Dance is the most synchronized activity people perform. Neuroscientists are trying to discover not only how but why we do it.
Image: Woody Welch, Aurora Photos
In Brief
- Dance is a fundamental form of human expression that likely evolved together with music as a way of generating rhythm.
- It requires specialized mental skills. One brain area houses a representation of the body’s orientation, helping to direct our movements through space; another serves as a synchronizer of sorts, enabling us to pace our actions to music.
- Unconscious entrainment—the process that causes us to absent-mindedly tap our feet to a beat—reflects our instinct for dance. It occurs when certain subcortical brain regions converse, bypassing higher auditory areas.
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So natural is our capacity for rhythm that most of us take it for granted: when we hear music, we tap our feet to the beat or rock and sway, often unaware that we are even moving. But this instinct is, for all intents and purposes, an evolutionary novelty among humans. Nothing comparable occurs in other mammals nor probably elsewhere in the animal kingdom. Our talent for unconscious entrainment lies at the core of dance, a confluence of movement, rhythm and gestural representation. By far the most synchronized group practice, dance demands a type of interpersonal coordination in space and time that is almost nonexistent in other social contexts.
Even though dance is a fundamental form of human expression, neuroscientists have given it relatively little consideration. Recently, however, researchers have conducted the first brain-imaging studies of both amateur and professional dancers. These investigations address such questions as, How do dancers navigate though space? How do they pace their steps? How do people learn complex series of patterned movements? The results offer an intriguing glimpse into the complicated mental coordination required to execute even the most basic dance steps.
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19 Comments
Add Comment"This finding bolsters the so-called gestural theory of language evolution..." - I agree with this completely, but also feel the Robin Dunbar's explanation of the link between grooming and language (Grooming, Gossip, and the Evolution of Language) is also very relevant to this finding - the representation of the hands in the Broca's area. I can't help but feel that evolutionary development as great as language require an amalgam of influential factors and Robin Dunbar's theory and I'm sure a couple others, I think, should be mentioned here. Is there a reason only "gestural theory" was mentioned since it is not the only link between language and the hands?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI have not read every word in the article you are replying to, but enough of your reply to indicate to me that you might be interested in this interview:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://brainsciencpodcast.wordpress.com/2008/06/13/39-arbib/
This was posted on SCIAM community blog.
I tried to listen to a related podcast on the same website, but it would not open. It may be that one must subscribe first.
It is a very informative view from a researcher and probably relevant to your interests.
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Edited by Bradley at 06/16/2008 7:19 PM
The authors discuss an area homologous to Broca's area. So, perhaps they can test some of their hypotheses about dance and language with experiments with American Sign Language. ASL includes the necessity of dynamically defining (and understanding) the space around the signer -- it's got more dimensions than the relative linearity of spoken languages. So... is it language (Broca's area), dance (homologue), both, or neither? PET or fMRI on ASL fluents... deaf, hearing, and previously hearing (people who lost the ability to hear and became ASL fluent later)... could give the answer and test the authors' overall hypothesis.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt might be easier to study the brain activity of a person playing a musical instrument. Playing the drums or the piano, for example, could easily be looked at as a form of dancing. Most of the same elements are involved including rhythm, coordination, muscle memory, practice improving performance, etc. Though not involving the whole body as much, even playing the clarinet would probably involve a lot of the same areas of the brain.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMay I suggest two other topics for this research?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this1. Compare brain activities of people involved in a very close embrace which require tremendous mutual coordination like in Argentine Tango and dancers dancing solo dances ( not tango ).
2. Very experienced Tango dancers are able to dance without music. As if they compose music inside and transmit it to the partner. It would be interesting to compare them with people who can not yet dance without music and the same dancers dancing with music.
Igor Polk: http://www.virtuar.com/tango/content.htm
So have you ever heard the expression, "If you held his/her hands, he/she could not speak"? I wonder about that. Specifically, it would be interesting to see differences in activity in, say, Brocca's area and the homologue mentioned in the article for people who use their hands a lot while speaking versus those who do not. You could interview people pre-scan and give them a semi-quantitative rating on the amount of their bodies they put into their speaking... and then scan them. Hmmm...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDance educators have understood for three decades that the symbol-making processes of learning expressive dance helps children learn other academic subjects. In addition, mothers of infants understand that learning movement gesture is a precursor to the development of language. The neurological connections have never been researched.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTechnological brain scanning to understand the learning of steps, patterns, and sequences of movement in the Tango is a wonderful beginning to understand how the brain functions in dance and how the learning of dance can promote learning. Research needs to continue with young children to explore a host of research questions in relation to the neurology of dance, brain function, and learning:
1. What is the relationship between learning dance and brain function in other areas of learning?
2. How does motor development affect the maturation of the brain and nervous system? Does this affect intellectual capabilities?
3. If, as biologist and psychologist Jean Piaget and others profess, children until the age of two are motor, senate, physical, and concrete learners, how does an understanding of early movement as a symbolic language affect an infant's cognitive development?
Much research has been done in relation to music and the development of spatial intelligence and math ability resulting in a multi-billion dollar "Mozart Affect" industry. No one has researched the relationship between spatial intelligence, symbol-making, learning, and dance. In the original study by Fran Raucher that correlated music and learning, the children were moving around the room and were not static. This important variable was never factored out in the results.
The NDEO has developed a Research in Dance Education database that is a descriptive index of approximately 4,000 documents on dance education. If any readers of Scientific American have written about learning dance, please call 301-585-2880 to insure your work is included in the database. Your work needs to be in the "body of knowledge."
