CAS Key Laboratory of Behavioral Science, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China; Department of Psychology, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China; CAS Key Laboratory of Mental Health, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China.
School of Art, Beijing Sport University, Beijing 100084, China.
Neuroimage. 2023 Sep;278:120301. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2023.120301. Epub 2023 Jul 29.
Long-term dance training offers numerous benefits, including improvements in physical health, posture, body coordination, and mental health and well-being. Since dance is an art form of body-to-body communication, professional dancers may share feelings and thoughts on dance with their partners, owing to their shared training experiences. Considering this perspective, one may expect that professional dancers would demonstrate pronounced neural similarities when viewing dancing videos, which could be associated with their training duration. To test these hypotheses, we collected functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data while presenting ballroom dancing and neutral video clips with long durations (∼100 s each) to 41 professional ballroom dancers (19 pairs of dance partners) and 39 age- and sex-matched nondancers. Our findings revealed that dancers exhibited broader and stronger neural similarities across the whole brain when watching dancing video clips, as compared to the control group. These increased neural similarities could be interpreted in at least two distinct ways. First, neural similarities in certain brain regions within the motor control circuit (i.e., frontal cortical-basal ganglia-thalamic circuit) were significantly correlated with dance-related information (e.g., dance partners' cooperation duration), which reinforced the impact of long-term dance training on neural synchronization. Second, neural similarities in other brain regions (e.g., memory-related brain regions) were significantly correlated with subjects' impression of the viewed videos (i.e., whether they have watched before, familiarity, and liking), which may not necessarily be directly linked to long-term dance training. Altogether, our study provided solid evidence for synchronized neural mechanisms in professional dancers due to long-term dance training.
长期的舞蹈训练有很多好处，包括改善身体健康、姿势、身体协调性以及心理健康和幸福感。由于舞蹈是一种身体到身体的交流艺术形式，专业舞者可能会与他们的舞伴分享关于舞蹈的感受和想法，这是因为他们有共同的训练经历。从这个角度来看，人们可能期望专业舞者在观看舞蹈视频时会表现出明显的神经相似性，这可能与他们的训练时长有关。为了验证这些假设，我们收集了功能磁共振成像（fMRI）数据，同时向 41 名专业的交谊舞舞者（19 对舞伴）和 39 名年龄和性别匹配的非舞者展示了时长约为 100 秒的交谊舞和中性视频片段。我们的研究结果表明，与对照组相比，舞者在观看舞蹈视频片段时，整个大脑表现出更广泛和更强的神经相似性。这些增加的神经相似性可以用至少两种不同的方式来解释。首先，运动控制回路（即额皮质-基底神经节-丘脑回路）中某些脑区的神经相似性与舞蹈相关信息（例如舞伴的合作时长）显著相关，这加强了长期舞蹈训练对神经同步的影响。其次，其他脑区（例如与记忆相关的脑区）的神经相似性与被试对所观看视频的印象（例如，他们是否以前看过、熟悉度和喜好）显著相关，这可能与长期舞蹈训练没有直接关系。总的来说，我们的研究为长期舞蹈训练导致的专业舞者的同步神经机制提供了确凿的证据。
