Rhythmic Tapping Research Articles

The Cerebellum and Implicit Sequencing: Evidence from Cerebellar Ataxia.

The cerebellum recognizes sequences from prior experiences and uses this information to generate internal models that predict future outcomes in a feedforward manner [Front Hum Neurosci 8: 475, 2014; Cortex 47: 137-44, 2011; Cerebellum 7: 611-5, 2008; J Neurosci 26: 9107-16, 2006]. This process has been well documented in the motor domain, but the cerebellum's role in cognitive sequencing, within the context of implicit versus explicit processes, is not well characterized. In this study, we tested individuals with cerebellar ataxia and healthy controls to clarify the role of the cerebellum sequencing using variations on implicit versus explicit and motor versus cognitive demands across five experiments. Converging results across these studies suggest that cerebellar feedforward mechanisms may be necessary for sequencing in the implicit domain only. In the ataxia group, rhythmic tapping, rate of motor learning, and implicit sequence learning were impaired. However, for cognitive sequencing that could be accomplished using explicit strategies, the cerebellar group performed normally, as though they shifted to extra-cerebellar mechanisms to compensate. For example, when cognitive and motor functions relied on cerebellar function simultaneously, the ataxia group's motor function was unaffected, in contrast to that of controls whose motor performance declined as a function of cognitive load. These findings indicated that the cerebellum is not critical for all forms of sequencing per se. Instead, it plays a fundamental role for sequencing within the implicit domain, whether functions are motor or cognitive. Moreover, individuals with cerebellar ataxia are generally able to compensate for cognitive sequencing when explicit strategies are available in order to preserve resources for motor function.

EFFECT OF MOTOR AND COGNITIVE DUAL TASK ON HAND FUNCTION IN PATIENTS WITH PARKINSON’S DISEASE

Amaç: Günlük yaşam aktiviteleri büyük çoğunlukla ikili görev (İG) performansı gerektirir. Parkinson hastalığında (PH) bireyin günlük yaşamdaki fonksiyonel durumu, motor ve bilişsel fonksiyon arasındaki etkileşimden etkilenebilir. Bu çalışmanın amacı, Parkinson hastalarında motor ve bilişsel İG’nin el fonksiyonuna etkisini incelemekti. Yöntem: Çalışmaya 50-80 yaş arası 33 PH ve benzer yaş ve cinsiyet dağılımına sahip 32 sağlıklı birey dahil edildi. El fonksiyonunu değerlendirmek için dokuz delikli peg testi (DDPT) kullanıldı. Motor İG, DDPT sırasında ayağın ritmik vurması ile, bilişsel İG ise, DDPT sırasında seri yedi çıkarma testi ile değerlendirildi. DDPT sonuçları tek görev, motor İG ve bilişsel İG altında saniye cinsinden kaydedildi. İG etkileşim yüzdesi hesaplandı. Ölçümler dominant ve dominant olmayan el için tekrarlandı. Sonuçlar: PH grubunda dominant ve dominant olmayan el fonksiyonunun hem motor hem de bilişsel İG sırasında kontrol grubuna göre daha fazla azaldığı görüldü (p<0,05). Her iki grupta da bilişsel İG’nin, el fonksiyonunu motor İG’den daha fazla azalttığı belirlendi (p<0,05). İG etkileşim yüzdeleri karşılaştırıldığında, motor İG etkileşimi açısından gruplar arasında anlamlı bir fark olmadığı (p>0,05); bilişsel İG etkileşim açısından ise PH grubunda etkileşimin kontrol grubuna göre daha fazla olduğu görüldü (p<0,05). Tartışma: PH olan bireylerin el fonksiyonu İG altında azalmaktadır. Bu azalma özellikle bilişsel İG sırasında daha fazladır. PH olan hastaların rehabilitasyon hedefleri arasında el fonksiyonu sırasında İG performansının artırılması da yer almalıdır. PH olan hastaların rehabilitasyon programına özellikle bilişsel görev içerikli İG’e yönelik egzersizlerin eklenmesi, el fonksiyonunu geliştirmede yararlı olabilir.

