Groove on the Brain: The Neuroscience of Rhythm

This talk is co-sponsored by the UBC Rhythm Research Cluster: Exploring Musical Time

Musical rhythm has a remarkable capacity to move our minds and bodies. With novel brain scanning techniques, we can now try to understand the neural underpinning of such remarkable effects. Peter Vuust will focus on two phenomenologically distinct yet structurally related types of rhythmic material: the occasional appearance of a surprising beat followed by a surprising rest (syncopation), and repeating syncopated patterns (groove). He will show how this model can explain why isolated syncopations lead to stronger prediction error in the brains of musicians and why we all experience a stronger urge to move to grooves with a medium level of syncopation compared to low and high levels of syncopation. Furthermore, Peter Vuust will show that musical tension created by syncopation and polyrhythm plays a central role in musical communication and discuss the role of the neurohormone oxytocin in this regard. These studies go to the heart of why we have music from an evolutionary point of view.