Study finds watching live dance syncs humans’ brainwaves

By Stephen Beech

Watching "Strictly Come Dancing" with friends or family "syncs" our brainwaves, according to new research.

Scientists found that when people watched a live contemporary dance performance, their brainwaves synced up, signaling shared focus and attention.

Even without a live stage, watching the recorded performance together still triggered brain synchrony.

But that level of synchrony didn't occur when people watched the same performance alone on video.

Study senior author Dr. Guido Orgs, a dancer and Associate Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London (UCL), said: “We wanted to explore what makes live performance feel so different from watching a recording.

“Dance felt like the perfect medium to investigate that because it’s so often experienced in the moment, in a shared space.”

Researchers took the lab into the theater as part of the Neurolive project - a collaboration between scientists and artists at UCL, Goldsmiths, University of London, Siobhan Davies Studios in London and the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics, Germany.

The project was developed to investigate “liveness” - the unique quality of being present in a performance.

The research team fitted 59 audience members with EEG headsets to track brainwaves across three live performances of Detective Work, a contemporary dance performance choreographed by Seke Chimutengwende working with dance artist Stephanie McMann.

The team then invited other participants to watch a recording of the same piece, in the cinema with others or alone in a lab, to compare how different settings affect brain synchrony.

During the live shows, audience members’ brains synced in the "delta band" - a range of slow-frequency brainwaves typically associated with mind-wandering and social processing.

The synchrony was "especially strong" when performers made direct eye contact with the crowd, according to the findings published in the journal iScience.

Study first author Laura Rai, a cognitive neuroscientist at UCL, said: “Previous research has mostly linked attention to the faster alpha band brainwaves.

“But in our study, it was the delta band that best captured shared engagement, which is surprising.”

Even without a live stage, watching the recorded performance together in a cinema still triggered brain synchrony.

But when people watched alone in a lab, that synchrony weakened.

The researchers say that the results suggest sharing the moment with others, or “social liveness,” may be as important as the performance itself.

Dr. Orgs said: “The fact that we find synchrony in the delta band links the experience of live dance to the idea that performing arts are social art forms.

“They are created by performers and an audience who are in the same space at the same time.”

The research team also investigated whether moments of heightened engagement could be predicted.

They asked choreographer Chimutengwende to identify scenes he expected would be most engaging.

Audience synchrony peaked at nearly every moment he predicted.

Dr. Orgs said: “People often emphasize how personal and subjective art is, and that’s absolutely true regarding interpretation.

"But when it comes to attention, we found that how people engage with live performance can be surprisingly predictable and measurable.

“Essentially, the artists know what they’re doing.”

The researchers hope to take the performance and study on a world tour, collecting more data and testing their findings in new settings.

Study co-author Matthias Sperling, artistic director and researcher at Neurolive, said: “There’s so much knowledge contained in live performance.

“The artists are experts in liveness, and so are the audience."

He added: "This research offers a new way to tell stories about what’s happening in that rich, complex environment, using science to open a different window into those shared experiences.”