Evolution

Chao Ma
Experimental Evidence for Synchronization to a
Musical Beat in a Nonhuman Animal

Aniruddh D. Patel,John R. Iversen,Micah R. Bregman, and Irena Schulz

The Neurosciences Institute
Department of Cognitive Science
University of California, San Diego
Motivation
● The tendency to move in rhythmic synchrony with a musical beat is not commonly
observed in other species.
● Whether the ability reflect a brain specialization for music cognition.

Hypotheses
● Only vocal learning species are capable of synchronizing movements to a musical beat.
● Vocal non-learners are not capable of musical beat perception and
synchronization(BPS).
Experimental Procedures
● The vocal learning hypothesis
● Participant: 12-year-old male sulphur-crested cockatoo called Snowball
● Stimuli:
○ 78 s extract of a song familiar to Snowball (Backstreet Boys, “Everybody”, 108.7
BPM)
○ 11 different tempi (original, +/- 2.5, 5, 10, 15 20%)
● Compared head bobs with tactus beats in the music
● Procedures and Equipment
● Data Analysis
● Permutation Test
 Results and Discussion
● No bouts occurred at the slowest two tempi
● Most bouts occurred at tempi faster than the song’s original tempo.

38 trials, distributed across all 11 tempi, bouts occurred in 22 of these trials, mean 101, SD 19
• The mean angle was 3.9 and was not
significantly different from 0 (t = 1.6, p =
0.11, degrees of freedom = 543).

• On average, head bobs during bouts were

closely aligned to auditory beats, which
resembles the timing of human tapping to
music
average phase angle 3.94

Figure 2 Circular Histogram of Head Bob Phases Relative to the Beat

 synchronized bouts

Bouts were interspersed

with periods.

instantaneous Snowball‘s pattern of occasional synchronization

dance tempo during periods of sustained dancing may resemble
130.4bpm Figure 3. Timing of Rhythmic Movements in One Trial
how young children synchronize to music.????
Null hypothesis:
Whether snowball simply dances rhythmically (and with variable tempo) in response to
music,with periods apparent synchronization occurring by chance.
● Permutation test
● Monte Carlo test
Result:
Movements during synchronization appear not to be simple copies of movements
typically found in the natural repertoire of cockatoos.
A variety of rhythmic gestures in addition to head bobs.
Evaluation
Shortcomings:
● With home videos it is not possible to rule out imitation of human movement
● Whether the parrot could synchronize to music across a broad range of tempi (a key
feature of BPS).
● Results may not be generalized to other learning species.
Suggestions:
● Conduct an experimental study involving suppression of human movement and
manipulation of the musical tempo.
● Further experimental work involving other species.
Findings & Future work
Findings:
● Synchronization to a musical beat is not uniquely human
● A fundamental aspect of music cognition is shared with other species and provide valuable clues
about the neurological substrates of this aspect of music.
● Animals models can provide insights into the neurobiology and evolution of human music.
Future work:
● further experimental work involving other species.
● future comparative work help determine what neural abilities are necessary foundations for BPS.
● comparative studies of other species can be a powerful approach for gaining insight into the
neurobiological and evolutionary foundations of our own musical abilities
Spontaneous Motor Entrainment to Music in Multiple
Vocal Mimicking Species

Adena Schachner, Timothy F. Brady,

Irene M. Pepperberg, Marc D. Hauser

Department of Psychology

Department of Human Evolutionary Biology

Harvard University
Hypotheses
● Entrainment evolved as a by-product of selection for vocal mimicry
● Generating the strong prediction that only vocal mimicking animals may be able to
entrain
● Vocal mimicry would be a necessary, although likely not sufficient, condition for
entrainment.
Methods
● Report evidence of entrainment from detailed case studies of two avian subjects,both
proficient vocal mimics.
● Perform a broader comparative exploration of entrainment in hundreds of species to
test the claim that vocal mimicry is necessary for entrainment (fix shortcoming in
paper 1).
Case Studies
● Subject 1
A well-studied African grey parrot
was video-recorded while
exposed to novel naturalistic
rhythmic musical stimuli at two
tempi (120 and 150 beats per
minute [bpm]) in the absence of
visual rhythmic movement.
Case Studies
● Subject 2,
A sulphur-crested cockatoo
was recorded while exposed to novel
natural rhythmic music and one familiar
piece of music with tempi ranging from
108 to 132 bpm in the absence of
continuous human movement.
Neither subject had been explicitly
trained to produce movement in
response to acoustic material.
Experimental Procedures
threshold for
● (A and B) videotape nonhuman subjects significance Fourier transform

while they moved in response to music

code the location of each subject’s head in
each frame
● take the derivative to obtain the speed of
movement (A) maximum-
likelihood
performed a Fourier transform to convert Gaussian
this signal to frequency space (black
waveform in [B]).
● (C) Ask whether the movements were in
consistent phase with the musical beat as
perceived by a human subject or an
automated beat tracker,using the Rayleigh
test with unspecified mean direction .
Figure 1. Visualizations of Methods
Results and Discussion

= not significant
 ● Approximately 50% of the videos
involved vocal nonmimics.

● All 33 videos demonstrating evidence

suggestive of entrainment were of
vocal mimics.

● The capacity for vocal mimicry is a

necessary precondition for
Figure 2. Distribution of Evidence of Entrainment
across Species

Video Database Analyses entrainment.

Evaluation
Shortcomings:
● Many selection biases associated with the kinds of videos
Suggestions:
● Use multiple methods to collect data, such as surveys and experiments, to
triangulate the results and reduce the impact of bias.
● Use weights or adjustments to account for any biases that may be present in the
sample.
Findings & Future work
Findings
● Entrainment is not unique to humans
● The distribution of entrainment across species supports the hypothesis that
entrainment evolved as a by-product of selection for vocal mimicry.
● Vocal mimicry is a necessary precondition for entrainment.
● The human entrainment capacity evolved as a by-product of our capacity for vocal
mimicry.
Future work
● Why humans produce and enjoy music is an evolutionary puzzle.
● Conduct experiments speak to the issue above.
Thank you