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The Neuroscience of Dance and the Dance of Neuroscience: Defininga Path of Inquiry

Dale, J. Alexander.Hyatt, Janyce.Hollerman, Jeff.

The Journal of Aesthetic Education, Volume 41, Number 3, Fall2007, pp. 89-110 (Article)

Published by University of Illinois PressDOI: 10.1353/jae.2007.0024

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Journal of Aesthetic Education, Vol. 41, No. 3, Fall 2007 ©2007 Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

The Neuroscience of Dance and the Dance of Neuroscience: Defining a Path of Inquiry

J. ALEXANDER DALE, JANYCE HYATT, and JEFF HOLLERMAN

Introduction

The neural processes of a person comprehending or creating music have intrigued neuroscientists and prompted them to examine the processing of information and emotion with some of the most recent and sophisticat-ed techniques in the brain sciences (see, for example, Zatorre and his col-leagues’ work1). These techniques and the excitement of studying matters that seemed so elusive have been successfully extended to the visual arts to some degree (for example, see Zeki2 and Solso3). For the most part, these efforts have focused on the perspective of the audience (listener/viewer), with a similar focus in the limited writing on dance.4 This article is an at-tempt to define an area of inquiry for the neuroscience of dance that focuses first on the dancer rather than the audience. Practically, this approach is easier for dance than music or visual art because of the immediacy of dance creation. In addition, from our perspective on dance, the experience of the dancer is central. In fact, it defines dance itself. The latter statement may

J. Alexander Dale is professor of psychology and neuroscience at Allegheny College in Meadville, Pennsylvania, and has taught there since 1970. He was a research col-laborator at University of Rome, “La Sapienza,” from November of 2002 through June of 2003, a psychological fellow and visiting professor in the Pain Management Center (September 1987-December 1987; January-July 1995) at the University of Virginia School of medicine, a visiting scientist (December 1979-March 1980) at the Neuropsychiatric Institute at UCLA, and a visiting fellow at Western Australia Insti-tute of Technology (July-December 1979). Janyce Hyatt, assistant professor of dance studies emeritus at Allegheny College, earned an M.F.A. in theater/dance from Case Western Reserve University and an Ed.D. in arts education from Teachers College, Columbia University. As a practicing artist/educator she actively cultivates an em-bodied aesthetic that centralizes experience, reflection, and connection. In 1984 she received the Ohio Governor’s Award for Arts Education, and in 2004 she received the Julian Ross Prize for Excellence in Teaching from Allegheny College. Jeff Holler-man is an associate professor of psychology and neuroscience at Allegheny College in Meadville, Pennsylvania. He earned his Ph.D. in behavioral neuroscience at the University of Pittsburgh in 1992 and then trained as a research assistant in the Physi-ology Department at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland before beginning his work at Allegheny College in 1996. He has twice served as director of Allegheny Col-lege’s Summer Institute on Neuroscience and the Humanities (2002 and 2004).

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90 Dale, Hyatt, and Hollerman

not be apparent if the term “dance” brings to mind a specific type of styl-ized or formalized dance; thus, it is important to clearly define what we are considering as we try to identify a neuroscience and dance path in a nearly uncharted wilderness. Our collaborative effort grew out of a curricular en-deavor to link neuroscience with the humanities, including a Neuroscience of Dance course.

