Mobile version of the Battery for the Assessment of Auditory Sensorimotor and Timing Abilities (BAASTA): Implementation and adult norms.

Timing and rhythm abilities are complex and multidimensional skills that are highly widespread in the general population. This complexity can be partly captured by the Battery for the Assessment of Auditory Sensorimotor and Timing Abilities (BAASTA). The battery, consisting of four perceptual and five sensorimotor tests (finger-tapping), has been used in healthy adults and in clinical populations (e.g., Parkinson's disease, ADHD, developmental dyslexia, stuttering), and shows sensitivity to individual differences and impairment. However, major limitations for the generalized use of this tool are the lack of reliable and standardized norms and of a version of the battery that can be used outside the lab. To circumvent these caveats, we put forward a new version of BAASTA on a tablet device capable of ensuring lab-equivalent measurements of timing and rhythm abilities. We present normative data obtained with this version of BAASTA from over 100 healthy adults between the ages of 18 and 87 years in a test-retest protocol. Moreover, we propose a new composite score to summarize beat-based rhythm capacities, the Beat Tracking Index (BTI), with close to excellent test-retest reliability. BTI derives from two BAASTA tests (beat alignment, paced tapping), and offers a swift and practical way of measuring rhythmic abilities when research imposes strong time constraints. This mobile BAASTA implementation is more inclusive and far-reaching, while opening new possibilities for reliable remote testing of rhythmic abilities by leveraging accessible and cost-efficient technologies.

Dance Improves Motor, Cognitive, and Social Skills in Children With Developmental Cerebellar Anomalies.

In this multiple single-cases study, we used dance to train sensorimotor synchronization (SMS), motor, and cognitive functions in children with developmental cerebellar anomalies (DCA). DCA are rare dysfunctions of the cerebellum that affect motor and cognitive skills. The cerebellum plays an important role in temporal cognition, including SMS, which is critical for motor and cognitive development. Dancing engages the SMS neuronal circuitry, composed of the cerebellum, the basal ganglia, and the motor cortices. Thus, we hypothesized that dance has a beneficial effect on SMS skills and associated motor and cognitive functions in children with DCA. Seven children (aged 7-11) with DCA participated in a 2-month dance training protocol (3 h/week). A test-retest design protocol with multiple baselines was used to assess children's SMS skills as well as motor, cognitive, and social abilities. SMS skills were impaired in DCA before the training. The training led to improvements in SMS (reduced variability in paced tapping), balance, and executive functioning (cognitive flexibility), as well as in social skills (social cognition). The beneficial effects of the dance training were visible in all participants. Notably, gains were maintained 2 months after the intervention. These effects are likely to be sustained by enhanced activity in SMS brain networks due to the dance training protocol.

Rhythmic Abilities of Children With Hearing Loss.

OBJECTIVES: Children with hearing loss (HL), in spite of early cochlear implantation, often struggle considerably with language acquisition. Previous research has shown a benefit of rhythmic training on linguistic skills in children with HL, suggesting that improving rhythmic capacities could help attenuating language difficulties. However, little is known about general rhythmic skills of children with HL and how they relate to speech perception. The aim of this study is twofold: (1) to assess the abilities of children with HL in different rhythmic sensorimotor synchronization tasks compared to a normal-hearing control group and (2) to investigate a possible relation between sensorimotor synchronization abilities and speech perception abilities in children with HL. DESIGN: A battery of sensorimotor synchronization tests with stimuli of varying acoustic and temporal complexity was used: a metronome, different musical excerpts, and complex rhythmic patterns. Synchronization abilities were assessed in 32 children (aged from 5 to 10 years) with a severe to profound HL mainly fitted with one or two cochlear implants (n = 28) or with hearing aids (n = 4). Working memory and sentence repetition abilities were also assessed. Performance was compared to an age-matched control group of 24 children with normal hearing. The comparison took into account variability in working memory capacities. For children with HL only, we computed linear regressions on speech, sensorimotor synchronization, and working memory abilities, including device-related variables such as onset of device use, type of device, and duration of use. RESULTS: Compared to the normal-hearing group, children with HL performed poorly in all sensorimotor synchronization tasks, but the effect size was greater for complex as compared to simple stimuli. Group differences in working memory did not explain this result. Linear regression analysis revealed that working memory, synchronization to complex rhythms performances, age, and duration of device use predicted the number of correct syllables produced in a sentence repetition task. CONCLUSION: Despite early cochlear implantation or hearing aid use, hearing impairment affects the quality of temporal processing of acoustic stimuli in congenitally deaf children. This deficit seems to be more severe with stimuli of increasing rhythmic complexity highlighting a difficulty in structuring sounds according to a temporal hierarchy.

