Honing, H., Merchant, H., Háden, G.P., Prado, L. & Bartolo, R. (2012). Probing beat induction in rhesus monkeys: Is beat induction species-specific? Proceedings of the International Conference on Music Perception and Cognition (pp. 454-455). Thessaloniki: Greece.

In the current study we measure auditory event-related brain potentials (ERP) in a rhesus monkey (Macaca mulatta) using the mismatch negativity component (MMN) as an index of (the violation of) rhythmic expectation (cf. Honing, 2012). First, we tested whether an MMN can be elicited in rhesus monkeys at all (using deviant tones at random positions in the sound stream). Second, we investigated whether an MMN can be elicited for omissions (by inserting gaps at random positions in the sound stream). Consequently, we probed the presence of beat induction by selectively omitting parts of a musical rhythm (randomly inserting gaps at the first position of a musical unit, i.e. the ‘downbeat’).

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