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Neural entrainment to musical rhythm is thought to underlie the perception and production of music. In aging populations, the strength of neural entrainment to rhythm has been found to be attenuated, particularly during attentive listening to auditory streams. However, previous studies on neural entrainment to rhythm and aging have often employed artificial auditory rhythms or limited pieces of recorded, naturalistic music, failing to account for the diversity of rhythmic structures found in natural music. As part of larger project assessing a novel music-based intervention for healthy aging, we investigated neural entrainment to musical rhythms in the electroencephalogram (EEG) while participants listened to self-selected musical recordings across a sample of younger and older adults. We specifically measured neural entrainment to the level of musical pulse—quantified here as the phase-locking value (PLV)—after normalizing the PLVs to each musical recording’s detected pulse frequency. As predicted, we observed strong neural phase-locking to musical pulse, and to the sub-harmonic and harmonic levels of musical meter. Overall, PLVs were not significantly different between older and younger adults. This preserved neural entrainment to musical pulse and rhythm could support the design of music-based interventions that aim to modulate endogenous brain activity via self-selected music for healthy cognitive aging.
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This content will become publicly available on January 31, 2026
Diary analysis of an RCT: Natural language analyses of gamma-music-based intervention
Recent findings in Alzheimer’s disease research has suggested that light entrainment in the form of gamma-band (40 Hz) stimulation can ameliorate Alzheimer’s-associated pathology and improve cognition. Here we report feasibility of a music-based intervention that is coupled with light entrainment in the gamma band, as well as a control intervention that pairs podcast listening with lights tuned to delta but not gamma band frequencies. We compare qualitative data from participant-maintained logbooks (diaries) and researcher notes using Natural Language Processing (NLP) methods, specifically word count and sentiment analysis, and show that both music-listening and podcast-listening participants spent a similar amount of time engaging with intervention and, on average, described positively valenced experiences. Results suggest the importance of naturalistic data obtained from diary studies as a snapshot of ongoing interventions.
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- PAR ID:
- 10590660
- Publisher / Repository:
- PKP
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Music and Medicine
- Volume:
- 17
- Issue:
- 1
- ISSN:
- 1943-8621
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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