In music and music theory, the pulse consists of beats in a (repeating) series of identical yet distinct periodic short-duration stimuli perceived as points in time occurring at the mensural level. "This pulse is typically what listeners entrain to as they tap their foot or dance along with a piece of music (Handel, 1989), and is also colloquially termed the 'beat,' or more technically the 'tactus' (Lerdahl & Jackendoff, 1983)."