Abstract

Synchronizing movements to music is a hallmark of human culture, but its evolutionary and neurobiological origins remain unknown. This ability requires (i) extracting a steady rhythmic pulse, or beat, out of continuous sounds; (ii) projecting this pattern forward in time; and (iii) timing motor commands to anticipate future beats. Here, we demonstrate that macaques can synchronize to a subjective beat in real music and even spontaneously do so over alternative strategies. This contradicts the influential “vocal-learning hypothesis” that musical beat synchronization is privileged to species with complex learned vocalizations. We propose an alternative view of musical beat perception and synchronization as a continuum onto which different species can be mapped based on their capacity to coordinate the general abilities listed above through association with reward.