Lowered Rhythm Tapping Ability in Patients With Constructional Apraxia After Stroke.

Rhythm tapping tasks are often used to explore temporal reproduction abilities. Many studies utilizing rhythm tapping tasks are conducted to evaluate temporal processing abilities with neurological impairments and neurodegenerative disorders. Among sensorimotor and cognitive disorders, rhythm processing abilities in constructional apraxia, a deficit in achieving visuospatial constructional activities, has not been evaluated. This study aimed to examine the rhythm tapping ability of patients with constructional apraxia after a stroke. Twenty-four patients were divided into two groups: with and without constructional apraxia. There were 11 participants in the constructional apraxia group and 13 in the without constructional apraxia group. The synchronization-continuation paradigm was employed in which a person performs a synchronized tapping activity to a metronome beat and continues tapping after the beat has stopped. For statistical analysis, a three-way mixed analysis of variance (2 × 2 × 3) was conducted. The factors were groups (with and without constructional apraxia), tapping tasks (synchronization and continuation), and inter-stimulus intervals (600, 750, and 1000 ms). A significant effect of group factor was found (F[1,132] = 16.62; p < 0.001). Patients in the without constructional apraxia group were able to more accurately reproduce intervals than those in the constructional apraxia group. Moreover, a significant effect of tapping tasks was found (F[1,132] = 8.22; p < 0.01). Intervals were reproduced more accurately for synchronization tasks than continuation tasks. There was no significant inter-stimulus interval effect. Overall, these results suggest that there might be a relation between temporal and spatial reproductions in a wide spectrum of processing levels, from sensory perception to cognitive function.

Entropy-based analysis of rhythmic tapping for the quantitative assessment of cerebellar ataxia

The severity of appendicular ataxia is currently assessed by neurological specialists observing the motor deficits during the performance of bedside tests. These tests are traditionally restricted to discrete subjective scales and prescribed by constraints that may in turn affect the subject's performance. To overcome these limitations and facilitate uniform monitoring of cerebellar ataxia, an instrumented assessment system using a wearable sensor has been developed for the rhythmic finger and foot tapping tasks. Departing from the conventional obligation to spatiotemporal parameters that are described clinically, the proposed approach investigates features based on information theory to evaluate the variability of the tapping dynamics. From a clinical trial of 24 healthy subjects and 34 patients diagnosed with cerebellar ataxia (CA), the findings revealed not only are there more variations in movement patterns and timing of tapping events in CA but that movement complexity was also degraded across multiple entropy scales. The system using combined models of different features was able to achieve an average classification accuracy of 81% and 79% in finger and foot tapping respectively. The outcomes strongly agreed with the clinical scale widely-used for the assessment and rating of ataxia (SARA) to a correlation level of 0.71 (p < 0.001) in finger tapping and 0.59 (p < 0.001) in foot tapping.

Joint rhythmic tapping elicits distinct emotions depending on tap timing and prior musical training.

Music plays a significant role in human life. It is a form of art and entertainment and a powerful medium for interpersonal interaction. The experience of listening to music is often emotional. Previous research has elucidated many of the mechanisms that effect an emotional response in the listener. In contrast, much less is known about how joint musical engagement impacts emotions. Here we focus on synchronized rhythmic interaction, a fundamental feature of musical engagement. There are theoretical reasons for hypothesizing that synchronized interaction should elicit positive affect among interacting individuals, although empirical studies performed with adults have found little consistent evidence for such an effect. We revisited this question, studying children instead of adults, and used an implicit measure of experienced affect to compare children's responses to synchronized versus asynchronized joint tapping. Unlike previous studies, we distinguished between musically trained and untrained participants, because a background of musical training may be associated with altered emotional sensitivities to rhythmic interaction. We found a striking difference in emotional responses to synchronized versus asynchronized tapping, which strongly depended on musical training background. The untrained children responded to synchrony with more positive affect and less negative affect when compared to asynchrony, in line with theoretical predictions. In contrast, the musically trained children showed low positive affect following both synchrony and asynchrony and more negative affect in response to synchrony rather than asynchrony. These results suggest a possible emotional dissociation between synchronized and asynchronized interpersonal rhythmic interaction that may be influenced by musical training background. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Auditory entrainment of motor responses in older adults with and without Parkinson’s disease: An MEG study

