Although early blind (EB) individuals are thought to have a better musical sense than sighted subjects, no study has investigated the musical rhythm and beat processing abilities in EB individuals. Using an adaptive ‘up and down’ procedure, we measured the beat asynchrony detection threshold and the duration discrimination threshold, in the auditory and vibrotactile modalities in both EB and sighted control (SC) subjects matched for age, gender, and musical experience. We observed that EB subjects were better than SC in the beat asynchrony detection task; that is, they showed lower thresholds than SC, both in the auditory and in the vibrotactile modalities. In addition, EB subjects had a lower threshold than SC for duration discrimination in the vibrotactile modality only. These improved beat asynchrony detection abilities may contribute to the known excellent musical abilities often observed in many blind subjects.
AmediA.RazN.PiankaP.MalachR.ZoharyE. (2003). Early ‘visual’ cortex activation correlates with superior verbal memory performance in the blind. Nature Neuroscience, 6, 758–766.
2.
AmitayS.IrwinA.HawkeyD. J.CowanJ. A.MooreD. R. (2006). A comparison of adaptive procedures for rapid and reliable threshold assessment and training in naive listeners. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 119, 1616–1625.
3.
BergerT. D.MartelliM.PelliD. G. (2003). Flicker flutter: Is an illusory event as good as the real thing?Journal of Vision, 3(6):1, 406–412.
4.
BoasL. V.MunizL.NetoC.da SilvaS.GouveiaM. D. C. L. (2011). Auditory processing performance in blind people. Brazilian Journal of Otorhinolaryngology, 77, 504–509.
5.
BrochardR.TouzalinP.DesprésO.DufourA. (2008). Evidence of beat perception via purely tactile stimulation. Brain Research, 1223, 59–64.
6.
BurtonH.SnyderA. Z.Te ConturoE. A.OllingerJ.RaichleM. (2002). Adaptive changes in early and late blind: A fMRI study of Braille reading. Journal of Neurophysiology, 87, 589–607.
7.
BurrD.BanksM. S.MorroneM. C. (2009). Auditory dominance over vision in the perception of interval duration. Experimental Brain Research, 198, 49–57.
8.
ChapinH. L.ZantoT.JantzenK. J.KelsoS.SteinbergF.LargeE. W. (2010). Neural responses to complex auditory rhythms: The role of attending. Frontiers in Psychology, 1, 224. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2010.00224.
9.
ChenJ. L.PenhuneV. B.ZatorreR. J. (2008). Moving on time: Brain network for auditory-motor synchronization is modulated by rhythm complexity and musical training. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 20, 226–239.
10.
CohenL. G.WeeksR. A.SadatoN.CelnikP.IshiiK.HallettM. (1999). Period of susceptibility for cross-modal plasticity in the blind. Annals of Neurology, 45, 451–460.
11.
CollignonO.DavareM.OlivierE.De VolderA. G. (2009). Reorganisation of the right occipito-parietal stream for auditory spatial processing in early blind humans. A transcranial magnetic stimulation study. Brain Topography, 21, 232–240.
12.
CollignonO.RenierL.BruyerR.TranduyD.VeraartC. (2006). Improved selective and divided spatial attention in early blind subjects. Brain Research, 1075, 175–182.
13.
CooperG. W.MeyerL. B. (1960). The rhythmic structure of music. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
14.
DrakeC.JonesM. R.BaruchC. (2000). The development of rhythmic attending in auditory sequences: Attunement, referent period, focal attending. Cognition, 77, 251–288.
15.
DrakeC.PalmerC. (2000). Skill acquisition in music performance: Relations between planning and temporal control. Cognition, 74, 1–32.
16.
EhrléN.SamsonS. (2005). Auditory discrimination of anisochrony: Influence of the tempo and musical backgrounds of listeners. Brain and Cognition, 58, 133–147.
17.
