Music · Medicine · BrainAll chapters

CHAPTER 22 · The Drive to Creativity

Musical Rhythm: Its Reception and Production in the Brain

Michael P. H. Stanley, MD · Marinos Sotiropoulos, MD

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Abstract

The link between internal cognitive operations and their external behavioral accompaniments is perhaps best exemplified in the everyday entrainment of the rhythmic movements that spontaneously arise in music listeners and music makers. Beginning with an illustrative case of aberrant rhythm generation in speech and discerning its phenomenological distinction from clinical mimics, the chapter offers a survey of both bottom-up and top-down sources of rhythm generation and interpretation generally, and then more specifically, in acoustical circumstances such as music. The authors later speculate, based on the anatomic and cognitive models presented, a means of approximating musical rhythm generation and interpretation with nearby perceptual theories of other modalities—such as the “what” and “where” pathway visually or right-sided prosody and left-sided language processes—to provide a richer integration of our sensorimotor system.

Keywords

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Cite this chapter

Chapter references below omit unverified page ranges and chapter-specific DOIs.

APA

Stanley, M. P. H., & Sotiropoulos, M. (2026). Musical Rhythm: Its Reception and Production in the Brain. In P. L. Pearl & S. Arfaie (Eds.), Music, Medicine, and the Neurobiology of Creativity. Cambridge University Press.

AMA

Stanley MPH, Sotiropoulos M. Musical Rhythm: Its Reception and Production in the Brain. In: Pearl PL, Arfaie S, eds. Music, Medicine, and the Neurobiology of Creativity. Cambridge University Press; 2026.

Vancouver

Stanley MPH, Sotiropoulos M. Musical Rhythm: Its Reception and Production in the Brain. In: Pearl PL, Arfaie S, editors. Music, Medicine, and the Neurobiology of Creativity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 2026.

Chicago

Stanley, Michael P. H., and Marinos Sotiropoulos. “Musical Rhythm: Its Reception and Production in the Brain.” In Music, Medicine, and the Neurobiology of Creativity, edited by Phillip L. Pearl and Saman Arfaie. Cambridge University Press, 2026.

BibTeX

@incollection{chapter22_2026,
  author = {Stanley, Michael P H and Sotiropoulos, Marinos},
  title = {Musical Rhythm: Its Reception and Production in the Brain},
  booktitle = {Music, Medicine, and the Neurobiology of Creativity},
  editor = {Pearl, Phillip L. and Arfaie, Saman},
  publisher = {Cambridge University Press},
  year = {2026}
}

Harvard

Stanley, M. P. H. and Sotiropoulos, M. (2026) “Musical Rhythm: Its Reception and Production in the Brain”, in Pearl, P.L. and Arfaie, S. (eds.) Music, Medicine, and the Neurobiology of Creativity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Michael P. H. Stanley

Michael P. H. Stanley

MD

Program Lead, Cognitive Neurology; Assistant Professor, Tufts University School of Medicine

Tufts Medical Center · Tufts University

Profile

Michael P. H. Stanley is a cognitive neurologist, Program Lead for Cognitive Neurology at Tufts Medical Center, and Assistant Professor at Tufts University School of Medicine. His clinical interests include memory care and the neurological development or impairment of artists, writers, poets, musicians, craftspeople, and actors. He brings this perspective on the relationship between neurological illness and creative life to the volume.

Scholarship & professional background

He graduated from the Tufts University School of Medicine’s Maine Track Program and completed residency in the Mass General Brigham Neurology program. During residency and fellowship, he participated in the Brigham and Women’s Performing Arts Clinic, caring for problems affecting musicians and their rehabilitation. His medical-humanities scholarship includes music and medicine, and he has written for public audiences in outlets including The Boston Globe, The Wall Street Journal, and WBUR. At the NIH Music as Medicine workshop, he addressed the role of clinical observations in developing questions for music-therapy research.

His 2026 publications include a case report and connectivity analysis of speech and motor hyperrhythmia associated with a right frontal glioblastoma. This work connects an unusual clinical alteration of rhythm with the study of the brain networks involved.

Selected work & perspectives

Academic profile and professional workTraining, performing arts medicine, and scholarship · NIH workshop biographySpeech and motor hyperrhythmia · 2026 publication
Marinos Sotiropoulos

Marinos Sotiropoulos

MD

Instructor in Neurology, Harvard Medical School; Leader of Continuing Education and Attending Physician in Behavioral Neurology, Mass General Brigham

Mass General Brigham · Harvard Medical School

Profile

Marinos Sotiropoulos is a neurologist affiliated with Mass General Brigham and Harvard Medical School. With Michael P. H. Stanley, he contributes a chapter on the reception and production of musical rhythm in the brain. Their subject links the temporal organization of music with the neurological processes that allow people to perceive, anticipate, and produce rhythm.

Scholarship & professional background

He studied medicine at the University of Athens and undertook neurological training in the Mass General Brigham program, followed by specialization in behavioral neurology and neuropsychiatry. His scholarship includes a review of the relationships among genetics, brain dynamics, and artistic creativity across music, dance, and the visual arts. This work places questions about rhythm within a broader investigation of the biological and cognitive foundations of creative behavior.

Selected work & perspectives

Genes, Brain Dynamics and Art: The Genetic Underpinnings of Creativity in Dancing, Musicality and Visual ArtsClinical training · Mass General Brigham