Medical therapies applied to Parkinson’s disease (PD) have advanced tremendously since the 1960’s based on advances in our understanding of the underlying neurophysiology. Behavioral therapies, such as rhythmic auditory stimulation (RAS), have been developed more recently and demonstrated efficacy. However, the neural mechanisms of RAS are only vaguely understood. In this study, we examined the neurophysiology of RAS using magnetoencephalography (MEG) in a sample of older adults with (21 people) and without PD (23 participants). All participants underwent high-density MEG during a beat-based cued tapping task with rhythmic and non-rhythmic patterns, and the resulting data were analyzed using a Bayesian image reconstruction method. Complex wavelet based time-frequency decomposition was used to compute inter-trial phase locking factor (PLF) to auditory stimuli for left and right signal space projection vectors. Tapping with a rhythm compared to a non-rhythmic sequence resulted in differential brain activity in each group: (i) a greater activation of temporal, motor and parietal areas was found in healthy adults; (ii) a greater reliance on parietal and frontal gyri was found in PD participants. During rhythmic tapping, older adults without PD had significantly stronger neural activity in bilateral frontal, supplementary and primary motor areas compared to those with PD. Conversely, older adults with PD exhibited significantly stronger activity in the bilateral parietal regions, as well as the rolandic operculum and bilateral supramarginal gyri, relative to their healthy peers. These data suggest that RAS mobilizes diverse oscillatory networks; Healthy controls may shift to frontal areas mobilization whereas PD patients rely on parietal areas to a greater extent, which may reflect frontal network dysfunction with compensation in PD, and could serve as specific regions of interest for further RAS studies.

Tap your hand if you feel the beat: differential effects of tapping in melodic intonation therapy

ABSTRACT Background Melodic Intonation Therapy (MIT) is a structured, intensive therapy for recovery of verbal output in people with nonfluent, Broca’s type, aphasia. Stemming from the observation that people with nonfluent aphasia can sometimes sing fluently, MIT was developed with two distinctive “musical” features. The first is intonation of phrases, typically over a two-pitch interval, in a chant-like connected form. The second is pacing syllable initiation with a steady rhythmic tapping of the client’s hand on a table. Aims Research has suggested that people with aphasia may have a higher-than-typical prevalence of rhythm processing deficits. The present study investigates whether these deficits might affect therapeutic results from MIT. We hypothesized that a comparison of treatment with and without tapping would show positive treatment effects from the inclusion of tapping. We further hypothesized that the effect of tapping may be different, or even opposite, for people with rhythm processing deficits. Methods & Procedures The study included three participants who underwent treatment with MIT in two 5-week treatment blocks: one with tapping, and one without. Three sets of phrases were balanced for phonetic complexity, syntactic structure, and baseline performance. A set was assigned to each treatment condition, and the third set remained untrained. Spoken repetition ability across all sets was tested at baseline, between blocks, at the close of therapy, at 5-week follow up, and in probes each week throughout treatment. Propositional speech was also assessed at baseline and milestone testing points. Outcomes & Results Results showed that two participants who were assessed as having an intact ability to tap to the beat of music – intact entrainment – realized stronger treatment effects with rhythmic tapping. The third participant, who was assessed as having impaired entrainment, showed greater treatment effects from treatment without tapping. Conclusions These results suggest that testing individual MIT candidates for the ability to tap along to music, and modifying clinical treatment protocols accordingly, may result in greater therapeutic effectiveness of MIT for entrainment-impaired clients.

