The effects of Parkinson’s disease, music training, and dance training on beat perception and production abilities

We assessed a large sample (n>400) of young, older, and Parkinson’s patient groups on various beat perception and production tasks and examined the influence of reported music and dance training. Music training appeared to mitigate motor timing deficits in Parkinson’s disease. Specifically, Parkinson’s disease patients with 3+ years of music training performed these tasks comparably to healthy adults, while patients with minimal training were significantly worse.