how do babies know to move to music before anyone has taught them to do so.
In: 168
This is only a theory but the thinking is that dancing is less of a skill and more of a natural phenomenon that occurs to us.
We’re conditioned from before birth the enjoy a beat. Psychologists think this it comes from hearing our mothers heart beat in the womb.
Basically, we have such a deep emotional response to music that our higher order brain has to out source it to our nervous system because it would be too overwhelming. That results in a spontaneous physical reaction. It can be anything from tapping your toe to full on dancing.
People enjoy this response and enjoy eliciting it in others and that’s where dancing and even music come from.
Over time we got really good at both and they’re some of our favorite things to do. We got so interested in them that we built whole cultures around them and created complex versions of them that we call art.
It’s honestly one of my favorite things about human beings.
Most if not all cultures in the world have ancestry that use dance. It’s likely that dancing became part of human life well before that for maybe hundreds of thousands of years. It’s entirely possible that its just in our genes and part of our natural instincts.
Dancing isn’t really a skill tbh
Like, complex dancing like Ballet, yeah, that’s all man made athletics stuff.
But the urge to dance along to consistent rhythms is just a really common thing in many animals
Even birds “dance” to a beat
It’s not that people don’t know how to dance. Everyone knows how to dance, some people are just too self-conscious to do it when others are watching.
Babies aren’t self-conscious.
Babies do a ton of stuff without being taught, because they’re not blank slates. They’re new to the outside world and their bodies and brains are rapidly trying to adapt to that.
Dancing is just a broader version of moving to a beat, and moving to a beat is an important part of human interaction.
When a room full of people start clapping they will make small changes to the speed of their clapping so that they all end up clapping at the same time. When a large group of people dance they are all dancing to the identifiable beats of the music, even if their moves are bad they’re taking part in a group action.
A baby dancing to music shows that that baby is processing the sound and interacting with it in the same way as the rest of their group is. It demonstrates that the baby is part of the group, and thinks like them.
Also, babies like to move around because they’re still building a strong connection between their brains and their body. They aren’t as good at holding themselves back from doing movements as toddlers, children, and adults are because they haven’t got those systems in place yet.
And it develops their muscles.
All around, babies dancing is an important physical and social development skill.
Couldn’t it just be the fact that we transfer data from one generation to another? Its how evolution works, and how saaay a certain lizard who, at the instant they hatch they go “oh shit! Theres things that are waiting for me above ground when i surface! I must run!”
People still wanna believe we live forever so still not into the idea thast we cease entirely and eternally, but least live on and pass only a part of us thru our reproduction
That results in a spontaneous physical reaction. It can be anything from tapping your toe to full on dancing.
Because humans are hard-wired to move when we hear music, and music directly influences movement. Here are two of the main phenomena at play:
1. Music activates the part of the brain associated with movement, which “primes” (ie, prepares) the body to move.
2. Our bodies automatically match our movements to the beat of music. This is a phenomenon called rhythmic entrainment, and it’s used a lot in physical rehabilitation with stroke and traumatic brain injury patients.
Here are a couple sources, though there’s a lot more research out there on this topic:
Grahn, J. A., & Brett, M. (2007). Rhythm and beat perception in motor areas of the brain. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 19(5), 893-906. doi:10.1162/jocn.2007.19.5.893
Thaut, M.H., & Hoemberg, V. (Eds.). (2014). Handbook of neurologic music therapy. Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press.
Chen, J. L., Penhune, V. B., & Zatorre, R. J. (2008). Listening to musical rhythms recruits motor regions of the brain. Cerebral Cortex, 18(12), 2844-2854.
There is a part of the brain (the cerebellum, I believe) that coordinates movements of the limbs in rhythmic patterns. In order to walk we need to move our legs in a cycle. If we want to carry something in both hands, the cerebellum coordinates the limbs. It’s the part of the brain that gets confused when you try to rub your belly with one hand, and pat your head with the other, or if you try to move your foot in clockwise circles and your hand in counterclockwise circles.
In babies, the cerebellum is under very active development and moving to music is exactly the sort of cognition that part of the brain performs. Babies love to dance because that’s how they learn muscle coordination and balance.
[removed]
Latest Answers