The beat may go on (as Sonny and Cher so famously sang), but apparently not with any kind of rhythm that makes sense to 23-year-old “Matthieu.”
In fact, he gives entire new meaning to Swedish singer Robyn’s hit song “Dancing on My Own.”
For this anonymous young man has been identified in a paper soon to be published in the journal Neuropsychologia as the first documented case of “beat deafness” — the complete inability to feel the beat in music.
The first documented case?
My initial reaction: The Canadian researchers who wrote the paper obviously don’t attend very many weddings.
But Matthieu doesn’t just dance poorly, the researchers note. His movements are never in sync with the music, no matter how hard he tries. Nor can he recognize if someone else is dancing out-of-sync.
He can, though, make in-sync movements to the steady beat of a metronome — a sign that his beat deafness is related specifically to music. And the young man is not tone deaf. He’d do fine in a karaoke contest.
Discovered by chance
The researchers discovered Matthieu when he responded to their recruitment call for people who felt they had difficulty keeping a beat, whether it was clapping in time at a concert or dancing in a club. He told the researchers he had always had a problem with hearing the beat in music, and although he enjoyed dancing, he found the activity difficult, even after taking lessons.
Tests revealed that Matthieu, described in the paper as a graduate student in communications, has no neurological problems in the hearing and motor areas of his brain. Nor does he have any history of psychological problems.
But Matthieu scored poorly on a standardized test that evaluates meter perception, so the researchers decided to test him further. They asked him and 33 “controls” (adults with no problem moving to a musical beat) to bounce (bend their knees) in rhythm to the popular merengue song Suavemente by Elvis Crespo for about 30 minutes. A device (a Nintendo Wii) was strapped to their bodies to measure how much their bouncing followed the song’s beat.
Matthieu was the only one whose movements were consistently “out of time” with the music.
Mathieu bouncing from Science News on Vimeo.
Beyond dance
In addition to being intriguing and, yes, a bit amusing, Matthieu’s case may have some scientific ramifications.
If beat deafness does exist, then it may lead to new insights into how — and why — the brain perceives rhythm.
For, as the authors of this paper point out, beat tracking has many uses besides dance. “Behaviors as complex as conversational turn-taking and as simple as adjusting one’s gait to that of a friend, require sophisticated process of temporal prediction and movement timing,” they write.
The researchers intend to conduct further tests on Matthieu to see if his beat deafness affects those other behaviors. They also hope to identify more people with this rare condition.
My suggestion: Hang out at wedding receptions.
(To view more videos that illustrate the difference between beat deafness and just plain bad dancing, scroll to the end of Science News’ article on this study.)