EssensP. J.PovelD. J. (1985). Metrical and nonmetrical representations of temporal patterns. Perception & Psychophysics, 37, 1–7.
18.
FribergA.SundbergJ. (1995). Time discrimination in a monotonic, isochronous sequence. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 98, 2524–2531.
19.
GérardC.RosenfeldM. (1995). Pratique musicale et régulations temporelles. L'Année Psychologique, 95, 571–591.
20.
GoldreichD.KanicsI. M. (2003). Tactile acuity is enhanced in blindness. The Journal of Neuroscience, 23, 3439–3445.
21.
GoriM.SandiniG.MartinoliC.BurrD. C. (2014). Impairment of auditory spatial localization in congenitally blind human subjects. Brain, 137, 288–293.
22.
GougouxF.LeporeF.LassondeM.VossP.ZatorreR. J.BelinP. (2004). Neuropsychology: Pitch discrimination in the early blind. Nature, 430(6997), 309.
23.
GougouxF.ZatorreR. J.LassondeM.VossP.LeporeF. (2005). A functional neuroimaging study of sound localization: Visual cortex activity predicts performance in early-blind individuals. PLoS Biology, 3(2): e27.
24.
GrahnJ. A. (2012). Neural mechanisms of rhythm perception: Current findings and future perspectives. Topics in Cognitive Science, 4, 585–606.
25.
GrahnJ. A.BrettM. (2007). Rhythm and beat perception in motor areas of the brain. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 19, 893–906.
26.
GrahnJ. A.RoweJ. B. (2009). Feeling the beat: Premotor and striatal interactions in musicians and nonmusicians during beat perception. The Journal of Neuroscience, 29, 7540–7548.
27.
GrahnJ. A.RoweJ. B. (2013). Finding and feeling the musical beat: Striatal dissociations between detection and prediction of regularity. Cerebral Cortex, 23, 913–921.
28.
GrubeM.CooperF. E.ChinneryP. F.GriffithsT. D. (2010a). Dissociation of duration-based and beat-based auditory timing in cerebellar degeneration. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, 107, 11597–11601.
29.
GrubeM.GriffithsT. D. (2009). Metricality-enhanced temporal encoding and the subjective perception of rhythmic sequences. Cortex, 45, 72–79.
30.
GrubeM.LeeK.-H.GriffithsT. D.BarkerA. T.WoodruffP. W. (2010b). Transcranial magnetic theta-burst stimulation of the human cerebellum distinguishes absolute, duration-based from relative, beat-based perception of subsecond time intervals. Frontiers in Psychology, 1, 171. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2010.00171.
31.
HalpernA. R.DarwinC. J. (1982). Duration discrimination in a series of rhythmic events. Perception & Psychophysics, 31, 86–89.
HatwellYGentazE. (2011). Origine et évolution des recherches psychologiques sur le toucher en France. L'Année Psychologique, 111, 701–723.
34.
HolcombeA. O. (2009). Seeing slow and seeing fast: Two limits on perception. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 13, 216–221.
35.
HöttingK.RöderB. (2004). Hearing cheats touch, but less in congenitally blind than in sighted individuals. Psychological Science, 15, 60–64.
36.
HuangJ.GambleD.SarnlertsophonK.WangX.HsiaoS. (2012). Feeling music: Integration of auditory and tactile Inputs in musical meter perception. PLoS ONE, 7(10): e48496.
37.
IvryR. B.SpencerR. M. (2004). Evaluating the role of the cerebellum in temporal processing: Beware of the null hypothesis. Brain, 127, e13.
LerdahlF.JackendoffR. (1983). An overview of hierarchical structure in music. Music Perception, 2, 229–252.
40.
LevittH. (1971). Transformed up-down methods in psychoacoustics. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 49, 467–477.
41.
