The human capacity to synchronize movements to an auditory beat is central to musical behaviour and to debates over the evolution of human musicality. Have humans evolved any neural specializations for music processing, or does music rely entirely on brain circuits that evolved for other reasons? The vocal learning and rhythmic synchronization hypothesis proposes that our ability to move in time with an auditory beat in a precise, predictive and tempo-flexible manner originated in the neural circuitry for complex vocal learning. In the 15 years, since the hypothesis was proposed a variety of studies have supported it. However, one study has provided a significant challenge to the hypothesis. Furthermore, it is increasingly clear that vocal learning is not a binary trait animals have or lack, but varies more continuously across species. In the light of these developments and of recent progress in the neurobiology of beat processing and of vocal learning, the current paper revises the vocal learning hypothesis. It argues that an advanced form of vocal learning acts as a preadaptation for sporadic beat perception and synchronization (BPS), providing intrinsic rewards for predicting the temporal structure of complex acoustic sequences. It further proposes that in humans, mechanisms of gene-culture coevolution transformed this preadaptation into a genuine neural adaptation for sustained BPS. The larger significance of this proposal is that it outlines a hypothesis of cognitive gene-culture coevolution which makes testable predictions for neuroscience, cross-species studies and genetics.

This article is part of the theme issue ‘Synchrony and rhythm interaction: from the brain to behavioural ecology’.

人类将动作与听觉节拍同步的能力是音乐行为和关于人类音乐性进化的争论的核心。人类是否进化出了用于音乐处理的神经专门化，或者音乐是否完全依赖于因其他原因而进化的大脑回路？声乐学习和节奏同步假说提出，我们以精确、预测和节奏灵活的方式随听觉节拍及时移动的能力起源于复杂声乐学习的神经回路。自该假说提出以来的 15 年里，各种研究都支持了它。然而，一项研究对这一假设提出了重大挑战。此外，越来越清楚的是，声音学习并不是动物拥有或缺乏的二元特征，而是在不同物种之间不断变化。鉴于这些发展以及节拍处理和声乐学习的神经生物学的最新进展，本文修正了声乐学习假设。它认为，声乐学习的高级形式可以作为零星节拍感知和同步（BPS）的预适应，为预测复杂声学序列的时间结构提供内在奖励。它进一步提出，在人类中，基因-文化协同进化机制将这种预适应转化为持续 BPS 的真正神经适应。该提议的更大意义在于，它概述了认知基因-文化协同进化的假设，该假设为神经科学、跨物种研究和遗传学做出了可检验的预测。

本文是主题“同步与节奏互动：从大脑到行为生态学”的一部分。