Multisensory integration and behavioral stability.

Information coming from multiple senses, as compared to a single one, typically enhances our performance. The multisensory improvement has been extensively examined in perception studies, as well as in tasks involving a motor response like a simple reaction time. However, how this effect extends to more complex behavior, typically involving the coordination of movements, such as bimanual coordination or walking, is still unclear. A critical element in achieving motor coordination in complex behavior is its stability. Reaching a stable state in the coordination pattern allows to sustain complex behavior over time (e.g., without interruption or negative consequences, like falling). This study focuses on the relation between stability in the coordination of movement patterns, like walking, and multisensory improvement. Participants walk with unimodal and audio-tactile metronomes presented either at their preferred rate or at a slower walking rate, the instruction being to synchronize their steps to the metronomes. Walking at a slower rate makes gait more variable than walking at the preferred rate. Interestingly however, the multimodal stimuli enhance the stability of motor coordination but only in the slower condition. Thus, the reduced stability of the coordination pattern (at a slower gait rate) prompts the sensorimotor system to capitalize on multimodal stimulation. These findings provide evidence of a new link between multisensory improvement and behavioral stability, in the context of ecological sensorimotor task.

Accent-induced Modulation of Neural and Movement Patterns during Spontaneous Synchronization to Auditory Rhythms.

Human rhythmic movements spontaneously synchronize with auditory rhythms at various frequency ratios. The emergence of more complex relationships-for instance, frequency ratios of 1:2 and 1:3-is enhanced by adding a congruent accentuation pattern (binary for 1:2 and ternary for 1:3), resulting in a 1:1 movement-accentuation relationship. However, this benefit of accentuation on movement synchronization appears to be stronger for the ternary pattern than for the binary pattern. Here, we investigated whether this difference in accent-induced movement synchronization may be related to a difference in the neural tracking of these accentuation profiles. Accented and control unaccented auditory sequences were presented to participants who concurrently produced finger taps at their preferred frequency, and spontaneous movement synchronization was measured. EEG was recorded during passive listening to each auditory sequence. The results revealed that enhanced movement synchronization with ternary accentuation was accompanied by enhanced neural tracking of this pattern. Larger EEG responses at the accentuation frequency were found for the ternary pattern compared with the binary pattern. Moreover, the amplitude of accent-induced EEG responses was positively correlated with the magnitude of accent-induced movement synchronization across participants. Altogether, these findings show that the dynamics of spontaneous auditory-motor synchronization is strongly driven by the multi-time-scale sensory processing of auditory rhythms, highlighting the importance of considering neural responses to rhythmic sequences for understanding and enhancing synchronization performance.

Accent-induced stabilization of spontaneous auditory-motor synchronization.

Humans spontaneously synchronize their movements with external auditory rhythms such as a metronome or music. Although such synchronization preferentially occurs toward a simple 1:1 movement-sound frequency ratio, the parameters facilitating spontaneous synchronization to more complex frequency ratios remain largely unclear. The present study investigates the dynamics of spontaneous auditory-motor synchronization at a range of frequency ratios between movement and sound, and examines the benefit of simple accentuation pattern on synchronization emergence and stability. Participants performed index finger oscillations at their preferred tempo while listening to a metronome presented at either their preferred tempo, or twice or three times faster (frequency ratios of 1:1, 1:2 or 1:3) with different patterns of accentuation (unaccented, binary or ternary accented), and no instruction to synchronize. Participants' movements were spontaneously entrained to the auditory stimuli in the three different frequency ratio conditions. Moreover, the emergence and stability of the modes of coordination were influenced by the interaction between frequency ratio and pattern of accentuation. Coherent patterns, such as a 1:3 frequency ratio supported by a ternary accentuation, facilitated the emergence and stability of the corresponding mode of coordination. Furthermore, ternary accentuation induced a greater gain in stability for the corresponding mode of coordination than was observed with binary accentuation. Together, these findings demonstrate the importance of matching accentuation pattern and movement tempo for enhanced synchronization, opening new perspectives for stabilizing complex rhythmic motor behaviors, such as running.

