WASHINGTON — If you have two left feet on the dance floor, it turns out
you may have a diagnosable condition.
The condition, called beat-deafness, is a rare condition in which sufferers
can’t keep a beat to music, which can make dancing a difficult activity.
A new study from
researchers at McGill University and the University of
Montreal found that people who have beat-deafness don’t have a problem
with
the actual movements involved in dancing, but rather synchronizing their body
to sounds.
In the study, researchers tracked participants’ ability to find a regular
pulse and move with it. Because beat deafness is so rare, researchers compared
two beat-deaf individuals with 32 controls participants.
“Most people had no problem, but the beat-deaf individuals were quite variable
in their tapping — sometimes missing the beat by a large amount,” McGill
psychology professor Caroline Palmer said in a news release.
The study found a small minority of people can’t tap their feet or clap their
hands to the beat, and many often missed the rhythms by a large amount.
Researchers are not sure why some people have difficulty moving to the beat
while others do not. Researchers concluded that beat-deaf people may have
different biological rhythms, which are behaviors that are periodic or cyclic,
such as walking, speaking and dancing.
“Our findings support the idea that beat-deafness is a problem of how our
internal biological rhythms adapt to or couple with changing sounds in the
environment that, in most individuals, make it possible to dance, ice skate
with a partner, and bob one’s head to the beat of a favorite tune,” Palmer
said in the release.
Watch a video about the research below:
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