Background: Music-based interventions are suggested for older adults to pre-vent or delay the onset of neurocognitive disorders (NCDs; J¨unemann et al.,2022) or to improve the quality of life of people with NCD (Kales et al., 2015).It has been suggested that stimulating sensorimotor synchronisation (SMS) might be e↵ective in bringing about positive behavioural and psychological changes (Ghilain et al., 2019). The goal of this research is to understand how SMS abilities are a↵ected by di↵erent aspects of cognitive functioning, since there currently exists some disparity in the literature regarding the nature and extent of sensorimotor decline in people with NCD. Methods: 52 older individuals (61-92 years old), recruited from a geriatric memory clinic, per-formed a SMS task after a full geriatric and neuropsychological assessment. The SMS task consists of tapping along to musical and metronomic stimuli containing sudden tempo changes. Results: People tapped with a higher consistency to a metronome than to music. People tapped close to the beat with music whereas their taps preceded the beat considerably when tapping to a metronome. People appeared to adapt more easily to accelerations than to decelerations, especially with the musical stimulus. Moreover, people with lower scores on the Mini-Mental State Examination, Activities of Daily Living (ADL), and Instrumental ADL scales tapped with a lower consistency than those with higher scores. Finally, people scoring higher on the Mattis Dementia Rating Scale memory subtest, and people scoring higher on orientation to space, tapped several tens of milliseconds ahead of the beat, as compared to people scoring lower on these scales. Discussion: Our research demonstrates that at least some aspects of cognitive functioning and functional independence are related to sensorimotor abilities. We discuss our results’ implications for the development of music-based interventions, the ways in which they might exert their positive effects on mood, behaviour and cognition, and especially the importance of tailoring an intervention to an individual’s cognitive profile.