Dynamic body feedback is used in dance movement therapy, with the aim to facilitate emotional expression and a change of emotional state through movement and dance for individuals with psychosocial or psychiatric complaints. It has been demonstrated that moving in a specific way can evoke and regulate related emotions. The current study aimed to investigate the effects of executing a unique set of kinetic movement elements on an individual mover’s experience of happiness. A specific sequence consisting of movement elements that (...) recent studies have related to the feeling of happiness was created and used in a series of conditions. To achieve a more realistic reflection of DMT practice, the study incorporated the interpersonal dimension between the dance movement therapist and the client, and the impact of this interbodily feedback on the emotional state of the client. This quantitative study was conducted in a within-subject design. Five male and 20 female participants participated in three conditions: a solo executed movement sequence, a movement sequence executed with a DMTh who attuned and mirrored the movements, and a solo executed movement sequence not associated with feelings of happiness. Participants were only informed about the movements and not the feelings that may be provoked by these movements. The effects on individuals were measured using the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule and visual analog scales. Results showed that a specific movement sequence based on movement elements associated with happiness executed with a DMTh can significantly enhance the corresponding affective state. An additional finding of this study indicated that facilitating expressed emotion through movement elements that are not associated with happiness can enhance feelings such as empowerment, pride, and determination, which are experienced as part of positive affect. The results show the impact of specific full-body movement elements on the emotional state and the support outcome of DMT on emotion regulation. (shrink)

Social behaviors rely on the coordination of multiple effectors within one’s own body as well as between the interacting bodies. However, little is known about how coupling at the interpersonal level impacts coordination among body parts at the intrapersonal level, especially in ecological, complex, situations. Here, we perturbed interpersonal sensorimotor communication in violin players of an orchestra and investigated how this impacted musicians’ intrapersonal movements coordination. More precisely, first section violinists were asked to turn their back to the conductor and (...) to face the second section of violinists, who still faced the conductor. Motion capture of head and bow kinematics showed that altering the usual interpersonal coupling scheme increased intrapersonal coordination. Our perturbation also induced smaller yet more complex head movements, which spanned multiple, faster timescales that closely matched the metrical levels of the musical score. Importantly, perturbation differentially increased intrapersonal coordination across these timescales. We interpret this behavioral shift as a sensorimotor strategy that exploits periodical movements to effectively tune sensory processing in time and allows coping with the disruption in the interpersonal coupling scheme. As such, head movements, which are usually deemed to fulfill communicative functions, may possibly be adapted to help regulate own performance in time. (shrink)

The aim of this review is to highlight the most relevant contributions on dance in neuroscientific research. Neuroscience has analyzed the mirror system through neuroimaging techniques, testing its role in imitative learning, in the recognition of other people's emotions and especially in the understanding of the motor behavior of others. This review analyses the literature related to five general areas: breakthrough studies on the mirror system, and subsequent studies on its involvement in the prediction, the execution, the control of movement, (...) and in the process of “embodied simulation” within the intersubjective relationship; research focused on investigating the neural networks in action observation, and the neural correlates of motor expertise highlighted by comparative studies on different dance styles; studies dealing with the viewer's experience of dance according to specific dance repertoires, which revealed the relevance of choreographic choices for aesthetic appreciation; studies focused on dance as an aesthetic experience, where both the emotional and the cultural dimension play a significant role, and whose investigation paves the way to further progress both in empirical and in phenomenological research methodologies; collaboration-based experiments, in which neuroscientists and choreographers developed expertise-related questions, especially focusing on the multiple phenomena that underlie motor imagery. (shrink)