When we listen to rhythm, we often move spontaneously to the beat. This movement may result from processing of the beat by motor areas. Previous studies have shown that several motor areas respond when attending to rhythms. Here we investigate whether specific motor regions respond to beat in rhythm. We predicted that the basal ganglia and supplementary motor area (SMA) would respond in the presence of a regular beat. To establish what rhythm properties induce a beat, we asked subjects to reproduce different types of rhythmic sequences. Improved reproduction was observed for one rhythm type, which had integer ratio relationships between its intervals and regular perceptual accents. A subsequent functional magnetic resonance imaging study found that these rhythms also elicited higher activity in the basal ganglia and SMA. This finding was consistent across different levels of musical training, although musicians showed activation increases unrelated to rhythm type in the premotor cortex, cerebellum, and SMAs (pre-SMA and SMA). We conclude that, in addition to their role in movement production, the basal ganglia and SMAs may mediate beat perception.

Although the public spends millions of pounds per year on various 'brain training' programs, the efficacy and performance of these training regimes remain unclear. In a collaboration with the BBC science series Bang Goes The Theory, Adrian Owen and colleagues conducted a six-week trial of various online training regimes. And although they observed improvements on the specific tasks used for training, the authors concluded that any improvements failed to transfer to other untrained cognitive tasks. Millions of pounds per year are spent on various 'brain-training' programs; however, the efficacy and performance of these training regimes is still unclear. In collaboration with the BBC, a six-week online study of brain training was conducted. Although improvements were observed in the specific tasks used for training, in the authors' view there was no evidence that these improvements transferred to other untrained cognitive tasks. ‘Brain training’, or the goal of improved cognitive function through the regular use of computerized tests, is a multimillion-pound industry1, yet in our view scientific evidence to support its efficacy is lacking. Modest effects have been reported in some studies of older individuals2,3 and preschool children4, and video-game players outperform non-players on some tests of visual attention5. However, the widely held belief that commercially available computerized brain-training programs improve general cognitive function in the wider population in our opinion lacks empirical support. The central question is not whether performance on cognitive tests can be improved by training, but rather, whether those benefits transfer to other untrained tasks or lead to any general improvement in the level of cognitive functioning. Here we report the results of a six-week online study in which 11,430 participants trained several times each week on cognitive tasks designed to improve reasoning, memory, planning, visuospatial skills and attention. Although improvements were observed in every one of the cognitive tasks that were trained, no evidence was found for transfer effects to untrained tasks, even when those tasks were cognitively closely related.

Little is known about the underlying neurobiology of rhythm and beat perception, despite its universal cultural importance. Here we used functional magnetic resonance imaging to study rhythm perception in musicians and nonmusicians. Three conditions varied in the degree to which external reinforcement versus internal generation of the beat was required. The “volume” condition strongly externally marked the beat with volume changes, the “duration” condition marked the beat with weaker accents arising from duration changes, and the “unaccented” condition required the beat to be entirely internally generated. In all conditions, beat rhythms compared with nonbeat control rhythms revealed putamen activity. The presence of a beat was also associated with greater connectivity between the putamen and the supplementary motor area (SMA), the premotor cortex (PMC), and auditory cortex. In contrast, the type of accent within the beat conditions modulated the coupling between premotor and auditory cortex, with greater modulation for musicians than nonmusicians. Importantly, the response of the putamen to beat conditions was not attributable to differences in temporal complexity between the three rhythm conditions. We propose that a cortico-subcortical network including the putamen, SMA, and PMC is engaged for the analysis of temporal sequences and prediction or generation of putative beats, especially under conditions that may require internal generation of the beat. The importance of this system for auditory–motor interaction and development of precisely timed movement is suggested here by its facilitation in musicians.

Humans possess an ability to perceive and synchronize movements to the beat in music (‘beat perception and synchronization’), and recent neuroscientific data have offered new insights into this beat-finding capacity at multiple neural levels. Here, we review and compare behavioural and neural data on temporal and sequential processing during beat perception and entrainment tasks in macaques (including direct neural recording and local field potential (LFP)) and humans (including fMRI, EEG and MEG). These abilities rest upon a distributed set of circuits that include the motor cortico-basal-ganglia–thalamo-cortical (mCBGT) circuit, where the supplementary motor cortex (SMA) and the putamen are critical cortical and subcortical nodes, respectively. In addition, a cortical loop between motor and auditory areas, connected through delta and beta oscillatory activity, is deeply involved in these behaviours, with motor regions providing the predictive timing needed for the perception of, and entrainment to, musical rhythms. The neural discharge rate and the LFP oscillatory activity in the gamma- and beta-bands in the putamen and SMA of monkeys are tuned to the duration of intervals produced during a beat synchronization–continuation task (SCT). Hence, the tempo during beat synchronization is represented by different interval-tuned cells that are activated depending on the produced interval. In addition, cells in these areas are tuned to the serial-order elements of the SCT. Thus, the underpinnings of beat synchronization are intrinsically linked to the dynamics of cell populations tuned for duration and serial order throughout the mCBGT. We suggest that a cross-species comparison of behaviours and the neural circuits supporting them sets the stage for a new generation of neurally grounded computational models for beat perception and synchronization.

Affective cognitive control capacity (e.g., the ability to regulate emotions or manipulate emotional material in the service of task goals) is associated with professional and interpersonal success. Impoverished affective control, by contrast, characterizes many neuropsychiatric disorders. Insights from neuroscience indicate that affective cognitive control relies on the same frontoparietal neural circuitry as working memory (WM) tasks, which suggests that systematic WM training, performed in an emotional context, has the potential to augment affective control. Here we show, using behavioral and fMRI measures, that 20 d of training on a novel emotional WM protocol successfully enhanced the efficiency of this frontoparietal demand network. Critically, compared with placebo training, emotional WM training also accrued transfer benefits to a “gold standard” measure of affective cognitive control–emotion regulation. These emotion regulation gains were associated with greater activity in the targeted frontoparietal demand network along with other brain regions implicated in affective control, notably the subgenual anterior cingulate cortex. The results have important implications for the utility of WM training in clinical, prevention, and occupational settings.