Similar to humans, rats can distinguish sounds presented regularly over time

What is it about?

The rhythms of music are organized on a regular beat. We explored whether a mammal species distantly related to humans (i.e. rats) could detect that sounds were presented regularly, in a constant rate. We trained the animals with sounds that were presented either regularly or irregularly over time. Only the regular ones were rewarded with food. Then, we presented the animals with sounds at new fast or slow rates, without giving them food for any test stimuli. Rats looked for food more times when the sounds were regularly presented. This means that the animals may have abstracted the temporal regularity underlying the sound sequences. We found a similar discrimination behavior in humans. In sum, detecting that sounds are regularly paced over time is not restricted to humans.

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Why is it important?

We found that rats, a mammal that is distantly related to humans and do not possess vocal learning abilities, can discriminate regluar sequences of sounds from irregular sequences of sounds. This means that these animals may have a timing mechanism (similar to humans) to accurately process perceptual information over time and thus recognize relevant temporal features of a given auditory stimulus.

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