Do Temporal Regularities during Maintenance Benefit Short-term Memory in the Elderly? Inhibition Capacities Matter.

BACKGROUND/STUDY CONTEXT: Recent research has shown a benefit of temporally regular structure presented during the maintenance period in short-term memory for young adults. Because maintenance is impaired in aging, we investigated whether older adults can also benefit from the temporal regularities for maintenance and how their cognitive capacities might affect this potential benefit. METHODS: Healthy older adults (range: 63-90 years old) had to memorize visually presented letters and maintain them in short-term memory for 6 s until recall. The six-second retention interval was either filled with an isochronous rhythmic sound sequence that provided a temporally regular structure or silent. RESULTS: The effect of the isochronous rhythm on recall performance was modulated by inhibition capacities of older adults: as compared to silence, improved recall performance thanks to the rhythm emerged with increased inhibitory capacity of the participants. CONCLUSION: Even though maintenance of older adults benefits less from the presence of temporal regularities than does the maintenance of younger ones, our findings provide evidence for improved maintenance in short-term memory for older adults in the presence of a temporally regular structure, probably due to enhanced attentional refreshing. It further provides perspectives for training and rehabilitation of age-related working memory deficits.

Music and speech distractors disrupt sensorimotor synchronization: effects of musical training.

Humans display a natural tendency to move to the beat of music, more than to the rhythm of any other auditory stimulus. We typically move with music, but rarely with speech. This proclivity is apparent early during development and can be further developed over the years via joint dancing, singing, or instrument playing. Synchronization of movement to the beat can thus improve with age, but also with musical experience. In a previous study, we found that music perturbed synchronization with a metronome more than speech fragments; music superiority disappeared when distractors shared isochrony and the same meter (Dalla Bella et al., PLoS One 8(8):e71945, 2013). Here, we examined if the interfering effect of music and speech distractors in a synchronization task is influenced by musical training. Musicians and non-musicians synchronized by producing finger force pulses to the sounds of a metronome while music and speech distractors were presented at one of various phase relationships with respect to the target. Distractors were familiar musical excerpts and fragments of children poetry comparable in terms of beat/stress isochrony. Music perturbed synchronization with the metronome more than speech did in both groups. However, the difference in synchronization error between music and speech distractors was smaller for musicians than for non-musicians, especially when the peak force of movement is reached. These findings point to a link between musical training and timing of sensorimotor synchronization when reacting to music and speech distractors.

Walking to a multisensory beat.

Living in a complex and multisensory environment demands constant interaction between perception and action. In everyday life it is common to combine efficiently simultaneous signals coming from different modalities. There is evidence of a multisensory benefit in a variety of laboratory tasks (temporal judgement, reaction time tasks). It is less clear if this effect extends to ecological tasks, such as walking. Furthermore, benefits of multimodal stimulation are linked to temporal properties such as the temporal window of integration and temporal recalibration. These properties have been examined in tasks involving single, non-repeating stimulus presentations. Here we investigate the same temporal properties in the context of a rhythmic task, namely audio-tactile stimulation during walking. The effect of audio-tactile rhythmic cues on gait variability and the ability to synchronize to the cues was studied in young adults. Participants walked with rhythmic cues presented at different stimulus-onset asynchronies. We observed a multisensory benefit by comparing audio-tactile to unimodal stimulation. Moreover, both the temporal window of integration and temporal recalibration mediated the response to multimodal stimulation. In sum, rhythmic behaviours obey the same principles as temporal discrimination and detection behaviours and thus can also benefit from multimodal stimulation.

BAASTA: Battery for the Assessment of Auditory Sensorimotor and Timing Abilities.

