ArticleFrontiers in psychology2017
The Paradox of Isochrony in the Evolution of Human Rhythm.
Article in Frontiers in psychology, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 37 papers.
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Who cites it
37 citing papers in PubMed.
- Cortico-striatal network architecture shapes rhythmic biases in music.Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991) · 2026Article
- Humans, but not zebra finches, produce spontaneously isochronous song through the lifespan.iScience · 2026Article
- Rhythmic Structure Shapes Dyadic Self-Other Representations Through Interpersonal Action Coupling.Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · 2026Article
- The Ontogeny of Vocal Rhythms in a Non-Human Primate.Developmental science · 2026Article
- Article
- Challenges and new opportunities in deciphering the meaning of corvid call sequences.Animal cognition · 2025Review
- Accelerando and crescendo in African penguin ecstatic display songs.Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · 2025Article
- Temporal Dynamics With and Without a Nervous System: Plant Physiology, Communication, and Movement.Cognitive science · 2025Review
- Rhythmic categories in horse gait kinematics.Journal of anatomy · 2025Article
- The rhythm of horse gaits.Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · 2025Article
- Rhythmic Roots: The Adaptive Functions of Vocal Isochrony and Its Role in Human Music and Language Evolution.Psihologijske teme = Psychological themes = Psychological topics · 2025Article
- Dance displays in gibbons: biological and linguistic perspectives on structured, intentional, and rhythmic body movement.Primates; journal of primatology · 2025Article
- Context-dependent rhythmicity in chimpanzee displays.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2024Article
- Cetaceans are the next frontier for vocal rhythm research.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- A genomic basis of vocal rhythm in birds.Nature communications · 2024Article
- The Emerging Science of Interacting Minds.Perspectives on psychological science : a journal of the Association for Psychological Science · 2024Article
- Syncopation as structure bootstrapping: the role of asymmetry in rhythm and language.Frontiers in psychology · 2024Article
- Why do dogs wag their tails?Biology letters · 2024Article
- Sex differences in vocal learning ability in songbirds are linked with differences in flexible rhythm pattern perception.Animal behaviour · 2023Article
- Modelling the emergence of synchrony from decentralized rhythmic interactions in animal communication.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2023Article
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2 authors.
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Abstract
Isochrony is crucial to the rhythm of human music. Some neural, behavioral and anatomical traits underlying rhythm perception and production are shared with a broad range of species. These may either have a common evolutionary origin, or have evolved into similar traits under different evolutionary pressures. Other traits underlying rhythm are rare across species, only found in humans and few other animals. Isochrony, or stable periodicity, is common to most human music, but isochronous behaviors are also found in many species. It appears paradoxical that humans are particularly good at producing and perceiving isochronous patterns, although this ability does not conceivably confer any evolutionary advantage to modern humans. This article will attempt to solve this conundrum. To this end, we define the concept of isochrony from the present functional perspective of physiology, cognitive neuroscience, signal processing, and interactive behavior, and review available evidence on isochrony in the signals of humans and other animals. We then attempt to resolve the paradox of isochrony by expanding an evolutionary hypothesis about the function that isochronous behavior may have had in early hominids. Finally, we propose avenues for empirical research to examine this hypothesis and to understand the evolutionary origin of isochrony in general.
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