Dance and Neuroscience Perspectives: Defining Dance and Neuroscience

One version of this text we had prepared opened with the line “We define dance as consciously organized energy that gives form to feeling.” Having spent over four years working together, twice team-teaching a course on the Neuroscience of Dance, we (the authors) each could draw a relatively clear, if not identical, meaning from that definition. (This definition was ar-ticulated by Janyce Hyatt as derived from her dance and education training and experience, drawing intensely not only from Margaret H’Doubler5 but also the experiential traditions of John Dewey6 and William James.7) One who has not been privy to that ongoing dialog, however, may be at a loss as to what this could possibly mean, especially, we suspect, those among you accustomed to the more concrete language typical of scientific communica-tion. As we—Jeff Hollerman and Alexander Dale—have at times struggled with such phrasing, we will later note when the “translation” is difficult in the opposite direction. In an attempt to deconstruct, without destroying, this succinct definition, the following definitions are offered: (1) Dance is an emotionally expressive use of the body (“gives form to feeling”) and (2) Dance involves conscious choices made by the dancer regarding what to do, or not do (“consciously organized energy”—engaging in a process that Erick Hawkins called “Think-Feel”8). In many ways this is a much broader definition than is generally applied to dance. Note that there are no requirements regarding form or content, not even requiring music or an audience. The expressive and conscious aspects, however, do put restraints on what will be considered as dance. Various mate attracting displays described in ethnology, which at least roughly can be considered a class of fixed-action-pattern, would not involve conscious choices and hence would appear to call on different substrates than we consider in our treatment of dance. Furthermore, human motor behaviors that lack the emotionally expressive dimension would also be excluded, in-cluding complex motor acts in sports and even some extremely stylized or technique-focused schools of “dance.” There are certainly other ways that one can define dance, for example, dance as a complex esthetic expression relevant to perpetuation of a complex species.9 We will not attempt to argue here that ours is the correct definition of dance, but as this is our current definition, our exploration of the interface between dance and neuroscience would not make sense if we did not make this clear.

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Dance and Neuroscience: A Path of Inquiry 91

It is worth noting that in this definition, the focus is on the dancer, not the observer of the dance. This is particularly important given that most work linking neuroscience with the humanities—for example, with music, visual art, and the little that has been written about dance—has focused on the listener, viewer, and observer, with the artist considered only insofar as s/he plays on the nervous system of the audience. Is this due to the lo-gistical problems in studying music or visual art production, such as limits in subject availability, problems in taking physiological measures in mov-ing subjects, and many more? Or because the creation of a musical or vi-sual piece of art can span long periods of time, whereas, once produced, it can be represented with at least some consistency? Or is it the belief that whereas we can all enjoy listening, looking at, or observing these art forms, only a select, highly trained few can produce them? Although the first two of these are valid limitations, we would object to the characterization of the third, especially in the case of dance, where, as expressed by Margaret H’Doubler, “Dance as an art, when understood, is the province of every human being.”10

Although it might not appear necessary to put forward an explicit defini-tion of neuroscience for our inquiry, there is at least some contention over just what constitutes neuroscience, or a neuroscientist. In that light, readers might find it helpful to know that those of us who consider ourselves to be neuroscientists have worked primarily at the systems level, recording neu-ral activity either in (intact) lab animals (Hollerman) or from humans using psychophysiological techniques (Dale). We both accept that neuroscience implicitly begins with the basic anatomy, chemistry, and physiology of in-dividual neurons and that attempts to address issues from a neuroscientific perspective must be founded in an understanding and acknowledgement of the basic properties of individual neurons.

Starting Points

Given our respective backgrounds, there was no guarantee that our attempt at collaboration would bear fruit. An initial series of meetings, spread over two weeks and including meetings with practicing dancers and neuroscien-tists, as well a neuroscience and dance students, led to the identification of the following sources and quotations as useful starting points in our dialogue.

Dance may be considered a neural projection of inner thought and feeling into movement, rhythm being the mould through which the creative life flows in giving its meaning form.11

Contrary to traditional scientific opinion, feelings are just as cogni-tive as other percepts. They are the result of a most curious physi-ological arrangement that has turned the brain into the body’s captive audience.12

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The resonance of the first quote with our (current) definition of dance above is hopefully clear, and the second should convey our focus on a mind-body unity that is apparent in neural processing. Given this orienta-tion (or set of orientations), we identified three general questions to drive our undertaking:

The Neuroscience Student’s Question: How does the brain know it is dancing? (Melissa Ramous, 2001)The Dancer’s Question: When does walking become dancing?The Authors’ Questions: (Why) does it matter? What are the implications for general and/or aesthetic education?

