Abstract
Music is a curious example of a temporally patterned acoustic stimulus, and a compelling pan-cultural phenomenon. This review strives to bring some insights from decades of music psychology and sensorimotor synchronization (SMS) literature into the mainstream auditory domain, arguing that musical rhythm perception is shaped in important ways by temporal processing mechanisms in the brain. The feature that unites these disparate disciplines is an appreciation of the central importance of timing, sequencing, and anticipation. Perception of musical rhythms relies on an ability to form temporal predictions, a general feature of temporal processing that is equally relevant to auditory scene analysis, pattern detection, and speech perception. By bringing together findings from the music and auditory literature, we hope to inspire researchers to look beyond the conventions of their respective fields and consider the cross-disciplinary implications of studying auditory temporal sequence processing.We begin by highlighting music as an interesting sound stimulus that may provide clues to how temporal patterning in sound drives perception. Next, we review the SMS literature and discuss possible neural substrates for the perception of, and synchronization to, musical beat. We then move away from music to explore the perceptual effects of rhythmic timing in pattern detection, auditory scene analysis, and speech perception. Finally, we review the neurophysiology of general timing processes that may underlie aspects of the perception of rhythmic patterns. We conclude with a brief summary and outlook for future research.
Highlights
Music is a curious example of a temporally patterned acoustic stimulus, and a compelling pan-cultural phenomenon
By presenting an overview of these diverse topics that likely rely on similar temporal encoding mechanisms, we hope that this review will provide an insightful point of departure for future investigations into auditory temporal sequence processing
We conclude by leaving the reader with an open question that we believe will be pivotal to advancing our understanding of temporal sequence processing, namely a mechanistic understanding of the entrainment of neural oscillations
Summary
The neurophysiology underlying beat perception will later be discussed at length, but a brief review of music psychology research into perceptual aspects of rhythmic timing will first offer a number of practical observations from which to embark on this investigation. These studies find that beat is generally perceived between 0.5 and 4 Hz, corresponding to time intervals of 250 ms to 2 s, a range beyond which precise coordination of motor movements becomes difficult (Repp, 2005; McAuley et al, 2006; Repp and Su, 2013) The preference or natural acceptance of binary meter could be due to a likeness of such meters to common rhythmic motor patterns such as breathing or walking
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