You're listening to Bulletproof Radio with Dave Asprey.

Today's cool fact of the day is that timing is everything when your brain listens to music.

You've probably felt the urge to tap along the music at least some of the time and

new research now tells us why that happens.

Turns out that recognizing rhythms doesn't involve just parts of the brain that process sound.

It also relies on the brain region that's in charge of how you move.

This is probably why we like to dance.

When an air of the brain that plans movement was disabled temporarily,

people struggled to detect changes in rhythms and music.

So some people really don't have rhythm if that part of the brain doesn't work well.

This study was the first to connect human's ability to detect rhythms to the posterior

parietal cortex, which is the brain region that's associated with planning body movements,

as well as some higher level functions like paying attention and perceiving three dimensions.

When you're listening to rhythm, you're making predictions about how long the time interval

is between the beats and where those sounds are going to fall, which is what the research

found.

Those predictions are part of a system scientist called relative timing, which helps the

brain process repetitive sounds like a musical rhythm.

Now this wasn't in the research, but your heartbeat works the same way.

If your heartbeat is beating on a regular, very, very set interval, it actually means

you're stressed.

If there's variance in the rhythm, it means you're not stressed and actually able to handle

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