Tapping-lips aggravated interictal bilateral discharges in EEG in the patients with Rett syndrome: a case report

BackgroundRett syndrome (RTT) is a severe neurodevelopmental disorder mainly affecting females. One of the main clinical manifestations is hand stereotypies, which is presumed to based on dysfunction rather than on structural impairment. Reflex interictal discharge precipitated by tapping-lips in electroencephalogram (EEG) is a rare phenomenon among RTT.Case presentationWe firstly reported a case of RTT concerning interictal reflex discharge precipitated by tapping- lips. The child, female, 5 years old, presented with a significant regression in motor development and language skills. She almost always tapped the lips with the right hand and stopped only when was interrupted. Her EEG results displayed extensive low amplitude fast wave could be elicited by lightly and slowly- rhythm tapping lips and multifocal bilateral discharges could be precipitated by relatively stronger and quicker rhythm action. It was when the movement stopped that corresponding discharges immediately disappeared. Besides, the reflex discharges were not precipitated by tapping- lips using observer’s hand at the certain tempo and intensity. The hand stereotypies did not respond to antiepileptic drugs.ConclusionsTapping- lips may be a somatosensory stimulation to precipitate interictal discharges in RTT, which may provide another idea to enrich the insight on hand stereotypies of RTT.

Hybrid dynamics in a paired rhythmic synchronization–continuation task

Synchronization is a fundamental component of a musical ensemble. Recent advancements in behavioral time series analyses have produced increasing evidence of global coordination, matching in statistical structures of fluctuation in long timescales, separate from synchronization as local coordination. Previous studies have demonstrated that strong interactions in local timescales and interactions in multiple scales with weak local interactions can be sources of global coordination. However, knowledge of global coordination in human rhythmic movement is still limited. The present study investigated fluctuation and coordination dynamics for inter-tap intervals (ITI) in a paired rhythmic tapping task, imitating duo performances, from local to global timescales. In addition, we examined parameter dynamics for a coupled oscillator model to test whether the model could replicate the task dynamics and integrate sources of global coordination. Measured ITI series demonstrated globally coordinated hybrid dynamics: persistent fluctuation and positively correlated coordination in global scales and anti-persistent fluctuation and negatively correlated coordination in local scales. Positive lag ±1 and negative lag 0 local cross-correlation suggested that the global coordination was emerged from local mutual timing adjustment processes. The coupled oscillator model for the task replicated these dynamics. Moreover, the model could generate both types of global coordination, which emerged from strong and weak local interactions. These findings can help to improve knowledge of interpersonal coordination in musical ensembles, allowing a better understanding, for example, of the basis of temporal harmony and individual differences in the coordination of each pair and their source.

The amplitude in periodic neural state trajectories underlies the tempo of rhythmic tapping.

Our motor commands can be exquisitely timed according to the demands of the environment, and the ability to generate rhythms of different tempos is a hallmark of musical cognition. Yet, the neuronal underpinnings behind rhythmic tapping remain elusive. Here, we found that the activity of hundreds of primate medial premotor cortices (MPCs; pre-supplementary motor area [preSMA] and supplementary motor area [SMA]) neurons show a strong periodic pattern that becomes evident when their responses are projected into a state space using dimensionality reduction analysis. We show that different tapping tempos are encoded by circular trajectories that travelled at a constant speed but with different radii, and that this neuronal code is highly resilient to the number of participating neurons. Crucially, the changes in the amplitude of the oscillatory dynamics in neuronal state space are a signature of duration encoding during rhythmic timing, regardless of whether it is guided by an external metronome or is internally controlled and is not the result of repetitive motor commands. This dynamic state signal predicted the duration of the rhythmically produced intervals on a trial-by-trial basis. Furthermore, the increase in variability of the neural trajectories accounted for the scalar property, a hallmark feature of temporal processing across tasks and species. Finally, we found that the interval-dependent increments in the radius of periodic neural trajectories are the result of a larger number of neurons engaged in the production of longer intervals. Our results support the notion that rhythmic timing during tapping behaviors is encoded in the radial curvature of periodic MPC neural population trajectories.

Performing Healing: Repetition, Frequency, and Meaning Response in a Chol Maya Ritual

AbstractThis article explores the role that repetition plays in symbolic healing through a close examination of the speech patterns and actions performed by a healer in a Chol Maya ritual aimed at curing a woman of kisiñ—the “embarrassment‐sickness.” The authors examine the repetition of speech patterns in the healing chant and the frequency with which other paralinguistic elements, such as taps, co‐occur with the chant verses. The sound patterns generated during the ritual, specifically those created by the rhythmic tapping of the patient's body with a bough bouquet, are yet another form of repetition often overlooked in analyses of healing rituals, which have concentrated on other symbolic elements used by healers. It is argued that the repetition of phrases in parallel verses serves as metapragmatic commentary on the healing process as a restructuring of the patient's body, which has been unstructured by the disease.

