About 69 genetic variants associated with beat synchronization have been discovered. Beat synchronization is the ability to adjust to the beat of music.
An international team of scientists, including the Vanderbilt Genetics Institute and 23andMe, demonstrated that the human ability to adjust to the beat of music (called beat synchronization) is partly coded in the human genome.
Genetic Variations and Beat Synchronization
Several genes associated with beat synchronization are involved in central nervous system function, including genes expressed very early in brain development and in areas underlying auditory and motor skills, said co-senior author Reyna Gordon, PhD, associate in the department of According to Professor Otolaryngology – Head and Neck Surgery and co-director of the Vanderbilt Music Cognition Lab.
‘The study made new connections between the genetic and neural architecture of musical rhythms, thus improving our understanding of how our genomes tune our brains to the beat of music.’
“The rhythm isn’t affected by just one gene, it’s influenced by many hundreds of genes,” Gordon said. “Calping, clapping and dancing to the beat of music is at the core of our human musicality.”
The study also discovered that beat synchronization shares some of its genetic architecture with other traits, including biological rhythms such as walking, breathing, and circadian patterns.
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“This is a novel way toward understanding the biology underlying how music relates to other health traits,” said co-senior author Lee Davis, associate professor of medicine.
23andMe’s large research dataset provided study data from more than 600,000 customers who agreed to participate in the research, allowing researchers to identify genetic alleles that vary with participants’ beat synchronization ability.
“The large number of consensual study participants provided a unique opportunity for our group to capture small genetic signals,” said David Hinds, PhD, a research fellow and statistical geneticist at 23andMe. “These findings represent a leap forward for scientific understanding of the relationship between genetics and music.”
Source: Eurekalert
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