ArticleCurrent biology : CB2020
Categorical Rhythms Are Shared between Songbirds and Humans.
Article in Current biology : CB, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. Cited by 44 papers.
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Who cites it
44 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
- Rhythm and timing in laughter reveal that human vocal plasticity falls on a hominid continuum.Communications biology · 2026Article
- Universal and Cross-Cultural Variations in Audio-Motor Synchronization Between French and Indian Participants.Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · 2026Article
- The Ontogeny of Vocal Rhythms in a Non-Human Primate.Developmental science · 2026Article
- Extreme Rhythm Keeping in Long-Range Slow Click Communication of Sperm Whales.Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · 2026Article
- Article
- Dual Sound Sources in Siamangs Generate Individually Rhythmic and Temporally Coordinated Vocal Emissions.Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · 2026Article
- The Emergence of a Universal Rhythmic Feature: Simple Models Can Produce Categorical Rhythms.Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · 2026Article
- Novel Approach to Inter-Onset-Interval Ratio Uncovers Music-Like Rhythmic Patterns in Budgerigar (Melopsittacus undulatus) Warble Song.Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · 2026Article
- Rhythmic Signaling of Ants and Butterflies With Varying Degrees of Myrmecophily.Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · 2026Article
- Twice times two: Dual mechanism for double rhythmic meter in orangutans and the evolution of human song.iScience · 2026Article
- Hidden assumptions of integer ratio analyses in bioacoustics and music.Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · 2025Article
- Core systems of music perception.Trends in cognitive sciences · 2025Review
- Revealing rhythm categorization in human brain activity.Science advances · 2025Article
- Rhythmic coordination in rapid duets of little crakes: cooperative signalling without shared experience.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Third-order self-embedded vocal motifs in wild orangutans, and the selective evolution of recursion.Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · 2025Article
- Accelerando and crescendo in African penguin ecstatic display songs.Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · 2025Article
- An evolutionary model of rhythmic accelerando in animal vocal signalling.PLoS computational biology · 2025Article
- Rhythmic categories in horse gait kinematics.Journal of anatomy · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
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- Erratum issued
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Rhythm is a prominent feature of music. Of the infinite possible ways of organizing events in time, musical rhythms are almost always distributed categorically. Such categories can facilitate the transmission of culture-a feature that songbirds and humans share. We compared rhythms of live performances of music to rhythms of wild thrush nightingale and domestic zebra finch songs. In nightingales, but not in zebra finches, we found universal rhythm categories, with patterns that were surprisingly similar to those of music. Isochronous 1:1 rhythms were similarly common. Interestingly, a bias toward small ratios (around 1:2 to 1:3), which is highly abundant in music, was observed also in thrush nightingale songs. Within that range, however, there was no statistically significant bias toward exact integer ratios (1:2 or 1:3) in the birds. High-ratio rhythms were abundant in the nightingale song and are structurally similar to fusion rhythms (ornaments) in music. In both species, preferred rhythms remained invariant over extended ranges of tempos, indicating natural categories. The number of rhythm categories decreased at higher tempos, with a threshold above which rhythm became highly stereotyped. In thrush nightingales, this threshold occurred at a tempo twice faster than in humans, indicating weaker structural constraints and a remarkable motor proficiency. Together, the results suggest that categorical rhythms reflect similar constraints on learning motor skills across species. The saliency of categorical rhythms across humans and thrush nightingales suggests that they promote, or emerge from, the cultural transmission of learned vocalizations. VIDEO ABSTRACT.
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