The scalar property during isochronous tapping is disrupted by a D2-like agonist in the nonhuman primate.

Dopamine, and specifically the D2 system, has been implicated in timing tasks where the absolute duration of individual time intervals is encoded discretely, yet the role of D2 during beat perception and entrainment remains largely unknown. In this type of timing, a beat is perceived as the pulse that marks equally spaced points in time and, once extracted, produces the tendency in humans to entrain or synchronize their movements to it. Hence, beat-based timing is crucial for musical execution. In this study we investigated the effects of systemic injections of quinpirole (0.005-0.05 mg/kg), a D2-like agonist, on the isochronous rhythmic tapping of rhesus monkeys, a classical task for the study of beat entrainment. We compared the rhythmic timing accuracy, precision, and the asynchronies of the monkeys with or without the effects of quinpirole, as well as their reaction times in a control serial reaction time task (SRTT). The results showed a dose-dependent disruption in the scalar property of rhythmic timing due to quinpirole administration. Specifically, we found similar temporal variabilities as a function of the metronome tempo at the largest dose, instead of the increase in variability across durations that is characteristic of the timing Weber law. Notably, these effects were not due to alterations in the basic sensorimotor mechanism for tapping to a sequence of flashing stimuli, because quinpirole did not change the reaction time of the monkeys during SRTT. These findings support the notion of a key role of the D2 system in the rhythmic timing mechanism, especially in the control of temporal precision. NEW & NOTEWORTHY Perceiving and moving to the beat of music is a fundamental trait of musical cognition. We measured the effect of quinpirole, a D2-like agonist, on the precision and accuracy of rhythmic tapping to a metronome in two rhesus monkeys. Quinpirole produced a flattening of the temporal variability as a function of tempo duration, instead of the increase in variability across durations that is characteristic of the scalar property, a hallmark property of timing.

Rhythmic motor behaviour influences perception of visual time.

Temporal processing is fundamental for an accurate synchronization between motor behaviour and sensory processing. Here, we investigate how motor timing during rhythmic tapping influences perception of visual time. Participants listen to a sequence of four auditory tones played at 1 Hz and continue the sequence (without auditory stimulation) by tapping four times with their finger. During finger tapping, they are presented with an empty visual interval and are asked to judge its length compared to a previously internalized interval of 150 ms. The visual temporal estimates show non-monotonic changes locked to the finger tapping: perceived time is maximally expanded at halftime between the two consecutive finger taps, and maximally compressed near tap onsets. Importantly, the temporal dynamics of the perceptual time distortion scales linearly with the timing of the motor tapping, with maximal expansion always being anchored to the centre of the inter-tap interval. These results reveal an intrinsic coupling between distortion of perceptual time and production of self-timed motor rhythms, suggesting the existence of a timing mechanism that keeps perception and action accurately synchronized.

Supplemental Material for Joint Rhythmic Tapping Elicits Distinct Emotions Depending on Tap Timing and Prior Musical Training

Supplemental Material for Joint Rhythmic Tapping Elicits Distinct Emotions Depending on Tap Timing and Prior Musical Training

Quantitative Assessment of Cerebellar Ataxia With Kinematic Sensing During Rhythmic Tapping.

The aim of this study is to investigate the validity of an entropy-based objective assessment of cerebellar ataxia patients performing rhythmic tapping. Previous research conducted, particularly in time and frequency domains, tested the adherence of patients to more stringent experimental requirements. These requirements may inadvertently cause higher level brain functions to influence the performance and possibly obscure the cerebella related disabilities in the data stream. In this study, a multiscale entropy-based learning process that overcomes this practical limitation was considered. In particular, assessment techniques with less restrictions on the tapping duration were considered. Thirty-three patients were engaged in the test, with three levels of severity 0 (normal), 1 (moderate) and 2 (severe) ranked by specialist clinicians. The performance of each model was evaluated using leave-oneout cross validation. Results from both time-frequency features and entropy features extracted and characterized the cerebellar condition captured during the finger and foot tapping tests (with over 80% accuracy). Strong correlations with clinical assessment-based scoring were observed with the entropy based approach for both tests, although the correlation with timefrequency features were less convincing.

