Spontaneous tempo and rhythmic entrainment in a bonobo (Pan paniscus).

Abstract

The emergence of speech and music in the human species represent major evolutionary transitions that enabled the use of complex, temporally structured acoustic signals to coordinate social interaction. While the fundamental capacity for temporal coordination with complex acoustic signals has been shown in a few distantly related species, the extent to which nonhuman primates exhibit sensitivity to auditory rhythms remains controversial. In Experiment 1, we assessed spontaneous motor tempo and tempo matching in a bonobo (Pan paniscus), in the context of a social drumming interaction. In Experiment 2, the bonobo spontaneously entrained and synchronized her drum strikes within a range around her spontaneous motor tempo. Our results are consistent with the hypothesis that the evolution of acoustic communication builds upon fundamental neurodynamic mechanisms that can be found in a wide range of species, and are recruited for social interactions.

Neural Entrainment to the Beat: The “Missing-Pulse” Phenomenon

“…To evaluate the robustness of their pulse perception, we evaluated, using circular statistics, how long it took each participant to start tapping [time to tap (TTT)] as well as the temporal precision of their taps. For each subject in each trial, the event times closest to the tapping times were used to convert all taps of all subjects into a sequence of phases ϭ 2 t event Ϫ t tap IOI , where the IOI of the metronome time was set to 60/tempo (Large and Gray, 2015). The circular mean for each trial was then computed.…”

Synchronization and temporal processing

“…The origins of human rhythmic abilities are a matter of vigorous debate and speculation. Origin accounts of SMS range from being an adaptation for sexual selection, communication, group cohesion, to being a non-evolved side effect of other evolved traits (reviewed in [65]), and debate has been spurred by a recent spate of comparative studies exploring the limits of SMS in non-human animals including parrots, primates, and sea lions [66][67][68][69][70][71] as well as prior descriptions of naturally occurring SMS behaviors for instance in insects and frogs (reviewed in [72 ]), and temporal sequencing and grouping abilities in other species [73]. There are many recent reviews of comparative SMS, some emphasizing the continuity of human abilities with those of other species, based on shared mechanisms (e.g.…”

Keeping the Beat as a Measure of Specific Learning Difficulties Using Midi Controller

“…There are very few other species that are able to synchronize their movements to a beat and to our current knowledge none of these come close to humans neither in precision nor in the variety of tempi in which they can achieve relative synchrony (Large, Gray, 2015). We feel an urge to follow repetitive sounds and find many associated activities rewarding (dancing, singing, playing an instrument, etc.)…”