Many things stimulate our brains' reward centers, among them, coordinated movements. Consider the thrill some get from watching choreographed fight or car chase scenes in action movies. What about the enjoyment spectators get when watching sports or actually riding on a roller coaster or in a fast car?

Scientists aren't sure why we like movement so much, but there's certainly a lot of anecdotal evidence to suggest we get a pretty big kick out of it. Maybe synchronizing music, which many studies have shown is pleasing to both the ear and brain, and movement—in essence, dance—may constitute a pleasure double play.

Music is known to stimulate pleasure and reward areas like the orbitofrontal cortex, located directly behind one's eyes, as well as a midbrain region called the ventral striatum. In particular, the amount of activation in these areas matches up with how much we enjoy the tunes. In addition, music activates the cerebellum, at the base of the brain, which is involved in the coordination and timing of movement.

So, why is dance pleasurable?

First, people speculate that music was created through rhythmic movement—think: tapping your foot. Second, some reward-related areas in the brain are connected with motor areas. Third, mounting evidence suggests that we are sensitive and attuned to the movements of others' bodies, because similar brain regions are activated when certain movements are both made and observed. For example, the motor regions of professional dancers' brains show more activation when they watch other dancers compared with people who don't dance.

This kind of finding has led to a great deal of speculation with respect to mirror neurons—cells found in the cortex, the brain's central processing unit, that activate when a person is performing an action as well as watching someone else do it. Increasing evidence suggests that sensory experiences are also motor experiences. Music and dance may just be particularly pleasurable activators of these sensory and motor circuits. So, if you're watching someone dance, your brain's movement areas activate; unconsciously, you are planning and predicting how a dancer would move based on what you would do.

That may lead to the pleasure we get from seeing someone execute a movement with expert skill—that is seeing an action that your own motor system cannot predict via an internal simulation. This prediction error may be rewarding in some way.

So, if that evidence indicates that humans like watching others in motion (and being in motion themselves), adding music to the mix may be a pinnacle of reward.

Music, in fact, can actually refine your movement skills by improving your timing, coordination and rhythm. Take the Brazilian folk art, Capoeira—which could be a dance masquerading as a martial art or vice versa. Many of the moves in that fighting style are choreographed, taught and practiced, along with music, making the participants more adept—and giving them the pleasure from the music as well as from performing the movement.

Adding music in this context may cross the thin line between a killing machine and a dancing machine.

15 Comments

1. 1. bob.nichols@cox.net 08:32 PM 9/26/08

   This is an interesting review of how music and dance seem to be connected to reward centers of the brain This does not answer the question of why we like music. It only pushes the question back a step to why music and dance connected to reward centers of the brain. One can imagine evolutionary events that would select for this music-movement-reward connection.

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2. 2. stvjns 09:24 PM 9/26/08

   I find it telling that this neurologist fails to even consider for a moment that the body has equipment vital for health (lymph node system for example) that are exercized through dance. Without dance or other vigorous movements of the body, we move towards sickness. It seems that this neurologist forgot that the brain is an aspect of a larger system.

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3. 3. AScience 10:23 AM 9/27/08

   I agree with both of the above posts. The author fails to mention many other things connected to movement and it does not answer the question "Why do we like to dance--And move to the beat?". But, this scientist also makes a good point when he says that both the music and the body movement (dancing) stimulate us in different ways that when combined make for a larger, more rewarding stimulus.

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4. 4. Jim Lacey 10:06 AM 9/28/08

   Rhythmic percussion and dance probably are earlier examples of social bonding than language.

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5. 5. christinadmt 12:44 PM 9/30/08

   For years, dance/movement therapists have been harnessing the pleasure circuits in the brain to support healing with a variety of populations. Science is catching up to them, and this is exciting for the profession. I would encourage the author to do a piece on dance/movement therapy. Not only has engaging in dance been shown to elevate mood by activating the brains pleasure circuits, but moving in relationship with another fosters empathy. Dance can be a vehicle for physical release and can serve as an expressive and communicative vehicle capable of moving people deeply. It is through this that trained dance/movement therapists use dance and movement as the primary means for assessment, connection and expression. (see American Dance Therapy Association)
   

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6. 6. christinadmt 12:45 PM 9/30/08

   For years, dance/movement therapists have been harnessing the pleasure circuits in the brain to support healing with a variety of populations. Science is catching up to them, and this is exciting for the profession. I would encourage the author to do a piece on dance/movement therapy. Not only has engaging in dance been shown to elevate mood by activating the brain’s pleasure circuits, but moving in relationship with another fosters empathy. Dance can be a vehicle for physical release and can serve as an expressive and communicative vehicle capable of moving people deeply. It is through this that trained dance/movement therapists use dance and movement as the primary means for assessment, connection and expression. (see American Dance Therapy Association)
   

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7. 7. DanH 02:29 PM 9/30/08

   It is, of course, interesting to look for clues to this in human history- but, could the apparent need for coordinated/empathetic movement be much older?
   Our roots are in the ocean. Perhaps the fantastic schooling movements of many species of fish offer a clue: line-dancing protects us against predation.
   

