Connecting brains and people through dance
by Simon Spichak
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On a Sunday morning, thousands of people log into an hour-long class at the Dance Church. This live-streamed church doesn't include any religion or preaching. Instead, it offers beginner-friendly dance classes. Dance Church grew in popularity during the COVID-19 pandemic. An on-screen instructor leads thousands through different dance moves. Some people do it to get a workout and stay in shape, for others it's about connection and brain health.
Dr. Julia Basso, neuroscientist, dancer, and director of the Embodied Brain Lab at Virginia Tech University, believes the secret behind dance is neural synchrony. To dance, the neurons in the brain send signals that coordinate different parts of the brain. The sensory areas of the brain take in information about the music, the rhythm, and the dance moves. This is passed onto the motor area of the brain, which sends the signals to get the muscles moving.
“When we dance with other people, there's this idea of inter-brain synchrony,” Basso says. “We're actually getting the neural oscillations, the rhythms of the brain, to connect with one another.”
A state of synchrony between dancers’ brains helps them mimic and synchronize dance moves. In the aftermath, it also releases a cacophony of brain chemicals — the sort that help the brain rewire itself after injury and reduce stress.
The dancing brain
When I was studying neuroscience in university, I hardly thought about dancing. I'm clumsy and uncoordinated. Also, the idea that it could be therapeutic sounded preposterous. Then I attended a seminar where I heard a professor speak about neurologic music therapy.
Dr. Michael Thaut, professor of music at the University of Toronto, talked about his fascinating work. The takeaway is a powerfully promising one: music, rhythm, and movement can help manage injuries and brain disorders.
He shared a video of a person with Parkinson’s disease — a progressive neurodegenerative condition that causes tremors, stiffness, and difficulty walking — who shuffled through a hallway. Then, a physiotherapist turned on some music. Like magic, the patient’s posture straightened and the small shuffling steps turned into strides that synced to the beat.
The presentation fueled my curiosity in neurologic music therapy, and more than seven years later as a science writer, the topic hasn’t lost its appeal.
Lost connections
Making simple dance moves involves getting different brain cells, called neurons, to communicate and collaborate. If The Village People's “Y.M.C.A.” starts playing, the brain prepares the signals needed to bust out a Y shape. It could take ten or more different neurons working together to do the move.
Stroke, brain injury, and Parkinson's often damage the neurons in these pathways, preventing the brain from using the broken areas to make the movement. It's like a road or highway closure that blocks off the usual route to work… you can still get to the final destination, but you’ll need a detour.
Dancing is an effective way to build a new pathway within the brain. Many clinical trials show that dancing is the most effective form of physical therapy for Parkinson’s. It improves debilitating motor symptoms like tremors, walking impairments, and balance problems. Dancing therapy also helps with recovery after stroke or traumatic brain injury.
It’s fair to say that incorporating dance into our regular life routines could serve at least most of us well. Figuring out how to use your body in this way might be challenging initially for newcomers, but giving dancing a go gets neurons in the brain firing. They release chemical signals called BDNF (brain-derived neurotrophic factors) and GDNF (glial-derived neurotrophic factors), which help form new roads and pathways. This process is called neuroplasticity — it means that the brain starts rewiring itself.
Dance doesn’t just help brain cells connect with each other; dance also helps people who might speak different languages form connections. “Dance is all about communication, and it evolved as a form of interpersonal coordination,” Basso says. “People started communicating with their bodies, through rhythms and through music, making a language out of their body.”
Found connections
In 2010, Dance Church was founded. It started off as casual drop-in dance classes hosted across major U.S. cities. During the pandemic, Dance Church went virtual, leading to exponential growth. This was exciting for scientists like Basso because it provided an opportunity to study the mood-modifying properties of dance.
“We found even in a single online group session, dance decreased depression, decreased negative affect, and it also increased self-esteem and positive affect,” Basso explained. The people who enjoyed their dance classes the most experienced the biggest boost in mood. Their study also found an increase in social and community connection. This was especially important during the early stages of the pandemic.
Some of the benefits Dance Church attendees rave about are now validated in a scientific setting. When it comes to mental health, dancing isn’t meant to be a replacement for prescribed medication or dedicated work with a therapist. But it does provide people — and their neurons — with a space to meet and connect.