Percussion Music & Motor System

 

Drumming, or instrumental sound generation of any sort, is very uncommon among vertebrates. Perhaps the most striking other example are palm cockatoos, Probosciger aterrimus, which use a stick to strike hollow trees as a communication signal (Wood, 1984, 1988). The only other clear examples are by woodpeckers (who sometimes drum with their bills against particularly resonant trees as displays, in territorial/mate attractions contexts similar to those associated with song in songbirds (Dodenhoff et al., 2001; Stark et al., 1998). Kangaroo rats and some other desert rodents drum out patterns with their hind feet on the ground (Randall, 1997). But bimanual drumming per se is, as far as I know, unique to the great apes and humans.

---- W. Tecumseh Fitch (2006)

 

In human cultures, singing, rapping, and dancing are often accompanied by percussion music, which reinforces/represents the hierarchy of the metrical structure through regular accents. Metrical structures refer to the way musical beats are grouped, such as marches (two beats grouped together) or waltzes (three beats grouped together). The hierarchy of the metrical structure can be regarded as a “time ruler” with labelled graduation marks (Figure 1). Such structures may reflect humans' superior capacity for temporal organization.

 

Figure 1. A “time ruler” with labelled graduation marks and the metrical symbols in Kunqu.

 

We conducted two brain-imaging experiments on the rhythmic patterns of percussion music (Tsai et al., 2010; 2012). In the first experiment, we compared the brain activation patterns associated with the learned percussion music of Beijing opera and the unlearned percussion music of Sichuan opera. The participants recruited the premotor cortices (PMC) and the pre-supplementary motor area (pre-SMA) to covertly recite along with the learned percussion music (Figure 2). In the second experiment, we examined the brain activation patterns associated with the rhythmic patterns of the drum set in rock music. The participants (skilled drummers) did not recruit the pre-supplementary motor area to covertly recite along with the learned percussion music. Given that the percussion music of Beijing opera is characterized by subtle timing manipulations and shifts between metrical structures, we suggest that the pre-SMA plays a key role in error-monitoring during subvocal rehearsals. This view is consistent with previous experiments demonstrating error-related activity in the SMA/pre-SMA during motor tasks (Gallea et al., 2008; Klein et al., 2007). More investigations are needed to compare different genres and traditions of human percussion music.

 

 

Figure 2. A comparison of the brain activation patterns associated with the learned percussion music of Beijing opera and the unlearned percussion music of Sichuan opera (Tsai et al., 2010).

 

REFERENCES

Dodenhoff, D. J., Stark, R. D., & Johnson, E. V. (2001). Do woodpecker drums encode information for species recognition? Condor, 103, 143–150.

Fitch, W. T. (2006). The biology and evolution of music: a comparative perspective. Cognition, 100, 173–215.

Gallea, C., Graaf, J. B., Pailhous, J., & Bonnard, M. (2008). Error processing during online motor control depends on the response accuracy. Behavioural Brain Research, 193, 117–125.

Klein, T. A., Endrass, T., Kathmann, N., Neumann, J., von Cramon, D. Y., & Ullsperger, M. (2007). Neural correlates of error awareness. Neuroimage, 34, 1774–1781.

Randall, J. A. (1997). Species-specific footdrumming in kangaroo rats: Dipodomys ingens, D. deserti, D. spectabilis. Animal Behaviour, 54, 1167–1175.

Stark, R. D., Dodenhoff, D. J., & Johnson, E. V. (1998). A quantitative analysis of woodpecker drumming. Condor, 100, 350–356.

Tsai, C. G., Chen, C. C., Chou, T. L., & Chen, J. H. (2010). Neural mechanisms involved in the oral representation of percussion music: an fMRI study. Brain and Cognition, 74, 123-131.

Tsai, C. G., Fan, L. Y., Lee, S. H., Chen, J. H., & Chou, T. L. (2012). Specialization of the posterior temporal lobes for audio-motor processing - evidence from a functional magnetic resonance imaging study of skilled drummers. European Journal of Neuroscience, 35, 634–643.

Wood, G. A. (1984). Tool use by the Palm Cockatoo Probosciger aterrimus during display. Corella, 8, 94–95.

Wood, G. A. (1988). Further field observations of the Palm Cockatoo Probosciger aterrimus in the Cape York Peninsula, Queensland. Corella, 12, 48–52.

 

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