congenital amusia: A disorder of fine-grained pitch discrimination

Neuron

(2002)

I. Peretz et al.

The genetics of congenital amusia (tone deafness): A family-aggregation study

The American Journal of Human Genetics

(2007)

K. Petrini et al.

When knowing can replace seeing in audiovisual integration of actions

Cognition

(2009)

J. Phillips-Silver et al.

Vestibular influence on auditory metrical interpretation

Brain and Cognition

(2008)

A. Schachner et al.

Spontaneous motor entrainment to music in multiple vocal mimicking species

Current Biology

(2009)

F. Styns et al.

Walking on music

Human Movement Science

(2007)

L.J. Trainor et al.

The primal role of the vestibular system in determining musical rhythm

Cortex

(2009)

A. Vatakis et al.

Audiovisual synchrony perception for music, speech, and object actions

Brain Research

(2006)

S.J. Wilson et al.

Modelling rhythmic function in a musician post-stroke

Neuropsychologia

(2002)

J. Ayotte et al.

Congenital amusia: A group study of adults afflicted with a music-specific disorder

Brain

(2002)

W. Brown et al.

Dance reveals symmetry especially in young men

Nature

(2005)

J.L. Chen et al.

The role of auditory and premotor cortex in sensorimotor transformations

Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences

(2009)

C. Darwin

The descent of man and selection in relation to sex

(1871)

C. Drake et al.

Tapping in time with mechanically and expressively performed music

Music Perception

(2000)

Eerola, T., Luck, G., & Toiviainen, P. (2006). In: M. Baroni, A. R. Addessi, R. Caterina, M. Costa (Eds.), Proceedings...

J.M. Foxton et al.

Characterization of deficits in pitch perception underlying ‘tone deafness’

Brain

(2004)

Cited by (120)

