Hips don’t lie – but a new study suggests our sense of rhythm actually comes from the brain.
Researchers at Montreal’s McGill University wanted to know how people are able to synch actions with sounds – allowing us to dance to new music, for example.
They measured brain activity in 29 adults who each had at least six years of formal training on a musical instrument.
“We were interested in exploring how musicians’ brains respond to rhythms,” explained professor Caroline Palmer, lead author of the study, in a release. “It could be that some people are better musicians because they listen differently or it could be that they move their bodies differently.
“We found that the answer was a match between the pulsing or oscillations in the brain rhythms and the pulsing of the musical rhythm – it’s not just listening or movement. It’s a linking of the brain rhythm to the auditory rhythm.”
The study results are published in the October 2020 edition of the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.