CNS*2026 Halifax

Introduction
Humans develop beat perception and rhythm synchronization remarkably early, suggesting that prenatal experience may play a formative role. The neural basis behind this remains poorly understood. We propose that maternal gait during pregnancy helps shape the development of neural timekeeping by pairing rhythmic auditory events with correlated smooth vestibular input that the fetus learns to anticipate.


Methods
We developed a biologically grounded recurrent neural network with parallel auditory and vestibular pathways. One version of the network contained generic excitatory and inhibitory units; another incorporated a diversity of units modeled from cortical neurons. The models were trained via single-step backpropagation with auditory pulses paired with sinusoidal vestibular waveforms mimicking maternal locomotion. The model was trained to predict the input five timesteps in advance — representing vestibular predictions during maternal gait — across a range of tempos. Vestibular input was gradually removed as training performance improved, encouraging the network to rely on internally generated predictions given only auditory pulses.

Results
We explored the effects of networks incorporating multiple biologically realistic cell types, which outperformed single-type networks on synchronization tasks. The dual auditory-vestibular architecture further improved both synchronization and continuation performance compared to either network on its own. Weighted tempo sampling, based on training loss, reduced drift toward preferred tempos during continuation and could represent musical training during life.


Discussion
These results demonstrate that a biologically inspired predictive network can be trained through a plausible developmental curriculum to internalize and maintain rhythmic structure across different tempos. This model offers a platform for investigating the neural basis of timekeeping and how early sensory experience — beginning in utero and refined by musical training — may scaffold the rhythm synchronization abilities universal to humans. 


References
Yousefabadi, M., & Cannon, J. (2025). Maternal Gait Contributes To Development Of Beat Perception And Urge To Move To Music In A Predictive Processing Network Model. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17247501

Acknowledgement
This research was funded in part by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada