Washington DC, April 14 -- Dancing fluidly with someone requires social coordination. This skill requires coordinating movements with others while also processing dynamic sensory input, such as sounds and visuals.

Felix Bigand and Giacomo Novembre from the Italian Institute of Technology in Rome, together with others, report on how the brain drives social coordination during dance.

The researchers recruited pairs of inexperienced dancers and recorded their brain activity, whole-body movements, and muscle activity as they danced to the same or different songs. The researchers also manipulated whether dancers could or could not see each other. These methods unveiled distinct neural signals for music processing, self-generated movements, m...