Commentary: Beta-Band Oscillations Represent Auditory Beat and Its Metrical Hierarchy in Perception and Imagery

According to the event tagging framework (Hanslmayr and Staudigl, 2014), beta oscillations encode salient events (e.g., downbeat) as depicted in Figure 1C. During rhythm perception, where encoding the beat in memory is critical (Teki and Griffiths, 2014, 2016) the structure of the metrical accents and salient events may be represented by the depth of beta desynchronization. [...]the largest beta desynchronization may be expected to occur after the downbeat (Figure 1C). In the present study, the amount of beta desynchronization was found to be largest after the accented tones. [...]the reported results are consistent with the event tagging framework, suggesting that subjectively and physically accented events invoke changes in the encoding of these events (Pfurtscheller and Lopes da Silva, 1999; Repp, 2005). [...]future studies should also focus on other (non-sensory) brain regions, like the supplementary motor area or basal ganglia that are implicated in encoding rhythmic patterns (Grahn and Brett, 2007; Teki et al., 2011; Crowe et al., 2014; Merchant et al., 2015), as it is possible that different regions may recruit distinct mechanisms.