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Auditory arrhythmia


Auditory arrhythmia is the inability to rhythmically perform music, to keep time, and to replicate musical or rhythmic patterns. It has been caused by damage to the cerebrum or rewiring of the brain.

An individual with this condition has an especially difficult time maintaining a steady beat, and even has difficulty following along to a steady rhythm. Before it was a known disorder, it was thought that these individuals were just severely uncoordinated, and therefore were unable to follow along with the music. It has been discovered recently that problems with rhythm in Schizophrenia, Parkinson's, and Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder are also found to have a correlation to rhythm deficiencies.

The cerebellum houses the center for fine motor skills. These are needed in order to play the instrument.

The temporal lobe and the frontal lobe are necessary for listening and recalling different musical aspects from lyrics, reading the music, and performing.

Memory centers are primarily located in the hippocampus, and the process of listening to music originates there.

Neuroplasticity allows the brain to grow and change, especially in the auditory and motor cortex. Listening and playing music helps both of these areas of the brain to develop more, which was found to be correlated to having an improves auditory imagery in many performers in a study conducted at Utrecht University in the Netherlands.

Auditory arrhythmia can also be confused with something called beat deafness. Beat deafness is a form of congenital amusia, which is a person's inability to move in time to the music, or feel a musical rhythm. It is believed by researchers that beat deafness stems from a connection problem between the brain's auditory cortex and inferior frontal lobe. A postdoctoral researcher with the International Laboratory for Brain, Music, and Sound Research at the University of Montreal studied a case where a man could not feel a rhythm in any sense. Not only did he have difficulty dancing, but he was unable to tap his foot or snap his fingers along with the beat of the music. The major difference between beat deafness and auditory arrhythmia, however, is that beat deafness is most likely something you are born with, whereas the arrhythmia most likely comes from damage, which was the case in the research done on "Mathieu," the first known case of beat-deafness. In another case, a former musician known as H.J. suffered damage from a temporoparietal infarct, which is an area of dead tissue due to lack of adequate blood supply. The infarct was believed to have been caused by a problem during a coronary angiography, which is a test to show the insides of an individual's coronary arteries. H.J. suffered difficulties with creating a steady beat, an inability to distinguish between different sets of rhythms, and also experienced difficulties when playing his instruments.


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