Abstract
Our daily lives are filled with rhythmic movements, such as walking, sports, and dancing, but the mechanisms by which the brain controls rhythmic movements are poorly understood. In this review, we examine the literature on neuropsychological studies of patients with focal brain lesions, and functional brain imaging studies primarily using finger-tapping tasks. These studies suggest a close connection between sensory and motor processing of rhythm, with no apparent distinction between the two functions. Thus, we conducted two functional brain imaging studies to survey the rhythm representations relatively independent of sensory and motor functions. First, we determined brain activations related to rhythm processing in a sensory modality-independent manner. Second, we examined body part-independent brain activation related to rhythm reproduction. Based on previous literature, we discuss how brain areas contribute rhythmic motor control. Furthermore, we also discuss the mechanisms by which the brain controls rhythmic movements.
Highlights
As Fraisse (1984) highlighted, rhythm is difficult to define, but in general, rhythm refers to the ordered chronological patterns perceived between events [1]
The authors found that patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD) showed both less accuracy and greater variability in response intervals when performing repetitive wrist rotation at 2 and 2.5 Hz compared to healthy controls; these results suggest that the basal ganglia are involved in controlling rhythmic movements on a millisecond scale
Our results are consistent with the involvement in sensory input of rhythm, regardless of sensory modalities such as visual, auditory, and tactile [14,46]. These results suggest that the cerebellum plays a crucial role in the storage of absolute durations in rhythm sequence in a multimodal manner
Summary
As Fraisse (1984) highlighted, rhythm is difficult to define, but in general, rhythm refers to the ordered chronological patterns perceived between events (e.g., sounds and sounds) [1]. Many researchers have attempted to elucidate the neural mechanisms that underlie rhythmic motor control Most of these studies are psychophysical studies that use two kinds of finger-tapping task for humans; one is the “rhythm synchronization task” in which the participants are required to tap their finger synchronously with external/sensory cues, and the another is the “rhythm reproduction task”, in which the participants memorize a specific rhythmic pattern and reproduce it by tapping. These tasks have been used to elucidate the characteristics of rhythm information processing in humans. We subsequently discuss how each brain region contributes to the control of rhythmic movements
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