The Battery for the Assessment of Auditory Sensorimotor and Timing Abilities (BAASTA) is a new tool for the systematic assessment of perceptual and sensorimotor timing skills. It spans a broad range of timing skills aimed at differentiating individual timing profiles. BAASTA consists of sensitive time perception and production tasks. Perceptual tasks include duration discrimination, anisochrony detection (with tones and music), and a version of the Beat Alignment Task. Perceptual thresholds for duration discrimination and anisochrony detection are estimated with a maximum likelihood procedure (MLP) algorithm. Production tasks use finger tapping and include unpaced and paced tapping (with tones and music), synchronization-continuation, and adaptive tapping to a sequence with a tempo change. BAASTA was tested in a proof-of-concept study with 20 non-musicians (Experiment 1). To validate the results of the MLP procedure, less widespread than standard staircase methods, three perceptual tasks of the battery (duration discrimination, anisochrony detection with tones, and with music) were further tested in a second group of non-musicians using 2 down / 1 up and 3 down / 1 up staircase paradigms (n = 24) (Experiment 2). The results show that the timing profiles provided by BAASTA allow to detect cases of timing/rhythm disorders. In addition, perceptual thresholds yielded by the MLP algorithm, although generally comparable to the results provided by standard staircase, tend to be slightly lower. In sum, BAASTA provides a comprehensive battery to test perceptual and sensorimotor timing skills, and to detect timing/rhythm deficits.

Unravelling individual rhythmic abilities using machine learning.

Humans can easily extract the rhythm of a complex sound, like music, and move to its regular beat, like in dance. These abilities are modulated by musical training and vary significantly in untrained individuals. The causes of this variability are multidimensional and typically hard to grasp in single tasks. To date we lack a comprehensive model capturing the rhythmic fingerprints of both musicians and non-musicians. Here we harnessed machine learning to extract a parsimonious model of rhythmic abilities, based on behavioral testing (with perceptual and motor tasks) of individuals with and without formal musical training (n = 79). We demonstrate that variability in rhythmic abilities and their link with formal and informal music experience can be successfully captured by profiles including a minimal set of behavioral measures. These findings highlight that machine learning techniques can be employed successfully to distill profiles of rhythmic abilities, and ultimately shed light on individual variability and its relationship with both formal musical training and informal musical experiences.

Coordination Rigidity in the Gait, Posture, and Speech of Persons with Parkinson's Disease.

Parkinson's disease (PD) is associated with reduced coordination abilities. These can result either in random or rigid patterns of movement. The latter, described here as coordination rigidity (CR), have been studied less often. We explored whether CR was present in gait, quiet stance, and speech-tasks involving coordination among multiple joints and muscles. Kinematic and voice recordings were used to compute measures describing the dynamics of systems with multiple degrees of freedom and nonlinear interactions. After clinical evaluation, patients with moderate stage PD were compared against matched healthy participants. In the PD group, gait dynamics was associated with decreased dynamic divergence-lower instability-in the vertical axis. Postural fluctuations were associated with increased regularity in the anterior-posterior axis, and voice dynamics with increased predictability, all consistent with CR. The clinical relevance of CR was confirmed by showing that some of those features contribute to disease classification with supervised machine learning (82/81/85% accuracy/sensitivity/specificity).

Rhythmic serious games as an inclusive tool for music-based interventions.

Technologies, such as mobile devices or sets of connected sensors, provide new and engaging opportunities to devise music-based interventions. Among the different technological options, serious games offer a valuable alternative. Serious games can engage multisensory processes, creating a rich, rewarding, and motivating rehabilitation setting. Moreover, they can be targeted to specific musical features, such as pitch production or synchronization to a beat. Because serious games are typically low cost and enjoy wide access, they are inclusive tools perfectly suited for remote at-home interventions using music in various patient populations and environments. The focus of this article is in particular on the use of rhythmic serious games for training auditory-motor synchronization. After reviewing the existing rhythmic games, initial evidence from a recent proof-of-concept study in Parkinson's disease is provided. It is shown that rhythmic video games using finger tapping can be used with success as an at-home protocol, and bring about beneficial effects on motor performance in patients. The use and benefits of rhythmic serious games can extend beyond the rehabilitation of patients with movement disorders, such as to neurodevelopmental disorders, including dyslexia and autism spectrum disorder.

Temporal malleability to auditory feedback perturbation is modulated by rhythmic abilities and auditory acuity.

