The artist on stage or on the radio starts playing, and suddenly it happens: Almost without you noticing, your body has started to dance. Whether you’re standing close together at a festival, or if you’re sitting all alone, and your fingers drum against the steering wheel. But why does it happen? The answer may lie in the oldest part of the brain. – Live with your whole body Last weekend there were many dancing people at Revelen in Mo i Rana. There, the Verket music festival rang out of huge loudspeakers on the lawn. Not even Una Nikolaisen could resist dancing to the music. Una Nikolaisen couldn’t keep still when the music started resounding over the Verket i Mo i Rana festival. Photo: Elise Fossland / news – When I feel that one lives with the whole body and enjoy life, I just have to dance, she says to news. – There is something about the rhythm. I kind of feel it deep in my soul or body. And it’s not just imagination, new research shows. NM in standing still Alexander Refsum Jensenius is a researcher at the RITMO center at the University of Oslo (UiO). He has researched in a laboratory what happens in the brain when you feel like dancing. To do that, he had to have an answer to: Do we really have to move to music? That is why he organized an NM. NM in standstill, or in other words, standing still. Especially because it was a serious competition, the answer was completely clear to the researcher. – We are forced to move to music. At least a little. Alexander Refsum Jensenius, researcher at the RITMO center at the University of Oslo (UiO). Photo: annica Thomsson / UiO – Many underlying processes in the brain are affected by music. We see that there is an area in the brain where sound and movement are linked together, says Jensenius. The pupils reveal a desire to dance Some of what Jensenius discovered that gave a desire to dance were surprising and uneven rhythms, called “syncopes”. – When the brain has to work a little harder to understand the rhythms, and the movement center is more active, we feel more compelled to dance, says Vuoskoski. Their colleague, Connor Spiech from UiO, found that it is not just the body that shows that you want to dance. You can also see that in ago. Electronic dance music, also known as EDM, seemed to affect micro-movements the most. Photo: University of Oslo Pupils can reveal how much attention a task requires. For example, if the dance rhythm becomes different or stops completely and starts again, as in a so-called “drop”. – It turns out that when people listen to music, we can see changes in their eyes about how perceptive they are, says Spiech. Otherwise, this is not something you can see with your partner on the dance floor. We are talking about tiny changes that are only visible in controlled conditions in the laboratory. An empathetic dancer There is also some music that makes us want to move more. Especially when the pulse in the music is the same as the pulse of the heart or slightly faster, the researchers found that we feel like dancing. – Dance music works extra well. Especially the one at around 120 bpm, explains Jensenius. Electronic dance music, also known as EDM, seemed to affect micro-movements the most, and the researchers therefore chose to concentrate on this genre. – When it comes to dance, body control and your relationship to music will mean something, says Jensenus. But he emphasizes that even the “hopeless” and “tone-deaf” are better at dancing than they think. – My experience is that people dance perfectly well, as long as they are given freedom and no one is watching them. This is how the motion sensors were mounted on the subjects in the experiment. Photo: UiO But when the researchers looked at the microscopic movements of the participants, it didn’t matter if they were stars on the dance floor. What personality type one has, on the other hand, had much more to say. The people who scored high on emotional response, i.e. empathy, moved more than others. Jensenius says that this is also in line with other studies which show that empathic people mirror other people, and are more attentive to their surroundings. Ancient forces in motion But what actually happens when you feel you must dance? Jonna Vuoskoski, associate professor at the Department of Musicology at UiO, explains that moving to music can lie far back in evolution, in the “fight-or-flight” response. – The primitive parts of the brain give notice that it may mean danger, especially if the music is fast and loud. – You can see the same thing in many different animals. Therefore, it can come from far back in evolution. Jonna Vuoskoski is associate professor in music cognition at the University of Oslo. Photo: University of Oslo But she points out that fear is not a very strong explanation for why we want to dance. From studies of the brain, they know that the area of the brain responsible for planning and simulating movement becomes active when you hear music. Even if one lies completely still. The “fight-or-flight” response occurs in the oldest part of the brain, but the simulations for movement and what makes us want to move in time with the music come from newer parts, the researcher explains. – These areas exist in a broader sense when we interact with other people. It gives an inner understanding of other people’s feelings and movements. Vuoskoski explains that there is a theory that says that music simulates movement. We have to anticipate the rhythms so that we can plan our movements, and moving in time with others also makes us more connected to each other. Photo: Lars-Petter Kalkenberg / news It is likely that cavemen also used music to synchronize movement and feeling with other cavemen, according to the researcher.
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Rocking feet and a desire to dance are from man’s primal instinct – the eye also reveals that you must dance – news Nordland
