RITMO Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Rhythm, Time and Motion

Humans have a unique capacity to experience and create rhythm. This capacity is central for making sense of events happening in time. Rhythm is also central to human biology, from the oscillations of our nervous system to breathing, pulse, and longer bodily cycles. These levels of human rhythm constantly interplay with various biological, cultural, and mechanical rhythms in our environment. RITMO’s vision is to expand our understanding of rhythm as a fundamental property of human life. We generate new knowledge about the foundations for human rhythm and time perception. The starting point is that the human sense of rhythm relates to basic perceptual and cognitive mechanisms that are in themselves rhythmic. The centre is interdisciplinary, combining perspectives from music and media studies, philosophy and aesthetics, cognitive neuroscience, and informatics. We use state-of-the-art methods for motion capture, eye tracking, physiological sensing, neuroimaging, machine learning, and robotics. After six years of existence, we see increasing interdisciplinary collaboration within the centre. The number of co-authored publications by researchers from different disciplines increases, and more projects combine different methods. In 2023, RITMO researchers published 1 book, 21 book chapters, 48 journal articles and held more than 100 conference presentations around the world. Seven RITMO PhD fellows defended their theses. RITMO researchers were also involved in a number of scientific and artistic dissemination activities. More than 800 people from around the world participated in RITMO’s new open course “Pupillometry – The Eye as a Window into the Mind” on the FutureLearn platform.

Rhythm is omnipresent in human life, as we walk, talk, dance and play; as we tell stories about our past; and as we predict the future. Rhythm is also central to human biology, from the micro-oscillations of our nervous system to our heartbeats, breathing patterns and longer chronobiological cycles (or biorhythms). As such, it is a key aspect of human action and perception that is in complex interplay with the various cultural, biological and mechanical rhythms of the world. The vision behind RITMO is to reveal the basic cognitive mechanism(s) underlying human rhythm, using music, motion and audiovisual media as empirical points of departure. No other interdisciplinary research environment has focused solely on rhythm and its direct and indirect impacts before. Given the fundamental role of rhythm in human life, such an endeavour is long overdue. RITMO will undertake research on rhythm in human action and perception, and on the aesthetic and cultural 'texts' that such processes elicit. This venture will benefit from the combined perspectives of the humanities, cognitive neuroscience, social sciences and informatics. Now is the right time to establish such a centre, because we can finally explore some of the larger questions of the humanities via state-of-the-art technologies for motion capture, neuroimaging, pupillometry and robotics. Such a research strategy is as novel as it is essential to any engagement with the impact of human rhythm. RITMO will generate groundbreaking knowledge about the structuring and understanding of the temporal dimensions of human life. As such, it will change how we view human cognition and supply a cornerstone for the future exploitation of rhythm in applications for well-being and rehabilitation.