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8. 8. JohnnyRab 08:01 PM 9/30/08

   Another thing to note that I read in a book by Stephen Pinkner. . . Why does some music calm us while another type makes us aggressive? He thinks that is has something to do with environmental stimulus, i.e. in an environment that produces sounds like rock music is probably threatening to humans compared to an environment containing sounds like classical music which would be more stimulating and possibly, boring to some. It's obviously a complicated issue but I recommend reading "how the mind works" to understand music as "auditory cheesecake."

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9. 9. Cerebral*Origami 08:50 AM 10/1/08

   Many animals "dance" during courtship rituals. We could simply be responding on a subconscious level to one of the oldest and most powerful motivators there is: the desire to mate.

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10. 10. dr george pradhan, mb 10:32 AM 10/1/08

    =Dance, close bisex tight hug or not, or all male totem/jungle dance, or night club floor show pole dance, or temple dance, all dance is definitely erotic soft core sex set to music and drum beat, to thrill the viewer or participants, even to mental or genital orgasm..

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11. 11. dmarchant 04:06 PM 10/2/08

    Social Scientist, Barbara Ehrenreich point out in her book, "Dancing in the Streets: a history of collective joy" that rhythmic movement would have been useful as a way to achieve group synchrony. So-called "primitive" tribal dance rituals organize individuals into collective group entities that hunt better, resist predation better and act as one larger organism than individuals alone. Music integrally functions as a lattice for this collective harmony. So groups (and therefore their individual members) that could achieve such harmony would be more successful survivors. Mirror Neurons are just structural evidence that we are wired for social harmonic unity, and unified rhythmic movement reinforces these social bonds. And as previously mentioned, the brain and nervous system is built as a unit through dynamic, interaction with environments (movement). Dancing and other movement arts/activities as a form of play is good training for real-world encounters in which movement skill is necessary. Most successful animals have forms of play which similarly serve life-skill functions (See National Institute for Play).
    And finally, I concur with the movement therapists that full body movement is good for the Being as a whole, mindbodyspirit. The most perplexing question to me is why have human beings gotten so sedentary as to have to contemplate dance so "objectively"? If you get out and move with people in rhythm, you find out exactly why we do it.

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12. 12. riborp 03:01 PM 10/5/08

    It's interesting and informative. I'd rather say why I like to dance. I have danced whole nights to the tune of music and it's definitely pleasurable. A relation to attract opposite sex is also a part of the game, but that solely doesn't give us pleasure. I think when we move to the beat we perform a task efficiently and in harmony with nature. Moreover, there's an effect of music on our brain as well. I am not an expert in motors or neuron cells but it definitely soothes the brain. After all, we all are perfectionists.

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13. 13. Musician 11:21 PM 10/12/08

    Most likely, we like to dance because that is how we first communicated joyous events with each other as a form of social bonding.

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14. 14. choppam 08:47 AM 4/21/09

    The parallel with sex is good here - limber, coordinated, improvisational sex produces its own excitement and release, and good, tight, individual bonding. And D Marchant's comment: "Mirror Neurons are just structural evidence that we are wired for social harmonic unity, and unified rhythmic movement reinforces these social bonds" ties in with his observation about "group synchrony. So-called "primitive" tribal dance rituals organize individuals into collective group entities that hunt better, resist predation better and act as one larger organism than individuals alone."
    
    Getting the cacophony of individual conflicting interests, emotions etc (due to status, gender, age etc) into synch is imperative for effective group functioning - think orchestras or sports teams. Music and dance achieve this - the greater the crescendo and the freer the orgasmic release, the better for us and our groups.
    
    Which just shows how inhuman and sclerotic our present puritanical anti-sensual society is and how great the need is to change it to a more liberating and energizing society where schools give our kids a deep confidence and mastery of rhythm and harmony and interaction and creativity in their earliest and most formative years. With this foundation they'll be able to work together better and learn together better later when it comes to more abstract things like science, logic, maths, etc - theoretical analysis and synthesis.
    
    So Wilhelm Reich and his followers were bang on target with the central place they gave orgasmic release in their theory - and the necessity for loosening up, sloughing off body "armour", moving and a-grooving, reeling with the feeling, rocking and a-rolling, etc.
    
    Excellent!
    
    And of course, a lot of studies that you all know better than I do have shown that music and song target different parts of the brain from less rhythmic more discursive language.
    
    Which also (since it's all hardwired) shows that attempting to suppress rhythm, dance, music, poetry etc (as certain puritanical sects or regimes do) or to corral them into commercially profitable industrially bullwhipped sectors (Big Entertainment - Hollywood, Recording, etc) or to turn it all into some kind of hyper-exclusive minority activity (Big Art, Dance, Performance, etc) is as hopeless an enterprise as trying to stop the tide coming in, or trying to ban electricity.

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15. 15. JoanneDuffy 11:54 AM 4/7/10

    Dance is a horizontal expression of a vertical desire.

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