Ballroom dancers' brains sync up while moving together
· News-MedicalScientists at the University of Colorado Boulder have discovered something that experienced ballroom dancers have long known: When dancers are in tune with each other, their brains may sync up, helping them move as one.
The researchers also took their findings one step further, designing a wearable device that monitors dancers' brains and vibrates when they sync up.
The tool, which dancers wear on their wrists, is still in its early stages. But Roque envisions that similar technologies could one day help people learn a wide range of tasks that require humans to coordinate without speaking-such as playing music or team sports.
Shall we dance?
Sun started tangoing when she moved to Boulder five years ago. Unlike many other types of dances, the tango is rarely choreographed - dancers usually improvise their steps in the moment. Pairs signal their next moves through subtle signs like a light compression of the hands or a shift in the upper body.
Then, the dancers began to tango.
Riding the wave
Roque noted that how those waves behaved in the experiment depended on how in-step the dancers were with each other.
When a leader, for example, took a step forward and the follower took an immediate (within 200 milliseconds or less) step back, their brain waves tended to match up-rising and falling at about the same time. When their steps weren't in sync, neither were their brains. Those trends were true for a range of brain waves, including beta and theta waves.
"When I started seeing the results-they were perfect," Roque said. "The coupling was even better than I expected."
Other co-authors of the new study included Grace Leslie, associate professor at ATLAS and the College of Music, and Ellen Do, professor at ATLAS and the Department of Computer Science.
From dancing to cycling
He and his colleagues wondered if a wearable device could enhance that experience of synchrony.
Sun tried out the team's biofeedback device with her tango partner. The tool buzzed at all times but vibrated vigorously when the pair's brain waves lined up. Sun noted that the buzzing was distracting when she and her partner weren't in sync. But when they were, it just felt right.
"It almost enhanced that feeling of connection," Sun said.
Roque still has a lot of work to do before dancers, or anyone else, can wear that kind of device in the real world. For a start, he'd like to flip the settings-making the wrist device buzz when dancers aren't in tune with each other and go silent when they're synchronizing.
"In sports, you need to know what your teammates are going to do," he said. "By using a system like this, they may be able to better learn how to understand each other during training."
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