ABSTRACT
In light of the recent merging of dance and neuroscience, researchers have started to explore the dancer's brain and the mechanisms involved in learning, observing, and executing dance. As a complex form of movement and as a universal form of expression, dance can inform about motor and emotional processing, action-observation networks, and plasticity, amongst other aspects. The points of interest in this study were the processes involved in dance observation from the audience perspective. Previous studies have emphasised the role of cognition, mirror neurons, action-observation networks, embodiment, and areas such as the parietal cortex in perceiving movement and experiencing emotion during a dance performance. Also, motor, and visual experience seem to impact not only how dance is learned, but how it is perceived. An fMRI experiment was conducted on 14 participants where two videos were presented: one of an individual dancing and one of an individual exercising. An intersubject correlation (ISC) analysis was performed, and it was hypothesised that there would be greater synchronisation of activity in action observation networks, as well as areas involved in emotional and cognitive processing, while watching dance compared to exercise. Analysis software included BrainVoyager and the ISC Toolbox for MATLAB. Results indicated that there was greater and more synchronisation while watching dance compared to exercise. The exercise stimuli showed less synchronisation and fewer clusters that were mostly related to basic visual processing. Even though current results are mostly in accordance with previous findings, there are some limitations to take into consideration, and further studies are needed.
