The role of endogenous melatonin for the control of the circadian system under entrained conditions and for the determination of the chronotype is still poorly understood. Mice with deletions in the melatoninergic system (melatonin deficiency or the lack of melatonin receptors, respectively) do not display any obvious defects in either their spontaneous (circadian) or entrained (diurnal) rhythm...

The attentional blink (AB) is one impressive demonstration of limited attentional capacities in time: a second target (T2) is often missed when it should be detected within 200-600 ms after a first target. According to the dynamic attending theory, attention cycles oscillatory. Regular rhythms (i.e., pulses) should evoke expectations regarding the point of the next occurrence of a tone/element ...

Humans and oscine songbirds share the rare capacity for vocal learning. Songbirds have the ability to acquire songs and calls of various rhythms through imitation. In several species, birds can even coordinate the timing of their vocalizations with other individuals in duets that are synchronized with millisecond-accuracy. It is not known, however, if songbirds can perceive rhythms holistically...

Tapping tasks have been investigated throughout the years, with variations in features such as the complexity of the task, the use of one or both hands, the employ of auditory or visual stimuli, and the characteristics of the subjects. The evaluation of lateral asymmetries in tapping tasks in children offers an insight into the structure of rhythmic movements and handedness at early stages of d...

Many neurons exhibit postinhibitory rebound (PIR), in which neurons display enhanced excitability following inhibition. PIR can strongly influence the timing of spikes on rebound from an inhibitory input. We studied PIR in the lateral pyloric (LP) neuron of the stomatogastric ganglion of the crab Cancer borealis. The LP neuron is part of the pyloric network, a central pattern generator that nor...

Previous research has shown that the matching of rhythmic behaviour between individuals (synchrony) increases cooperation. Such synchrony is most noticeable in music, dance and collective rituals. As well as the matching of behaviour, such collective performances typically involve shared intentionality: performers actively collaborate to produce joint actions. Over three experiments we examined...

Several global and specific rhythm metrics and speech rate were used to characterize differences in the rhythms of 5- and 8-year-olds' spoken English. The results were that only speech rate and the rate-normalized Pairwise Variability Index (nPVI) differentiated between 5- and 8-year-olds' speech. A further result was that the variance in nPVI values was better explained by a specific measure d...

To study the function of the neuropeptide pigment-dispersing factor (PDF) in the circadian system of Drosophila, we misexpressed the pdf gene from the grasshopper Romalea in the CNS of Drosophila and investigated the effect of this on behavioral rhythmicity. pdf was either ectopically expressed in different numbers of neurons in the brain or the thoracical nervous system or overexpressed in the...