Categorical Rhythms Are Shared between Songbirds and Humans.

Categorical Rhythms Are Shared between Songbirds and Humans. Curr Biol. 2020 Jul 22;: Authors: Roeske TC, Tchernichovski O, Poeppel D, Jacoby N Abstract Rhythm is a prominent feature of music. Of the infinite possible ways of organizing events in time, musical rhythms are almost always distributed categorically. Such categories can facilitate the transmission of culture-a feature that songbirds and humans share. We compared rhythms of live performances of music to rhythms of wild thrush nightingale and domestic zebra finch songs. In nightingales, but not in zebra finches, we found universal rhythm categories, with patterns that were surprisingly similar to those of music. Isochronous 1:1 rhythms were similarly common. Interestingly, a bias toward small ratios (around 1:2 to 1:3), which is highly abundant in music, was observed also in thrush nightingale songs. Within that range, however, there was no statistically significant bias toward exact integer ratios (1:2 or 1:3) in the birds. High-ratio rhythms were abundant in the nightingale song and are structurally similar to fusion rhythms (ornaments) in music. In both species, preferred rhythms remained invariant over extended ranges of tempos, indicating natural categories. The number of rhythm categories decreased at higher tempos, with a threshold above which rhythm became highly stereotyped. In thrush nightingales, this threshold occurred at a tempo twice faster than in humans, ind...
Source: Current Biology - Category: Biology Authors: Tags: Curr Biol Source Type: research