We can rephrase these questions as followed: What is happening at the neural level when one identifies his/her actions as dancing? What is differ-ent about the processes involved when one engages in “pedestrian” versus dance movement? The answers to these questions can be viewed as opposite sides of a coin, the first written in the language of neuroscience, the second in that of phenomenology. The third question is really two questions: Does such a coin exist? And if it does, what does it tell us about the relation be-tween neural processes and human experience, particularly in the context of education? These are, obviously, not small issues, touching as they do upon what Chalmers13 has termed “the hard problem,” and we make no claim to have answers. However, through our early efforts in asking these questions, we have encountered enough to justify the endeavor. This exercise in attempting to explicitly define dance (at least for our purposes) and to review the central themes driving our inquiry has high-lighted another difference between our approach and that of those authors cited above who have taken some of the initial steps in linking neuroscience and the humanities. These authors start from the basics of visual or audi-tory sensation, then perception and integration, and only in the final stages touch on defining the art itself. This could be considered a “bottom-up” ap-proach, which serves them well in their endeavors. Our view of dance, on the other hand, begins with questions about the nature of dance itself, and we attempt to trace the roots of this to its source in the nervous system. We thus follow primarily a “top-down” approach, which, of course, we hope will serve us well in our endeavor.

Dance: The Earliest Art?

That titillating subheading ends in a question mark as a confession that we will never be able to resolve which “art” was first expressed/created by hu-mans or our ancestors. The point of even raising the question is to highlight that conceptually, at least, the argument for dance is as strong as for paint-ing, sculpture, music, or any art form one cares to define. Thus, any discus-sion of the origin of art must address dance, and discussion of the biological

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nature of dance must take into account its likely ancient origin. Of course, in the area of physical evidence, dance is at a considerable disadvantage, especially relative to the visual arts, which leave physical artifacts (painting, sculpture). It is not possible now to resolve the details regarding the timing or even the source of the origins of the various arts. To continue, it is sufficient to accept, along with those who study the evolution of dance, that dance origi-nated in prehistory.14 In this view, from its origins dance was a most serious intellectual business in the life of the earliest humans and is among the old-est of human ritualistic and ceremonial forms. As early as 1940 H’Doubler hypothesized along these lines that precursor acts of dance may have been impulsive movements, unorganized except as they followed the natural laws of the early human’s body structure.15 These impulsive movements would then later have given way to regulation by consciousness in the con-text of an individual’s identity with a group in which dancing functioned as an integral part of the social and religious life of a community. H’Doubler further suggested, “since all important events in the life cycle of the individ-ual had both a practical and a religious significance, they were symbolized in bodily movement.”16

The idea that creating art is an innate characteristic of humans has led to a variety of proposals regarding the evolutionary function of art: the argu-ment is that if creating art is truly part of the human genetic endowment, it must have provided a selective advantage at some point, or it is a byprod-uct of something that did. One concise and relatively complete idea was set forward by Ellen Dissanayake, a contemporary cultural theorist whose work explores ways in which humans are inherently aesthetic and artistic creatures. She argues: “The arts were ‘enabling mechanisms’ for the perfor-mance of selectively valuable behaviors and in that way were necessary, that is selected-for in their own right.”17

In the case of dance, the result was a wide variety of dances. Among the most important of these celebratory, cross-cultural forms seems to have been the circle dance.18 The circle creates separate, sacred, potentially trans-formative ground for the dancing. In this way sacred dance space is distinct from the secular ground of everyday existence. Ritualistic and ceremonial dancing produced the illusion of power, the gathering, harnessing, and or-dering of the vital forces of nature. These dances also reflected powerful social forces. The intrinsic nature of dance may also be reflected in the “outbreaks” in dancing reported at various times in various cultures. One specific example of these outbreaks occurred in the medieval period when large groups of people were apparently unable to inhibit their dancing and danced until exhaustion. This behavior has been called St. Vitus’ Dance and has been dis-cussed as an example of “mass hysteria.”19 Or was it possibly ergot poison-ing? Or a widespread epidemic of Sydenham’s chorea? Another example is

