How our brains recognise different styles of dance

This is the conclusion reached by scientists in a paper published in the journal Nature Communications, reports Nature Publishing Group. The study provides a new perspective on how the brain processes dance - both when watching and performing.

By observing brain activity while a person watches a dance, researchers get a window into how the nervous system integrates visuals with music and emotional cues. Previous neuroimaging studies have previously shown which areas of the brain are switched on while watching dance videos or live performances. But detailed maps of exactly how this information is processed in an individual's brain have emerged much less frequently.

In the new work, Yu Takagi and colleagues scanned the brains of 14 volunteers - seven beginners and seven experienced dancers. The participants were shown about five hours of dance videos. The selection included performances by more than 30 dancers to over 60 pieces of music in 10 styles - among them hip-hop, breakdancing, street dance and ballet jazz.

To understand how the brain encodes what it sees, the team used a deep generative artificial intelligence model. It was pre-trained on a large array of dance videos and then "matched" to the participants' brain activity data.

The analysis showed that the formation of the "map of dance" in the brain is influenced by several components at once: the features of movement, musical pattern, visual aesthetics and emotional colouring. It was the combination of these parameters that best explained how the participants "recorded" the dance they saw at the level of the cerebral cortex.

The result for experienced dancers was particularly interesting. They had brain maps of different dance styles that were more individualised and unique than novices, especially in areas related to movement processing. In other words, a trained dancer "sees" choreography in the brain in a more subtle and differentiated way.

The authors believe their work helps to better understand how the human brain perceives and creates choreography, and how dance practice gradually changes neural representations of movement. This may be important for both dance training and rehabilitation through movement and creative practices.