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Cerebral Cortex Advance Access originally published online on October 12, 2005
Cerebral Cortex 2006 16(8):1157-1167; doi:10.1093/cercor/bhj057
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© The Author 2005. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

The Neural Basis of Human Dance

Steven Brown1,2, Michael J. Martinez1 and Lawrence M. Parsons1,3

1 Research Imaging Center, University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, San Antonio, TX, USA, 2 Present address: Department of Psychology, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada, 3 Present address: Department of Psychology, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK

Address correspondence to Lawrence Parsons, Department of Psychology, University of Sheffield, Western Bank, Sheffield S10 2TP, UK. Email: L.parsons{at}sheffield.ac.uk.

Human dance was investigated with positron emission tomography to identify its systems-level organization. Three core aspects of dance were examined: entrainment, meter and patterned movement. Amateur dancers performed small-scale, cyclically repeated tango steps on an inclined surface to the beat of tango music, without visual guidance. Entrainment of dance steps to music, compared to self-pacing of movement, was supported by anterior cerebellar vermis. Movement to a regular, metric rhythm, compared to movement to an irregular rhythm, implicated the right putamen in the voluntary control of metric motion. Spatial navigation of leg movement during dance, when controlling for muscle contraction, activated the medial superior parietal lobule, reflecting proprioceptive and somatosensory contributions to spatial cognition in dance. Finally, additional cortical, subcortical and cerebellar regions were active at the systems level. Consistent with recent work on simpler, rhythmic, motor-sensory behaviors, these data reveal the interacting network of brain areas active during spatially patterned, bipedal, rhythmic movements that are integrated in dance.

Key Words: complex sensorimotor coordination • dance • entrainment • music • neuroimaging


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