UvA-DARE ( Digital Academic Repository ) Rhesus monkeys ( Macaca mulatta ) detect rhythmic groups in music , but not the beat Honing

Content Provider	Semantic Scholar
Author	Honing, Henkjan Merchant, Hugo Háden, Gábor P. Prado, Luis Bartolo, Ramón
Copyright Year	2012
Abstract	It was recently shown that rhythmic entrainment, long considered a human-specific mechanism, can be demonstrated in a selected group of bird species, and, somewhat surprisingly, not in more closely related species such as nonhuman primates. This observation supports the vocal learning hypothesis that suggests rhythmic entrainment to be a by-product of the vocal learning mechanisms that are shared by several bird and mammal species, including humans, but that are only weakly developed, or missing entirely, in nonhuman primates. To test this hypothesis we measured auditory event-related potentials (ERPs) in two rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta), probing a well-documented component in humans, the mismatch negativity (MMN) to study rhythmic expectation. We demonstrate for the first time in rhesus monkeys that, in response to infrequent deviants in pitch that were presented in a continuous sound stream using an oddball paradigm, a comparable ERP component can be detected with negative deflections in early latencies (Experiment 1). Subsequently we tested whether rhesus monkeys can detect gaps (omissions at random positions in the sound stream; Experiment 2) and, using more complex stimuli, also the beat (omissions at the first position of a musical unit, i.e. the ‘downbeat’; Experiment 3). In contrast to what has been shown in human adults and newborns (using identical stimuli and experimental paradigm), the results suggest that rhesus monkeys are not able to detect the beat in music. These findings are in support of the hypothesis that beat induction (the cognitive mechanism that supports the perception of a regular pulse from a varying rhythm) is species-specific and absent in nonhuman primates. In addition, the findings support the auditory timing dissociation hypothesis, with rhesus monkeys being sensitive to rhythmic grouping (detecting the start of a rhythmic group), but not to the induced beat (detecting a regularity from a varying rhythm). Citation: Honing H, Merchant H, Háden GP, Prado L, Bartolo R (2012) Rhesus Monkeys (Macaca mulatta) Detect Rhythmic Groups in Music, but Not the Beat. PLoS ONE 7(12): e51369. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0051369 Editor: Charles R. Larson, Northwestern University, United States of America Received June 6, 2012; Accepted November 6, 2012; Published December 12, 2012 Copyright: 2012 Honing et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Funding: The research of HH and GH was supported by the Research Priority Area ‘Brain & Cognition’ at the University of Amsterdam. The first author (HH)is supported by the Hendrik Muller chair designated on behalf of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and 8 Sciences (KNAW). The second author’s research (HM) was supported by Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnologı́a Grant 151223, Programa de Apoyo a Proyectos de Investigación e Innovación Tecnológica Grant: IN206508. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. * E-mail: honing@uva.nl
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