LAUSR

Music listening often entails spontaneous perception and body movement to a periodic pulse-like meter. There is increasing evidence that this cross-cultural ability relates to neural processes that selectively enhance metric periodicities, even when these periodicities are not prominent in the acoustic stimulus. However, whether these neural processes emerge early in development remains largely unknown. Here, we recorded the electroencephalogram (EEG) of 20 healthy 5- to 6-month-old infants, while they were exposed to two rhythms known to induce perception of meter consistently across Western adults. One rhythm contained prominent acoustic periodicities corresponding to the meter, whereas the other rhythm did not. Infants showed significantly enhanced representations of meter periodicities in their EEG responses to both rhythms. This effect is unlikely to reflect the tracking of salient acoustic features in the stimulus, as it was observed irrespective of the prominence of meter periodicities in the audio signals. Moreover, as previously observed in adults, the neural enhancement of meter was greater when the rhythm was delivered by low-pitched sounds. Together, these findings indicate that the endogenous enhancement of metric periodicities beyond low-level acoustic features is a neural property that is already present soon after birth. These high-level neural processes could set the stage for internal representations of musical meter that are critical for human movement coordination during rhythmic musical behavior. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.