# Eye blinks synchronize with musical beats during music listening

## TL;DR

This study shows that people's eye blinks naturally sync with music beats, revealing a new way the brain processes rhythm.

## Contribution

It identifies eye blinks as a novel form of auditory-motor synchronization linked to brain activity and attention.

## Key findings

- Eye blinks synchronize with musical beats across various tempi and without melodic cues.
- Blink synchronization correlates with neural beat tracking and white matter structure in the left superior longitudinal fasciculus.
- Blink synchronization reflects modulation of dynamic auditory attention.

## Abstract

Auditory-motor synchronization, the alignment of body movements with rhythmic patterns in music, is a universal human behavior, yet its full scope remains incompletely understood. Through four experiments with 123 young nonmusicians, integrating eye-tracking, neurophysiological recordings, white matter structural imaging, and behavioral analysis, we reveal a previously unrecognized form of synchronization: spontaneous eye blinks synchronize with musical beats. Blinks robustly synchronized with beats across a range of tempi and independently of melodic cues. Electroencephalogram recordings revealed a dynamic correspondence between blink timing and neural beat tracking. Blink synchronization performance was linked to white matter microstructure variation in the left superior longitudinal fasciculus, a key sensorimotor pathway. Additionally, the strength of blink synchronization reflected the modulation of dynamic auditory attention. These findings establish blink synchronization as a novel behavioral paradigm, expanding the auditory-motor synchronization repertoire and highlighting the intricate interplay between music rhythms and oculomotor activity. This discovery underscores a cross-modal active sensing mechanism, offering new insights into embodied music perception, rhythm processing, and their potential clinical applications.

Human movements are known to synchronize with rhythmic patterns in music. This study expands our understanding of embodied music perception, by revealing that spontaneous eye blinks also align with musical beats and linking this to brain activity, white matter structure, and dynamic attention.