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the “tarantella.” In southern Italy the origin of this dance has been traced to the belief that a form of this dance was a therapeutic intervention for unfortunate people suffering from the poisonous bite of the tarantella spi-der.20 These victims were reportedly quite inhibited in motor movement until they were stimulated by the frenzied music of the tarantella tradition, and then they would dance uncontrollably until the music stopped and they would be “cured.” (The term “tarentism” has been coined to describe the “dancing mania” as distinguished from the dance itself.) The acute global inhibition purportedly caused by the spider bite is reminiscent of the claim that voodoo priests might use a “zombie powder” of tetrodotoxin from the puffer fish to paralyze victims and put them in a death-like coma.21 It would be interesting to compare the toxins involved and even to see if the zombie victims could be stimulated to dance until cured—or if it is all a myth. Cer-tainly the dance has persisted long after anyone has reported a tarantella bite, and perhaps the terms “mass hysteria” or “cultural motivation” could be applied to this tradition as well as the tradition of the St. Vitus’ Dance. Interestingly, St. Vitus’ Dance also survives in the “Dancing Procession of Echternacht,” a tradition that dates to medieval times, when the dancing was alternately condemned as a disease and engaged in as a cure.22 In addi-tion to reflecting the cultural impact of dance, this history also highlights the spiritual nature of dance, in this case mass dance. It is interesting to specu-late that the combination of the intrinsic and spiritual nature of dance may also play a role in more modern dance phenomena, such as the rave.23

This combination of factors may also relate to the increased and/or re-newed interest in the role of dance in health and disease. While dance has had an old role in health (see the examples above), dance therapy continues as a viable discipline in treatment of some brain disorders such as schizo-phrenia and Alzheimer’s disease and emotional disorders such as bulimia, anxiety, and depression.24

The origin of dance in prehistory and its ubiquity across history and cultures are consistent with dance arising from intrinsic, innate sources. There are, in addition, observations from neurological disorders that are also potentially informative regarding an innate neural basis of dance. Hun-tington’s disease is a genetically dominant, degenerative disease that has its onset in midlife and is characterized by, among other behaviors, dance-like (choreiform) jerky movements. Neurologically, Huntington’s involves neuronal degeneration in a group of subcortical brain structures collectively referred to as the basal ganglia. The cells that are principally affected are neurons that normally provide an inhibitory signal (via the neurotransmit-ter gamma-aminobutyric acid, or GABA) to cells in other components of the basal ganglia.25 Rapid involuntary dance-like movements also characterize Sydenham’s chorea,26 which results from infection by particular strains of streptococcus bacteria and is associated with rheumatic fever. Sydenham’s

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has also been associated with obsessive-compulsive behavior in some pa-tients, potentially linking it to the basal ganglia as well. Following from the neural processes known to occur in the course of Huntington’s, the observa-tion that in the absence of effective inhibition dance-like movements occur suggests that we might be inhibiting movement, or dance, all the time. Interestingly, active music therapy, which incorporates components of dance, can be therapeutic in Parkinson’s disease, another neurodegenera-tive movement disorder in which symptoms may be attributed to an abnor-mal regulation of this inhibitory basal ganglia output.27 Anecdotal reports also describe how seriously affected Parkinson’s patients, who are “locked” by their symptoms into an immobile state, sometimes can be “danced“ into movement by playing music.28 Music has also been associated with an al-leviation of symptoms of Tourette’s disease, in which the basal ganglia are also implicated. Here at Allegheny College we have noted that the symp-toms of Tourette’s disorder vanished when one afflicted student was in the process of performing song or dance, and Sacks29 has also made this observation.

Redefining Dance?

