ARE YOU BEAT-DEAF?

‘Poor dancers now have a potential scientific explanation for their two left feet. The condition is called beat-deafness, and it affects our ability to pick up rhythms.’
If you’re a dancer with the proverbial two left feet, it could be that it’s not your fault at all. Like with everything else, there is a chance that you can blame your genes for it. New research suggests that there is a condition called ‘beat-deafness’ which renders you incapable of moving to the rhythm of music. Not only are your movements constrained by this, but also your ability to pick up the beats in a piece of music.
Researchers from McGill University and the University of Montreal in Canada compared two people with suspected beat-deafness to thirty-two control participants. When the ‘suspects’ were asked to beat their feet evenly on the ground without any music, they were able to do it easily, ruling out any motor disability. But when music was added, it was found that they were incapable of catching the beats, and they fell out of sync with the time changes.
The team therefore concluded that beat-deafness is a condition in which the internal biological rhythms of the body react differently from normal to external cues. Biological rhythms are the natural patterns of the body that allow us to perform certain activities such as eating and sleeping. Other rhythmic behaviour is driven by external cues, such as times when we match our walking speed to our partner’s.
Can you use it as an excuse for your non-existent dancing ability? Be careful because the condition is extremely rare. So if you’re going to use it, make sure no one else in the room is.