Coordinated rhythms in animal species, including humans: Entrainment from bushcricket chorusing to the philharmonic orchestra
2023, Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews
Coordinated group displays featuring precise entrainment of rhythmic behavior between neighbors occur not only in human music, dance and drill, but in the acoustic or optical signaling of a number of species of arthropods and anurans. In this review we describe the mechanisms of phase resetting and phase and tempo adjustments that allow the periodic output of signaling individuals to be aligned in synchronized rhythmic group displays. These mechanisms are well described in some of the synchronizing arthropod species, in which conspecific signals reset an individual’s endogenous output oscillators in such a way that the joint rhythmic signals are locked in phase. Some of these species are capable of mutually adjusting both the phase and tempo of their rhythmic signaling, thereby achieving what is called perfect synchrony, a capacity which otherwise is found only in humans.
We discuss this disjoint phylogenetic distribution of inter-individual rhythmic entrainment in the context of the functions such entrainment might perform in the various species concerned, and the adaptive circumstances in which it might evolve.
Group dancing as the evolutionary origin of rhythmic entrainment in humans
2022, New Ideas in Psychology
Citation Excerpt :
Conditions like poor-pitch singing (Pfordresher & Brown, 2007) and congenital amusia (Dalla Bella, Giguère, & Peretz, 2009) demonstrate deficits in the ability to vocally imitate acoustic sequences without loss of the ability to process rhythm. Likewise, there is a phenomenon of “beat deafness” in which people have a deficit in entrainment to a beat but have relatively preserved pitch processing (Phillips-Silver et al., 2011). These dissociations are further evidence that the neural systems for vocal learning/imitation and entrainment are, at least in large part, distinct.
An ecologically-valid approach to the evolutionary origins of rhythmic entrainment in humans has to address not one but two key issues: first, the capacity to generate acoustic rhythms, and second, the ability to entrain body movements to them. Most research in this area has ignored the first issue altogether and has instead placed all of the emphasis on motor entrainment skills per se. But this begs the question of how auditory rhythms came to be generated in the first place. I discuss evolutionary models that explicitly link the mechanisms of body entrainment to the mechanisms of sound generation. The most plausible models are those in which these processes occur interactively and mutually through group dancing, employing not only visual and haptic cues for entrainment but percussive sounds generated through body movements, most especially locomotor movements. Body percussion during movement creates a link between motor and sensory components of interpersonal entrainment.
Comorbidity and cognitive overlap between developmental dyslexia and congenital amusia in children
2021, Neuropsychologia
Developmental dyslexia and congenital amusia are two specific neurodevelopmental disorders that affect reading and music perception, respectively. Similarities at perceptual, cognitive, and anatomical levels raise the possibility that a common factor is at play in their emergence, albeit in different domains. However, little consideration has been given to what extent they can co-occur. A first adult study suggested a 30% amusia rate in dyslexia and a 25% dyslexia rate in amusia (Couvignou et al., Cognitive Neuropsychology 2019). We present newly acquired data from 38 dyslexic and 38 typically developing children. These were assessed with literacy and phonological tests, as well as with three musical tests: the Montreal Battery of Evaluation of Musical Abilities, a pitch and time change detection task, and a singing task. Overall, about 34% of the dyslexic children were musically impaired, a proportion that is significantly higher than both the estimated 1.5–4% prevalence of congenital amusia in the general population and the rate of 5% observed within the control group. They were mostly affected in the pitch dimension, both in terms of perception and production. Correlations and prediction links were found between pitch processing skills and language measures after partialing out confounding factors. These findings are discussed with regard to cognitive and neural explanatory hypotheses of a comorbidity between dyslexia and amusia.
Spontaneous and stimulus-driven rhythmic behaviors in ADHD adults and controls
2020, Neuropsychologia
Citation Excerpt :
Supporting a dissociation between neural mechanisms that are critical for self-paced and synchronization tapping, lesions and brain-stimulation studies have shown that the cerebellum and premotor cortex are important for auditory-motor synchronization, but their impairment does not affect generation of self-paced rhythms (Kornysheva and Schubotz, 2011; Schwartze et al., 2016). In addition to motor regions, synchronization tasks also engage bilateral auditory cortex (Grahn and Rowe, 2009, Chen et al., 2008), and difficulties in synchronization are associated with deficits in low-level auditory encoding (Nozaradan et al., 2016; Tierney and Kraus, 2013) and in perception-action coupling (Palmer et al., 2014; Phillips-Silver et al., 2011; Repp and Su, 2013; Schwartze et al., 2016; Sowiński and Dalla Bella, 2013). In contrast, spontaneous self-paced tapping seems to depends more heavily on the basal ganglia, as patients with basal ganglia lesions show higher variability and a lack of isochrony in self-paced tapping, but nonetheless are able to synchronize accurately to a broad range of external rhythms (Schwartze et al., 2011).
Many aspects of human behavior are inherently rhythmic, requiring production of rhythmic motor actions as well as synchronizing to rhythms in the environment. It is well-established that individuals with ADHD exhibit deficits in temporal estimation and timing functions, which may impact their ability to accurately produce and interact with rhythmic stimuli. In the current study we seek to understand the specific aspects of rhythmic behavior that are implicated in ADHD. We specifically ask whether they are attributed to imprecision in the internal generation of rhythms or to reduced acuity in rhythm perception. We also test key predictions of the Preferred Period Hypothesis, which suggests that both perceptual and motor rhythmic behaviors are biased towards a specific personal ‘default’ tempo. To this end, we tested several aspects of rhythmic behavior and the correspondence between them, including spontaneous motor tempo (SMT), preferred auditory perceptual tempo (PPT) and synchronization-continuations tapping in a broad range of rhythms, from sub-second to supra-second intervals. Moreover, we evaluate the intra-subject consistency of rhythmic preferences, as a means for testing the reality and reliability of personal ‘default-rhythms’. We used a modified operational definition for assessing SMT and PPT, instructing participants to tap or calibrate the rhythms most comfortable for them to count along with, to avoid subjective interpretations of the task. Our results shed new light on the specific aspect of rhythmic deficits implicated in ADHD adults. We find that individuals with ADHD are primarily challenged in producing and maintaining isochronous self-generated motor rhythms, during both spontaneous and memory-paced tapping. However, they nonetheless exhibit good flexibility for synchronizing to a broad range of external rhythms, suggesting that auditory-motor entrainment for simple rhythms is preserved in ADHD, and that the presence of an external pacer allows overcoming their inherent difficulty in self-generating isochronous motor rhythms. In addition, both groups showed optimal memory-paced tapping for rhythms near their ‘counting-based’ SMT and PPT, which were slightly faster in the ADHD group. This is in line with the predictions of the Preferred Period Hypothesis, indicating that at least for this well-defined rhythmic behavior (i.e., counting), individuals tend to prefer similar time-scales in both motor production and perceptual evaluation.
Unravelling individual rhythmic abilities using machine learning
2024, Scientific Reports
Mobile version of the Battery for the Assessment of Auditory Sensorimotor and Timing Abilities (BAASTA): Implementation and adult norms
2024, Behavior Research Methods

View all citing articles on Scopus

View full text

Born to dance but beat deaf: A new form of congenital amusia

Abstract

Research highlights

Section snippets

Case history

Synchronization tasks

Detection task

General discussion

Acknowledgments

Brain and Language

Brain Cognition

Neuropsychologia

Cortex

Journal of Experimental Child Psychology

Cognitive Science

Current Biology

Cortex

Current Biology

Neuron

The American Journal of Human Genetics

Cognition

Brain and Cognition

Current Biology

Human Movement Science

Cortex

Brain Research

Neuropsychologia

Congenital amusia: A group study of adults afflicted with a music-specific disorder

Brain

Dance reveals symmetry especially in young men

Nature

The role of auditory and premotor cortex in sensorimotor transformations

Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences

The descent of man and selection in relation to sex

Tapping in time with mechanically and expressively performed music

Music Perception

Characterization of deficits in pitch perception underlying ‘tone deafness’

Brain