|
03 September 2008
So you think you can dance?
Have you ever found yourself watching Billy Elliot or Strictly Come Dancing and wondered just how they do that? Well Professor Larry Parsons of the School of Psychology might have the answer.
Larry recently worked with Violinist Vanessa Mae in the BBC television series 'The Making of Me'. Using Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (FMRI) he scanned Vanessa's brain to help her discover what proportion of her talent for the violin was learned compared to genetically inherited.
This wasn't the first time that Larry had used a brain scanner to study a performing artist. Working with Steven Brown of the Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada, Larry wrote a paper for the journal 'Scientific American' on Dance and the Brain. In their article, Larry and Steven showed how the brain dances, coordinating expressive body movements to musical beats.
In one study, Larry used a Positron Emission Tomography (PET) machine to scan twelve tango dancers lying in the scanner performing tango steps. By analysing the scans, Larry was able to pinpoint the brain areas used by the dancers to follow the planned tango steps. In the same way, he isolated two other brain circuits, one responsible for moving through the dance without looking at one's feet and one for synchronising dance movements to the musical rhythm.
Following the publication of his findings, Larry's work has been used by other researchers who also study music and dance, and their effects on us. Such findings explain how new physical therapy methods help people with movement disorders, such as Parkinson's Disease. The work is also likely to improve techniques for teaching dance.
Working together with Frank Pollick of the University of Glasgow, Larry has organised the first ever conference of world experts on dance and the brain, taking place in London on the 7th of January. At the conference, Larry will lecture on the brain basis of dancing. The conference was funded by the Experimental Psychology Society.
|