We hope this research with the Tango is the beginning of a field of study in the neurology of kinesthetic learning. This is truly a gap in our knowledge about brain function and learning.
Rima Faber, Ph.D.
Program Director
National Dance Education Organization
This article is a clear indication that the medical community does have something to reveal for educators in general as well as the arts. This is certainly a beginning and future studies will need to address the layered learning and performance environment of learning and doing in dance, including whole body relationships, interpretation of movement, physical and cognitive ability comparisons, etc. I do wish that the article had included and recognized other writings such as that of Dale, Hyatt and Hallerman and the study done in England and Europe. While this study is a definite step forward it is not an isolated inquiry or completely original in thought. The last thing that is important to keep in mind as we do these medical/scientific studies, is the connection in dance of the physical-cognitive-emotional matrix that is always in play. This is central to dance in teaching, learning, performing or viewing. These sorts of studies are crucial to our field lifting the veil of imitation that dance education has relied on too long.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLuke C. Kahlich, Ed.D.
Professor and Doctoral Coordinator
Department of Dance
Boyer College of Music and Dance
Temple University
I had never heard the expression, but yesterday, after reading this comment, we found that I was unimpended to speak when my hands were busy, or reversely, to "dissociate" the things my hands are doing from my speech, while my colleague had deep problems with it. We got wondering where is the saying coming from, and where can I find more information on it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere are a few hundred of us with Parkinson's who dance every day, better than we can walk, and we are asking scientists and doctors: "How come? Eh? What's up with that." We maintain a romantic hope that we can re-wire our brains around the damaged areas. Please help if you can, even if just by an e-mail or a list of people we might e-mail, or just wave and gesture so that we know somebody someday will check into this. In 2 years we have heard from a lot of people with Parkinson's and from a lot of dancers; never at all from neurologists (whose research we steal for our website) and never at all from any Parkinson's Association anywhere in the world. Are we wrong or stupid or something? Could be. Maybe dancing just provides a rush of chemicals, a last gasp. But how come we can dance for 5 hours? Eh?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thiswww.parkinsonsdance.blogspot.com
Bob Dawson
dawsonschulz@yahoo.com
634 Route 203
Havelock, Quebec
Canada
J0S 2C0
I am quite over-whelmed or mind-boggled by all this brilliant information. I am amazed at how scientists can think like that. On behalf of a few hundred denizens of the internet, with Parkinson's, who dance because John Lee Hooker said the truth: Blues is a healer. (Or Tango, or whatever music hits you the right way.)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOn behalf of all of us, and Darcey at DustMyBroom, I extend thanks and gratitude to all you scientists who try to figure out what is going on in our brains. Part of my brain died, and it is a part I really liked. We need the dreamer and the man of action, we need the art and the science; we need you all, and we need you now.
www.parkinsonsdance.blogspot.com
One of the comments notes that dancers can entrain to the rhythm of another dance without music: should the consideration of innate rhythmic ability widen to include this rather then just the response to auditory rhythmic stimuli?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf so, then look closely at dressage horses. The rider can determine exactly the rhythm of the trot from 120-80 bpm, and the horse can learn a series of movements that are totally unnatural for it, which it endeavours to perform because it has learned the movement sequence (and in addition in can respond to musical cues). The rider does this essentially by means of setting the rhythm of their core musculature contractions.
Readers interested in the complexity of dance and the brain might want to see To Dance Is Human: A Theory of Nonverbal Communication. Revised edition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press (orig. 1979) and A Nonverbal Language for Imagining and Learning: Dance Education in K-12 Curriculum, Educational Researcher, 37(8):491-506, 2008. check out www.judithhanna.com for further research on dance and cognitive processes.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRelevant research on the topic of dance and the brain appears in “A Nonverbal Language for Imagining and Learning: Dance Education in K-12 Curriculum,” Educational Researcher, 37(8):491-506, 2008; To Dance Is Human: A Theory of Nonverbal Communication. 1987 Revised 1979 edition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. see www.judithhanna.com for dance research since 1965.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRelevant research on dance and the brain appears in To Dance Is Human: A Theory of Nonverbal Communication. 1987 Revised 1979 edition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press and “A Nonverbal Language for Imagining and Learning: Dance Education in K-12 Curriculum,” Educational Researcher, 37(8):491-506, 2008. See www.judithhanna.com for dance research since 1965.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisResearch related to the complexity of dance and the brain appears in “A Nonverbal Language for Imagining and Learning: Dance Education in K-12 Curriculum,” Educational Researcher, 37(8):491-506, 2008, and To Dance Is Human: A Theory of Nonverbal Communication. 1987 Revised 1979 edition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. See www.judithhanna.com for dance research since 1965.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisas an argentine tango dancer I agree completely, without theoretical or empirical notes, that the music moves my emotion to the dance direct, not much cognitive calculation of steps at all. In the interaction with the dancer, it is a direct communication of the inner world of her. It is so primitive and direct.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI don't know if this is relevant but I had enjoyed trying to walk a mile of railroad track every day on my way to school one summer. Every 20 or so steps I would just get back on and try again until I had arrived.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOn day I had received some devastating news just before I set out for my walk. Before I knew it, I had walked the entire MILE without falling off!!
What wast THAT? I could never repeat it.
All I know is that my mind was totally preoccupied with an intense despair.
Possibly strong emotions uninhibit some motor difficulties in our bodies. Music can bring about pleasant emotions and perhaps uninhibit movement in those with PD?
Someone in Toronto
czv
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