LindblomU.LindströmB. (1976). Tactile thresholds of normal and blind subjects on stimulation of finger pads with short mechanical pulses of variable amplitude. In ZottermanY. (Ed.), Sensory functions of the skin in primates, with special reference to man (pp. 105–111). Oxford: Pergamon Press.
42.
McAuleyJ. D.JonesM. R. (2003). Modeling effects of rhythmic context on perceived duration: A comparison of interval and entrainment approaches to short-interval timing. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 29, 1102–1125.
43.
MooreB. C. (2008). The role of temporal fine structure processing in pitch perception, masking, and speech perception for normal-hearing and hearing-impaired people. Journal of the Association for Research in Otolaryngology, 9, 399–406.
44.
ParncuttR. (1994). A perceptual model of pulse salience and metrical accent in musical rhythms. Music Perception, 11, 409–464.
45.
Pascual-LeoneA.TorresF. (1993). Plasticity of the sensorimotor cortex representation of the reading finger in Braille readers. Brain, 116, 39–52.
46.
PatelA. D.IversenJ. R.ChenY.ReppB. H. (2005). The influence of metricality and modality on synchronization with a beat. Experimental Brain Research, 163, 226–238.
47.
PovelD. J.EssensP. (1985). Perception of temporal patterns. Music Perception, 2, 411–440.
48.
PringL.WoolfK.TadicV. (2008). Melody and pitch processing in five musical savants with congenital blindness. Perception, 37, 290–307.
49.
PtitoM.MoesgaardS. M.GjeddeA.KupersR. (2005). Cross-modal plasticity revealed by electrotactile stimulation of the tongue in the congenitally blind. Brain, 128, 606–614.
50.
RagertP.SchmidtA.AltenmüllerE.DinseH. R. (2004). Superior tactile performance and learning in professional pianists: Evidence for meta-plasticity in musicians. European Journal of Neuroscience, 19, 473–478.
51.
RenierL.AnurovaI.De VolderA. G.CarlsonS.VanMeterJ.RauscheckerJ. P. (2010). Preserved functional specialization for spatial processing in the middle occipital gyrus of the early blind. Neuron, 68, 138–148.
52.
RenierL.De VolderA. G.RauscheckerJ. P. (2014). Cortical plasticity and preserved function in early blindness. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 41, 53–63.
53.
ReppB. H. (2005). Sensorimotor synchronization: A review of the tapping literature. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 12, 969–992.
54.
ReppB. H.PenelA. (2002). Auditory dominance in temporal processing: New evidence from synchronization with simultaneous visual and auditory sequences. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 28, 1085–1099.
55.
RöderB.KrämerU. M.LangeK. (2007). Congenitally blind humans use different stimulus selection strategies in hearing: An ERP study of spatial and temporal attention. Restorative Neurology and Neuroscience, 25, 311–322.
56.
RöderB.RöslerF.SpenceC. (2004). Early vision impairs tactile perception in the blind. Current Biology, 14, 121–124.
57.
SadatoN. (2005). How the blind ‘see’ Braille: Lessons from functional magnetic resonance imaging. The Neuroscientist, 11, 577–582.
58.
SadatoN.OkadaT.KubotaK.YonekuraY. (2004). Tactile discrimination activates the visual cortex of the recently blind naive to Braille: A functional magnetic resonance imaging study in humans. Neuroscience Letters, 359, 49–52.
59.
SadatoN.Pascual-LeoneA.GrafmanJ.DeiberM. P.IbanezV.HallettM. (1998). Neural networks for Braille reading by the blind. Brain, 121, 1213–1229.
60.
SadatoN.Pascual-LeoneA.GrafmanJ.IbanezVDeiberM. P.DoldG.HallettM. (1996). Activation of the primary visual cortex by Braille reading in blind subjects. Nature, 380(6574), 526–528.
61.
ShamsL.KamitaniY.ShimojoS. (2000). What you see is what you hear. Nature, 408(6814), 788.
62.
SlobodaJ. A. (1983). The communication of musical metre in piano performance. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 35, 377–396.
