Beat-deafness

Beat-deafness

Beat-deafness is a rhythm disorder that is a little like tone-deafness in that the brain is unable to process a particular aspect of music in the same manner as others. A person who is beat-deaf is not someone who lacks rhythm, but instead, they may difficulties translating auditory stimuli to physical responses (like clapping or dancing).  So, a person is aware of the beat, but when it comes to interacting with the rhythm, such as dancing or foot tapping, a person will experience difficulties keeping with the beat.

Beat-deafness is a relatively new disability, so the research on it is not as vast as other areas of study. Research has indicated that beat-deafness is a result of certain connectivity in the brain. The area in question is the region responsible for responding to alerts. The entirety of beat-deafness essentially boils down to what can be described as a glitch, of sorts, in the connectivity in the brain that process sound.

Simply being clumsy or being a bad dancer doesn’t necessarily mean that you are beat-deaf. The critical defining component to this disorder is that a person is unable to stay in time with beats. A person who is beat-deaf may respond a little too early or too late to a beat stimulus.

For a person with beat-deafness in may be difficult to know which instrument to dance to when listening to a song, but ultimately, if you enjoy music then who cares what others may have to say? Simply experience the music; because just like music is more than a beat, so too is a person more than anything that others may deem to be an infliction.  As Dr. Seuss once said, “Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter, and those who matter don’t mind.”