Eye blinks synchronize with musical beats during music listening

Abstract

Auditory-motor synchronization, the alignment of body movements with rhythmic patterns in music, is a universal human behavior, yet its full scope remains incompletely understood. Through four experiments with 123 young nonmusicians, integrating eye-tracking, neurophysiological recordings, white matter structural imaging, and behavioral analysis, we reveal a previously unrecognized form of synchronization: spontaneous eye blinks synchronize with musical beats. Blinks robustly synchronized with beats across a range of tempi and independently of melodic cues. Electroencephalogram recordings revealed a dynamic correspondence between blink timing and neural beat tracking. Blink synchronization performance was linked to white matter microstructure variation in the left superior longitudinal fasciculus, a key sensorimotor pathway. Additionally, the strength of blink synchronization reflected the modulation of dynamic auditory attention. These findings establish blink synchronization as a novel behavioral paradigm, expanding the auditory-motor synchronization repertoire and highlighting the intricate interplay between music rhythms and oculomotor activity. This discovery underscores a cross-modal active sensing mechanism, offering new insights into embodied music perception, rhythm processing, and their potential clinical applications.