What makes some people more able to time better than others at rhythm games?

[Arch0wl]

Originally Posted by kaiten123

according to some documentary on the brain that i watched like 5 years ago and barely remember: the human brain has mechanisms desiged specifically for detecting and following beats and rhythms and such. they even showed some woman who can't understand music in the same way as most people because her brain doesnt detect or interpret rhythm in any meaningful way so everything just sounds like a collection of noises to her.

The reason I'm skeptical of this being the only explanation is because, well,

people with very good MA are not always the best dancers; in fact, it's usually the opposite. The best DDR freestylers back in the day tended to have bad PA, and people with very good PA had very bad freestyle. There were exceptions, of course -- a few people were great in both -- but dancing ability seems to affect MA not at all.

Perhaps dancing ability is something like that ability + the ability to execute physical movements and the amount of rhythmic ability for dancing isn't as high as the physical ability, while MA is just that ability in isolation.