Is beat perception special?

Fleur Bouwer wonders. Behaviorally, temporal expectations seem to facilitate processing of events at expected time points, such as sounds that coincide with the beat in musical rhythm. Yet, temporal expectations can develop based on different forms of structure in the environment, not just the regularity afforded by a musical beat. Because still little is known about how different types of temporal expectations are neurally implemented and affect performance, she orthogonally manipulated the periodicity and predictability of rhythmic sequences to examine the mechanisms underlying beat-based and memory-based temporal expectations. The results are now accessible via BioRxiv.