The effects of Parkinson’s disease, music training, and dance training on beat perception and production abilities

Abstract

Humans naturally perceive and move to a musical beat, entraining body movements to auditory rhythms through clapping, tapping, and dancing. Yet the accuracy of this seemingly effortless behavior varies widely across individuals. Beat perception and production abilities can be improved by experience, such as music and dance training, and impaired by progressive neurological changes, such as in Parkinson’s disease. In this study, we assessed the effects of music and dance experience on beat processing in young and older adults, as well as individuals with early-stage Parkinson’s disease. We used the Beat Alignment Test (BAT) to assess beat perception and production in a convenience sample of 458 participants (278 healthy young adults, 139 healthy older adults, and 41 people with early-stage Parkinson’s disease), with varying levels of music and dance training. In general, we found that participants with over three years of music training had more accurate beat perception than those with less training (p < .001). Interestingly, Parkinson’s disease patients with music training had beat production abilities comparable to healthy adults while Parkinson’s disease patients with minimal to no music training performed significantly worse. No effects were found in healthy adults for dance training, and too few Parkinson’s disease patients had dance training to reliably assess its effects. The finding that musically trained Parkinson’s disease patients performed similarly to healthy adults during a beat production task, while untrained patients did not, suggests music training may preserve certain rhythmic motor timing abilities in early-stage Parkinson’s disease.

The relation between rhythm processing and cognitive abilities during child development: The role of prediction

“…These results indicate that children with DCD have problems in identifying and anticipating the single beats within a rhythm sequence, so that they seem to have difficulties in beat-based processing. Similar results have been revealed from studies with older people diagnosed with PD indicating that people with PD have poorer rhythmic abilities compared to typical controls (e.g., Grahn and Brett, 2009;Hsu et al, 2022). For example, Grahn and Brett (2009) tested older people affected by PD and typical controls in a rhythm discrimination task similar to the task described in Ozernov-Palchik et al ( 2018) consisting of two conditions: a beat-based and a non-beat-based condition.…”

At-Home Training With a Rhythmic Video Game for Improving Orofacial, Manual, and Gait Abilities in Parkinson’s Disease: A Pilot Study

“…We examined this possibility in the present pilot study by testing whether the beneficial effects of a rhythm-based intervention on a given effector (i.e., manual) do transfer to other effectors (orofacial, gait). Interventions targeting rhythmic skills can take different forms, such as rhythmic auditory cueing ( Ghai et al, 2018 ; Dalla Bella, 2020 ), full-body physical activities (e.g., dance, Hackney and Earhart, 2009 ; Hsu et al, 2022 ), or serious games ( Bégel et al, 2017 , 2018 ). A serious game is a video game combining serious intentions, such as educational, professional or medical purposes, with pleasant and recreational aspects ( Rego et al, 2010 , 2014 ; Marsh, 2011 ).…”

Dopamine dysregulation in Parkinson’s disease flattens the pleasurable urge to move to musical rhythms

“…Involvement of the motor cortico-striatal loop implies a role of nigrostriatal dopamine. However, studies on beat perception in PD patients show mixed results [22][23][24]26,53,54 . Conversely, many of these same studies show deficits in rhythm discrimination in PD patients [22][23][24]26,53,54 , which could suggest that the flatter pattern of ratings seen here may be due to reduced ability to distinguish the stimuli.…”

“…For example, the motor cortico-striatal loop is consistently engaged during rhythm and beat perception, and production [9][10][11][12][13][14] , whereas the limbic cortico-striatal loop is implicated in music-induced pleasure [15][16][17][18][19][20][21] . Within corticostriatal networks, dopamine seems to have a functional role in both beat-based [22][23][24][25][26] and motor timing 27 , as well as music-induced pleasure 18,28,29 . This confluence of musically relevant timing, motor, and reward processes suggests a key role of cortico-striatal dopamine in PLUMM 8 .…”