Learning to read is the cornerstone of education. Recently, it has been discovered that the better you are at keeping a beat (e.g., accurately tapping along to a metronome or tapping out a beat in music) the better you are at reading. This raises fundamental questions about the overlapping brain and behavioral bases of reading and rhythmic abilities. This project measures sound-induced brainwaves in the auditory neural system in a search for "neural signatures" that are shared between people who are good readers and those who are good at keeping a beat. Once these signatures are established, they can be used to hone programs such as school-based music instruction that emphasize rhythmic skills in order to best encourage the parts of the brain that support reading and literacy.
The investigators will examine the overlap in the neural resources drawn upon by reading and rhythm. By measuring neural responses they will test the hypothesis that two types of rhythmic skills, synchronizing to a metronomic beat and extracting a beat from a complex rhythm, involve different brain regions, subcortical and cortical, respectively. The hypothesis is that the two rhythmic skills relate to temporal precision in the brainstem and phase-locking of ongoing cortical oscillations and contribute independent sources of variance to reading ability. By comprehensively testing rhythmic and reading skills in secondary school students, an age group old enough to perform the required rhythmic tasks but in whom reading skills are continuing to emerge, the investigators hope to further our understanding of reading and rhythm in relation to the unique contributions of subcortical and cortical auditory areas. In so doing, this work might guide the development of teaching strategies to optimize language skills for all children and remediation programs for poor readers.