Predictive rhythmic tapping to isochronous and tempo changing metronomes in the nonhuman primate.

Beat entrainment is the ability to entrain one's movements to a perceived periodic stimulus, such as a metronome or a pulse in music. Humans have a capacity to predictively respond to a periodic pulse and to dynamically adjust their movement timing to match the varying music tempos. Previous studies have shown that monkeys share some of the human capabilities for rhythmic entrainment, such as tapping regularly at the period of isochronous stimuli. However, it is still unknown whether monkeys can predictively entrain to dynamic tempo changes like humans. To address this question, we trained monkeys in three tapping tasks and compared their rhythmic entrainment abilities with those of humans. We found that, when immediate feedback about the timing of each movement is provided, monkeys can predictively entrain to an isochronous beat, generating tapping movements in anticipation of the metronome pulse. This ability also generalized to a novel untrained tempo. Notably, macaques can modify their tapping tempo by predicting the beat changes of accelerating and decelerating visual metronomes in a manner similar to humans. Our findings support the notion that nonhuman primates share with humans the ability of temporal anticipation during tapping to isochronous and smoothly changing sequences of stimuli.

Musical Tasks and Energetic Arousal.

Music is widely recognized as a motivating stimulus. Investigators have examined the use of music to improve a variety of motivation-related outcomes; however, these studies have focused primarily on passive music listening rather than active participation in musical activities. To examine the influence of participation in musical tasks and unique participant characteristics on energetic arousal. We used a one-way Welch's ANOVA to examine the influence of musical participation (i.e., a non-musical control and four different musical task conditions) upon energetic arousal. In addition, ancillary analyses of participant characteristics including personality, age, gender, sleep, musical training, caffeine, nicotine, and alcohol revealed their possible influence upon pretest and posttest energetic arousal scores. Musical participation yielded a significant relationship with energetic arousal, F(4, 55.62) = 44.38, p = .000, estimated ω2 = 0.60. Games-Howell post hoc pairwise comparisons revealed statistically significant differences between five conditions. Descriptive statistics revealed expected differences between introverts' and extraverts' energetic arousal scores at the pretest, F(1, 115) = 6.80, p = .010, partial η2= .06; however, mean differences failed to reach significance at the posttest following musical task participation. No other measured participant characteristics yielded meaningful results. Passive tasks (i.e., listening to a story or song) were related to decreased energetic arousal, while active musical tasks (i.e., singing, rhythm tapping, and keyboard playing) were related to increased energetic arousal. Musical task participation appeared to have a differential effect for individuals with certain personality traits (i.e., extroverts and introverts).

Rhythm production at school entry as a predictor of poor reading and spelling at the end of first grade

Rhythm plays an organisational role in the prosody and phonology of language, and children with literacy difficulties have been found to demonstrate poor rhythmic perception. This study explored whether students’ performance on a simple rhythm task at school entry could serve as a predictor of whether they would face difficulties in word reading and spelling at the end of grade 1. The participants were 479 Norwegian 6-year-old first graders randomized as controls in the longitudinal RCT on track (n = 1171). Rhythmic timing and pre-reading skills were tested individually at school entry on a digital tablet. On the rhythm task, the students were told to tap a drum appearing on the screen to two different rhythms (2 Hz paced and 1.5 Hz paced). Children’s responses were recorded as they tapped on the screen with their index finger. Significant group differences were found in rhythm tapping ability measured at school entry, when groups were defined upon whether children went on to score above or below the 20th percentile reading and spelling thresholds in national assessment tests at the end of grade one. Inclusion of the school-entry rhythmic tapping measure into a model of classification accuracy for above or below threshold reading and spelling improved accuracy of classification by 6.2 and 9.2% respectively.

