Rhythm and its perception in the central nervous system

Abstract

Rhythm works as an organizing principle in all sorts/manner of human behavior and perception. Several sciences investigate rhythm, trying to unveil the mechanisms of its perception and its neural correlates. In order to assess the knowledge available from 2001 to 2011, we conducted a review into five international data bases using the keywords “rhythm” and “perception”. 17 original research papers were found whose findings were fairly inconclusive and unable to precisely locate one single rhythm processing area in the brain, but found activations in both cortical and subcortical structures and the cerebellum. However, methods were found to be fairly diverse and often terminologically inconsistent, which hampers comparison between studies. Conclusions: the former vision of rhythm perception in the brain as occurring in a network has been confirmed.