Auditory feedback perturbation studies have indicated a link between feedback and feedforward mechanisms in speech production when participants compensate for applied shifts. In spectral perturbation studies, speakers with a higher perceptual auditory acuity typically compensate more than individuals with lower acuity. However, the reaction to feedback perturbation is unlikely to be merely a matter of perceptual acuity but also affected by the prediction and production of precise motor action. This interplay between prediction, perception, and motor execution seems to be crucial for the timing of speech and non-speech motor actions. In this study, to examine the relationship between the responses to temporally perturbed auditory feedback and rhythmic abilities, we tested 45 adult speakers on the one hand with a temporal auditory feedback perturbation paradigm, and on the other hand with rhythm perception and production tasks. The perturbation tasks temporally stretched and compressed segments (onset + vowel or vowel + coda) in fluent speech in real-time. This technique sheds light on the temporal representation and the production flexibility of timing mechanisms in fluent speech with respect to the structure of the syllable. The perception tasks contained staircase paradigms capturing duration discrimination abilities and beat-alignment judgments. The rhythm production tasks consisted of finger tapping tasks taken from the BAASTA tapping battery and additional speech tapping tasks. We found that both auditory acuity and motor stability in finger tapping affected responses to temporal auditory feedback perturbation. In general, speakers with higher auditory acuity and higher motor variability compensated more. However, we observed a different weighting of auditory acuity and motor stability dependent on the prosodic structure of the perturbed sequence and the nature of the response as purely online or adaptive. These findings shed light on the interplay of phonological structure with feedback and feedforward integration for timing mechanisms in speech.

Rhythm as an independent determinant of developmental dyslexia.

Temporal accounts of Developmental Dyslexia (DD) postulate that a timing impairment plays an important role in this learning disorder. However, DD has been associated with timing disorders as well as other motor and cognitive dysfunctions. It is still unclear whether nonverbal timing skills per se may be considered as independent determinants of DD. In this study, we investigated the independent contribution of predictive timing to DD above and beyond the motor and cognitive dysfunctions typically associated with this disorder. Twenty-one children with DD (aged 8-12, nine females) and 27 controls (14 females) were evaluated on perceptual timing, finger tapping, fine motor control, as well as attention and executive tasks. Participants were native French speakers from various socioeconomic backgrounds. The performance of children with DD was poorer than that of controls in most of the tasks. Predictors of DD, as identified by logistic regression modeling, were beat perception and precision in tapping to the beat, which are both predictive timing variables, children's tapping rate, and cognitive flexibility. These data support temporal accounts of DD in which predictive timing impairments partially explain the core phonological deficit, independent from general motor and cognitive functioning, making predictive timing a valuable tool for early diagnosis and remediation of DD. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

At-Home Training With a Rhythmic Video Game for Improving Orofacial, Manual, and Gait Abilities in Parkinson's Disease: A Pilot Study.

Rhythm disorders are consistently reported in Parkinson's disease (PD). They manifest across motor domains, such as in orofacial (oral diadochokinesis), manual (finger tapping), and gait tasks. It is still unclear, however, whether these disorders are domain- and task-specific, or result from impaired common mechanisms supporting rhythm processing (general dysrhythmia). We tested the possibility that an at-home intervention delivered via a rhythmic video game on tablet improves motor performance across motor domains in PD. Patients with PD (n = 12) played at home a rhythmic video game (Rhythm Workers) on tablet, in which they finger-tapped to the beat of music, for 6 weeks. A control group (n = 11) played an active non-rhythmic video game (Tetris). A third group (n = 10) did not receive any intervention. We measured rhythmic abilities in orofacial, manual and gait motor domains, as well as rhythm perception, before and after the intervention. Patients who performed the rhythmic training improved their orofacial and manual rhythmic performance. This beneficial effect was linked to improved rhythm perception only following the rhythmic training period. We did not observe any improvement in rhythmic abilities in the other two groups. In this pilot study, we demonstrated that at-home intervention with a rhythmic video game using finger tapping can have beneficial effects on motor performance across different motor domains (manual and orofacial). This finding provides evidence of a general dysrhythmia in PD and paves the way to technology-driven interventions aiming at alleviating rhythm-related motor deficits in PD.

