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Highlights 1) Regular rhythmic stimulation benefits subsequent speech processing = 69 2) The P600 response to grammatical errors was enhanced after regular rhythms = 77 3) This benefit was observed in both dyslexic adults and matched controls = 73 4) It persisted despite dyslexics' temporal processing deficit and delayed P600 = 79 5) Findings encourage the use of rhythmic stimulation in rehabilitation and training = 84

When listening to temporally regular rhythms, most people are able to extract the beat. Evidence suggests that the neural mechanism underlying this ability is the phase alignment of endogenous oscillations to the external stimulus, allowing for the prediction of upcoming events (i.e., dynamic attending). Relatedly, individuals with dyslexia may have deficits in the entrainment of neural oscillations to external stimuli, especially at low frequencies. The current experiment investigated rhythmic processing in adults with dyslexia and matched controls. Regular and irregular rhythms were presented to participants while electroencephalography was recorded. Regular rhythms contained the beat at 2 Hz; while acoustic energy was maximal at 4 Hz and 8 Hz. These stimuli allowed us to investigate whether the brain responds non-linearly to the beat-level of a rhythmic stimulus, and whether beat-based processing differs between dyslexic and control participants. Both groups showed enhanced stimulus-brain coherence for regular compared to irregular rhythms at the frequencies of interest, with an overrepresentation of the beat-level in the brain compared to the acoustic signal. In addition, we found evidence that controls extracted subtle temporal regularities from irregular stimuli, whereas dyslexics did not. Findings are discussed in relation to dynamic attending theory and rhythmic processing deficits in dyslexia.

Recent research has shown that auditory rhythmic stimulation improves subsequent syntax processing of speech in children with and without developmental language disorders. Sensitivity to grammatical errors is enhanced after regular rhythmic primes in comparison to irregular ones. Our present study investigated this rhythmic priming effect in healthy adults by using subtle grammatical errors as targets, aiming to \it with the high linguistic level of the participants. We also assessed whether participants' sensitivity to rhythmic priming on syntax processing was related to self-reported rhythmic skills and musical habits. Participants listened to rhythmic regular or irregular primes followed by blocks of six grammatically correct or incorrect sentences. Participants provided grammaticality judgments on each of the sentences, and response accuracy was analyzed. Furthermore, participants \illed out a questionnaire about their musical skills, listening habits and music experience. Results revealed better grammaticality processing after regular rhythmic primes in comparison to irregular ones in healthy adults. Moreover, self-reported individual characteristics related to (1) rhythmic processing and synchronization, (2) amount of daily exposure to music, and (3) social bonding, contributed to signi\icantly predict the rhythmic priming effect. Our \indings con\irm the in\luence of temporal regularities of musical primes on subsequent syntax processing, even when syntax processing is automatized (as in healthy young adults), and they point to inter-individual differences modulating the strength of this priming effect. We discuss results within the framework of the Dynamic Attending Theory suggesting that regular rhythms orient attentional resources over time, improving the processing of event structures, including for speech.

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Conceptual priming studies have shown that listening to musical primes triggers semantic activation. The present study further investigated with a free semantic evocation task, 1) how rhythmic vs. textural structures affect the amount of words evoked after a musical sequence, and 2) whether both features also affect the content of the semantic activation. Rhythmic sequences were composed of various percussion sounds with a strong underlying beat and metrical structure. Textural sound sequences consisted of blended timbres and sound sources evolving over time without identifiable pulse. Participants were asked to verbalize the concepts evoked by the musical sequences. We measured the number of words and lemmas produced after having listened to musical sequences of each condition, and we analyzed whether specific concepts were associated with each sequence type. Results showed that more words and lemmas were produced for textural sound sequences than for rhythmic sequences and that some concepts were specifically associated with each musical condition. Our findings suggest that listening to musical excerpts emphasizing different features influences semantic activation in different ways and extent. This might possibly be instantiated via cognitive mechanisms triggered by the acoustic characteristics of the excerpts as well as the perceived emotions.

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Rhythm perception involves strong auditory-motor connections that can be enhanced with movement. However, it is unclear whether just seeing someone moving to a rhythm can enhance auditory-motor coupling, resulting in stronger entrainment. Rhythmic priming studies show that presenting regular rhythms before naturally spoken sentences can enhance grammaticality judgments compared to irregular rhythms or other baseline conditions. The current study investigated whether introducing a point-light figure moving in time with regular rhythms could enhance the rhythmic priming effect. Three experiments revealed that the addition of a visual cue did not benefit rhythmic priming in comparison to auditory conditions with a static image. In Experiment 1 (27 7–8-year-old children), grammaticality judgments were poorer after audio-visual regular rhythms (with a bouncing point-light figure) compared to auditory-only regular rhythms. In Experiments 2 (31 adults) and 3 (31 different adults), there was no difference in grammaticality judgments after audio-visual regular rhythms compared to auditory-only irregular rhythms for either a bouncing point-light figure (Experiment 2) or a swaying point-light figure (Experiment 3). Comparison of the observed performance with previous data suggested that the audio-visual component removed the regular prime benefit. These findings suggest that the visual cues used in this study do not enhance rhythmic priming and could hinder the effect by potentially creating a dual-task situation. In addition, individual differences in sensory-motor and social scales of music reward influenced the effect of the visual cue. Implications for future audio-visual experiments aiming to enhance beat processing, and the importance of individual differences will be discussed.