How Do People Hear Rhythm?

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ome people have a great ear for music, while others have no sense of rhythm at all, which has led scientists to believe that each individual’s brain perceives rhythm differently. Research has also revealed a lot about how the human brain responds to music – the brain scans performed on subjects while they were listening to music have shown the instant activation of specific centers, the differences in the intensity of the activity detected probably accounting for the differences in how enjoyable the tunes played were considered by the subject.  The best time to learn rhythm is with drum classes for kids, the earlier the better.

The research in the field has also revealed a lot about other, physiological and emotional changes triggered by music, especially by music that uses very strong, pounding rhythm, such as that of war drums. The process of enjoying rhythmic music is considered to be a form of neural entertainment, occurring when regular sensory input stimulates specific activity in the brain. The strength of neural entertainment was also related to the subject’s capacity to synchronize body movements to the rhythm – some people needed stronger, clearer rhythms to be able to synchronize with the music, while others could synchronize even to rhythms that were more difficult to interpret, such as jazz, achieving that through the internal generation of rhythms.

Originally Posted on: How Do People Hear Rhythm?