SterrA.MüllerM. M.ElbertT.RockstrohB.PantevC.TaubE. (1998). Perceptual correlates of changes in cortical representation of fingers in blind multifinger Braille readers. The Journal of Neuroscience, 18, 4417–4423.
65.
SterrA.MüllerM.ElbertT.RockstrohB.TaubE. (1999). Development of cortical reorganization in the somatosensory cortex of adult Braille students. Electroencephalography and Clinical Neurophysiology Supplement, 49, 292–298.
StevensJ. C.FoulkeE.PattersonM. Q. (1996). Tactile acuity, aging, and braille reading in long-term blindness. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 2, 91–106.
68.
StillaR.HannaR.HuX.MariolaE.DeshpandeG.SathianK. (2008). Neural processing underlying tactile microspatial discrimination in the blind: A functional magnetic resonance imaging study. Journal of Vision, 8(10):13, 1–19.
69.
StraitD. L.KrausN.Parbery-ClarkA.AshleyR. (2010). Musical experience shapes top-down auditory mechanisms: Evidence from masking and auditory attention performance. Hearing Research, 261, 22–29.
70.
TekiS.GrubeM.KumarS.GriffithsT. D. (2011). Distinct neural substrates of duration-based and beat-based auditory timing. The Journal of Neuroscience, 31, 3805–3812.
71.
TervaniemiM.JustVKoelschS.WidmannA.SchrögerE. (2005). Pitch discrimination accuracy in musicians vs nonmusicians: An event-related potential and behavioral study. Experimental Brain Research, 161, 1–10.
72.
TervaniemiM.RytkönenM.SchrögerE.IlmoniemiR. J.NäätänenR. (2001). Superior formation of cortical memory traces for melodic patterns in musicians. Learning & Memory, 8, 295–300.
73.
Van BovenR. W.HamiltonR. H.KauffmanT.KeenanJ. P.Pascual-LeoneA. (2000). Tactile spatial resolution in blind Braille readers. Neurology, 54, 2230–2236.
74.
Van der LubbeR. H.Van MierloC. M.PostmaA. (2010). The involvement of occipital cortex in the early blind in auditory and tactile duration discrimination tasks. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 22, 1541–1556.
75.
VossP.GougouxF.ZatorreR. J.LassondeM.LeporeF. (2008). Differential occipital responses in early- and late-blind individuals during a sound-source discrimination task. Neuroimage, 40, 746–758.
76.
VossP.ZatorreR. J. (2012). Occipital cortical thickness predicts performance on pitch and musical tasks in blind individuals. Cerebral Cortex, 22, 2455–2465.
77.
WanC. Y.WoodA. G.ReutensD. C.WilsonS. J. (2010a). Early but not late-blindness leads to enhanced auditory perception. Neuropsychologia, 48, 344–348.
78.
WanC. Y.WoodA. G.ReutensD. C.WilsonS. J. (2010b). Congenital blindness leads to enhanced vibro-tactile perception. Neuropsychologia, 48, 631–635.
79.
WeaverK. E.StevensA. A. (2006). Auditory gap detection in the early blind. Hearing Research, 211, 1–6.
80.
WongM.GnanakumaranV.GoldreichD. (2011). Tactile spatial acuity enhancement in blindness: Evidence for experience-dependent mechanisms. The Journal of Neuroscience, 31, 7028–7037.
81.
YeeW.HolleranS.JonesM. R. (1994). Sensitivity to event timing in regular and irregular sequences: Influences of musical skill. Perception & Psychophysics, 56, 461–471.
82.
ZatorreR. J. (1988). Pitch perception of complex tones and human temporal-lobe function. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 84, 566–572.
83.
ZatorreR. J.EvansA. C.MeyerE. (1994). Neural mechanisms underlying melodic perception and memory for pitch. The Journal of Neuroscience, 14, 1908–1919.
