Cortical oscillations are modified by expertise in dance and music: Evidence from live dance audience

Over the past decades, the focus of brain research has expanded from using strictly controlled stimuli towards understanding brain functioning in complex naturalistic contexts. Interest has increased in measuring brain processes in natural interaction, including classrooms, theatres, concerts and museums to understand the brain functions in the real world. Here, we examined how watching a live dance performance with music in a real-world dance performance setting engages the brains of the spectators. Expertise in dance or music has been shown to modify brain functions, including when watching dance or listening to music. Therefore, we recorded electroencephalography (EEG) from an audience of dancers, musicians and novices as they watched the live dance performance and analysed their cortical oscillations. We compared intrabrain oscillations when participants watched the performance (with music) or listened to the music alone without the dance. We found that dancers have stronger fronto-central and parieto-occipital theta phase synchrony (4–8 Hz) than novices when watching dance, likely reflecting the effects of dance experience on motor imagery, multisensory and social interaction processes. Also, compared with novices, dancers had stronger delta phase synchrony (0.5–4 Hz) when listening to music, and musicians had stronger delta phase synchrony when watching dance, suggesting expertise in music and dance enhances sensitivity or attention to temporal regularities in movement and sound.