News Finding: Poeppel is quick to acknowledge that his work by no means proves that entrainment equates with being a good musician.
Paper Finding: As the entrainment mechanism occurs for a wide range of acoustic stimuli, we find it unlikely to be following beat or meter in music: such clear groupings do not exist in other stimulus types.
News Context: They might also explain why musicians appear to be more attuned to environmental sounds, like picking out a single voice in the din of a crowded room. Poeppel is quick to acknowledge that his work by no means proves that entrainment equates with being a good musician. aEURoeMaybe youaEUR(tm)re still a really bad piano player despite your brain rhythms locking on, but most of our musicians were conservatory trained so presumably theyaEUR(tm)re pretty good,aEUR he jokes.
Paper Context: This methodological choice allows us to study the rate of the music without delving into the complexities of beat and meter, which can shift nonmonotonically with increasing overall rate (i.e., faster notes are often arranged into larger groupings). As the entrainment mechanism occurs for a wide range of acoustic stimuli, we find it unlikely to be following beat or meter in music: such clear groupings do not exist in other stimulus types. We demonstrate that cortical oscillatory activity in both low (<8 Hz) and high (15-30 Hz) frequencies is tightly coupled to behavioral performance in musical listening, in a bidirectional manner.