Comparative Analysis of Indicators of Coordination Abilities Development in 5th-7th Graders

The objective of the research is to determine the regularities of coordination abilities development in 5th-7th-grade boys. Materials and methods. The participants in the research were boys of the 5th grade (n = 21), 6th grade (n = 20), 7th grade (n = 19). To achieve the tasks outlined, the research used the following methods: analysis of scientific and methodological literature; pedagogical testing, pedagogical observation, methods of mathematical statistics.Research results. The 5th-6th-grade boys show a statistically significant difference between their results in the following tests: “Standing long jump (cm)” (p &lt; 0.002); “Six standing accuracy ball handlings to a partner from a 7 m distance using one of the techniques learned” (p &lt; 0.049); “Rhythmic hand tapping” (p &lt; 0.044); “Rhythmic movements of upper and lower limbs” (p &lt; 0.042) (p &lt; 0.05); “Height (cm)”; “Body weight (kg)”. The 6th-7th-grade boys — “30 m running (s)”; “Standing long jump (cm)”; “Sit-ups in 30 seconds”; “Evaluation of static equilibrium by E. Ya. Bondarevsky’s method”; “Evaluation of dynamic equilibrium by the BESS method”; “Rhythmic hand tapping”; “Rhythmic movements of upper and lower limbs”; “Shuttle run (4 × 9 m)”; “Tossing rings over a peg”. The 5th-7th-grade boys — “Standing long jump (cm)”; “Pull-ups (number of times)”; “Evaluation of the ability to differentiate movement speed (accuracy in reproduction of running speed, 90% of maximum)”; “Evaluation of static equilibrium by E. Ya. Bondarevsky’s method”; “Evaluation of dynamic equilibrium by the BESS method”; “Rhythmic hand tapping”; “Shuttle run (4 × 9 m)”; “Height (cm)”; “Body weight (kg)”.Conclusions. The research has observed a positive dynamics of the results in the following group of tests: “Standing long jump” by 8.4%, “Rhythmic hand tapping and rhythmic movements of upper and lower limbs” by 18.5% and 17.5%, respectively, “Height” by 6.2% (5th-6th grades); “30 m running (s)” by 0.2%; “Standing long jump” by 6.9%; “Static equilibrium” by 43.7%; “Tossing rings over a peg” by 17.5% (6th-7th grades); “Standing long jump” by 15.8%, “Pull-ups” by 48.1%, “Evaluation of the ability to differentiate movement speed (accuracy in reproduction of running speed, 90% of maximum)” by 26.7%; “Evaluation of static equilibrium by E. Ya. Bondarevsky’s method” by 58.4%; “Height (cm)” by 9.7%; “Body weight (kg)” by 47.1%. (5th–7th grades).

A case of involuntary rhythmic and characteristic tapping sounds during sleep

Abstract Involuntary motor disorders during sleep, such as sleep bruxism (SB) or facio-mandibular myoclonus (FMM), are observed in the oromandibuar area. This feature is repetitive and rhythmic movement produced by short muscle contraction. We report here a case of involuntary repetitive and unusual tapping sounds. The repetitive periodic jaw movement was observed every night but was absent during waking hours. The unusual sounds were confirmed both by audio recorder and the patient's bed partner. Video PSG showed spontaneous myoclonic EMG activity associated with lip movements and characteristic sounds from the patient's mouth. The movements existed in clusters throughout sleep. There are similarities and differences between this case and SB and FMM. The sleep stage and EMG activity in this case were similar to SB and FMM. The EMG burst duration was short as in FMM rather than the longer duration in SB. However, neither the characteristic sounds of grinding or clenching typical of SB nor the clicking sounds typical of FMM were observed. In addition, there was no history of tongue biting, which frequently occurs in SB and FMM. The authors were unable to find any reports regarding treatment for tapping sound, and unfortunately our attempted treatment was ineffective. In this case there was no response to either levetiracetam or clonazepam. Only triazolam reduced the number of episodes but did not result in a complete cure. This is the first reported case of video PSG documented rhythmic tapping sounds might be occurred from patient's oral cavity. We suggest that this case should be viewed as distinct from SB or FMM.