Dance
and the Mirror Neuron System The
ability to understand other people’s actions and to learn new actions
through observation is a ubiquitous feature of human behavior.
Prior research on action observation has identified brain areas
that are similarly active when individuals perform actions or watch
others perform the same actions. While
some features of this action resonance or ‘mirror neuron’ system
have been investigated, many more remain to be explored.
I will discuss studies of dancers learning new movement
sequences, which tests the sensitivity of this network to several
different types of experience. In
the first study, expert dancers were scanned with functional magnetic
resonance imaging (fMRI) across 6 weeks while they learned a series of
complex new movement sequences. With
this longitudinal study, we were able to investigate how newly acquired
motor expertise is manifest within the mirror neuron system.
The second study addressed questions about observational learning
and how the mirror neuron system differentiates between biological and
symbolic action cues. Pre-training
and post-training fMRI scans were collected on a group of non-dancers
who learned to perform movement sequences to music with a Dance Dance Revolution-type
game. Data from this study
indicate that individual components of the mirror neuron system show
differential responses based on training experience and cue type.
Implications of this work will be discussed in terms of pedagogy
and rehabilitation. |