Putting music to trial: Consensus on key methodological challenges investigating music-based rehabilitation.

Major advances in music neuroscience have fueled a growing interest in music-based neurological rehabilitation among researchers and clinicians. Musical activities are excellently suited to be adapted for clinical practice because of their multisensory nature, their demands on cognitive, language, and motor functions, and music's ability to induce emotions and regulate mood. However, the overall quality of music-based rehabilitation research remains low to moderate for most populations and outcomes. In this consensus article, expert panelists who participated in the Neuroscience and Music VII conference in June 2021 address methodological challenges relevant to music-based rehabilitation research. The article aims to provide guidance on challenges related to treatment, outcomes, research designs, and implementation in music-based rehabilitation research. The article addresses how to define music-based rehabilitation, select appropriate control interventions and outcomes, incorporate technology, and consider individual differences, among other challenges. The article highlights the value of the framework for the development and evaluation of complex interventions for music-based rehabilitation research and the need for stronger methodological rigor to allow the widespread implementation of music-based rehabilitation into regular clinical practice.

About time: Ageing influences neural markers of temporal predictability.

Timing abilities help organizing the temporal structure of events but are known to change systematically with age. Yet, how the neuronal signature of temporal predictability changes across the age span remains unclear. Younger (n = 21; 23.1 years) and older adults (n = 21; 68.5 years) performed an auditory oddball task, consisting of isochronous and random sound sequences. Results confirm an altered P50 response in the older compared to younger participants. P50 amplitudes differed between the isochronous and random temporal structures in younger, and for P200 in the older group. These results suggest less efficient sensory gating in older adults in both isochronous and random auditory sequences. N100 amplitudes were more negative for deviant tones. P300 amplitudes were parietally enhanced in younger, but not in older adults. In younger participants, the P50 results confirm that this component marks temporal predictability, indicating sensitive gating of temporally regular sound sequences.

BeatWalk: Personalized Music-Based Gait Rehabilitation in Parkinson's Disease.

Taking regular walks when living with Parkinson's disease (PD) has beneficial effects on movement and quality of life. Yet, patients usually show reduced physical activity compared to healthy older adults. Using auditory stimulation such as music can facilitate walking but patients vary significantly in their response. An individualized approach adapting musical tempo to patients' gait cadence, and capitalizing on these individual differences, is likely to provide a rewarding experience, increasing motivation for walk-in PD. We aim to evaluate the observance, safety, tolerance, usability, and enjoyment of a new smartphone application. It was coupled with wearable sensors (BeatWalk) and delivered individualized musical stimulation for gait auto-rehabilitation at home. Forty-five patients with PD underwent a 1-month, outdoor, uncontrolled gait rehabilitation program, using the BeatWalk application (30 min/day, 5 days/week). The music tempo was being aligned in real-time to patients' gait cadence in a way that could foster an increase up to +10% of their spontaneous cadence. Open-label evaluation was based on BeatWalk use measures, questionnaires, and a six-minute walk test. Patients used the application 78.8% (±28.2) of the prescribed duration and enjoyed it throughout the program. The application was considered "easy to use" by 75% of the patients. Pain, fatigue, and falls did not increase. Fear of falling decreased and quality of life improved. After the program, patients improved their gait parameters in the six-minute walk test without musical stimulation. BeatWalk is an easy to use, safe, and enjoyable musical application for individualized gait rehabilitation in PD. It increases "walk for exercise" duration thanks to high observance. Clinical Trial Registration: ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT02647242.

Singing proficiency in congenital amusia: imitation helps.

Singing out of tune characterizes congenital amusia. Here, we examine whether an aid to memory improves singing by studying vocal imitation in 11 amusic adults and 11 matched controls. Participants sang a highly familiar melody on the original lyrics and on the syllable /la/ in three conditions. First, they sang the melody from memory. Second, they sang it after hearing a model, and third, they sang in unison with the model. Results show that amusic individuals benefit from singing by imitation, whether singing after the model or in unison with the model. The amusics who were the most impaired in memory benefited most, particularly when singing on the syllable /la/. Nevertheless, singing remains poor on the pitch dimension; rhythm was intact and unaffected by imitation. These results point to memory as a source of impairment in poor singing, and to imitation as a possible aid for poor singers.