The neurophysiology underlying the symptoms of Huntington’s and Par-kinson’s diseases, in particular, demands attention in light of our attempts to define a neurodance inquiry. In the case of Parkinson’s, overactivity of an inhibitory system appears to impose stillness. In the case of Huntington’s, and somewhat for L-DOPA-induced dyskinesias, an underactivity of this same inhibitory system can release movements (some “dance-like”). One might ask, “How could this work if dance is defined as consciously orga-nized energy?” One component of the answer is that inhibition neurally is an active process, and a more pointed question becomes “How can we un-derstand the role of the inhibitory systems in producing dynamic stillness?” In light of our current inquiry, we might consider additionally defining dance as a conscious manipulation of an “exquisitely refined motor relation at the interface of motion and stillness, of voluntary and involuntary neural systems,” and in so doing further inform T. S. Eliot’s insight:

At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor

towards,Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,There would be no dance, and there is only the Dance.30

Note that the movements in these and other neurological conditions can only be referred to as “dance-like.” They are not dance (by our current

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definition) not only because they lack the dimension of conscious choice but they also appear to be disconnected from the realm of emotional expression. Our insistence on emotion as the root source of dance is, admittedly, at odds with some conventional views of dance and art as a whole (see Highwater,31 for example, for summaries of some of these views). In many ways, this can be traced to a long history in Western culture of devaluing the body and emotion in favor of the mind and intellect.

The Evils of Dance

While it is beyond the scope of this article to trace this history in detail, some summary statements on topics that are particularly germane to our analysis seem appropriate. The early Greek, Platonic tradition articulated the distinction between the “corporal appetites and the reasoning part of the spirit.”32 Not only was knowing through the mind differentiated from knowing through the body, but the two also were placed in hierarchical relationship, with the reasoning part more highly valued than the corporal. The extension of this hierarchy to the practice of dance can be seen later in the classical tradition in statements such as that of Cicero in Pro Murena:

For no man, one may almost say, ever dances when sober, unless perhaps he be madman, nor in solitude, nor in a moderate and sober party; dancing is the last companion of prolonged feasting, of luxuri-ous situation, and of many refinements.33

Dance has thus been associated with not only mental (soberness, sanity) deficiencies but also with moral deficiencies, a position further espoused by the early Christian church, which developed the view of the body as the “seat of sin.” The early Christian denigration of the body continued the Pla-tonic concepts and further associated the body with sexuality, the antithesis of the chastity thought to be needed to appreciate spiritual matters. Paul described these conflicts in the Bible (in Galatians 17 as “spiritus adversus car-nem”), and then Augustine quoted this again in his Confessions (Book VIII, Chapter 5). Augustine personalized the conflict with stories about himself and others transcending this interest in the body and “corporal appetites” by practicing chastity. In this tradition it seems noteworthy that the most famous/notorious dance in the Bible—that of Salome—lead to the behead-ing of John the Baptist. If that were not enough, extra-biblical sources have added dimensions of adultery, incest, and even pedophilia to this story, fur-ther demonizing dance. As noted above, the classical traditions of our western European/Ameri-can culture, as represented in philosophical and religious texts, adopt a largely negative view toward the body, devaluing it and associating it with pain, fatigue, lust, disease, and death. A more modern formulation of this

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perspective can be seen in Cartesian dualism and the notion of the reasoning mind as a separate, superior, immaterial order of being. The mental zenith of this attitude occurred in the Victorian society of western Europe at the turn of the last century when Freud’s analysis of repression was used in an attempt to explain some of the motives of artists.34 Freudian psychology has encouraged ego (and superego) to be associated with the mind, and id with the body. Freud consistently described the id as lower and more primitive. In these ways reason and instinct, thought and feeling are set in opposition Culturally, this has been translated into an inability to integrate ego (mind) with realms of instinct, emotion, feeling, and body-self activities. Our Western tradition is not easily liberated from this dualism because it is fundamental to the Judeo-Christian ideal of asceticism and its path of renunciation of the body. In this context, the writings of Descartes can be viewed as reflective manifestations of the dualism inherent in our religious experience of good and evil.35 While North American attitudes about body and mind have evolved to become more about dissociation than differentia-tion,36 the dissociation itself is associated with a value judgment, usually to the detriment of the body and emotions. These cultural biases are clearly evident in academia, where kinesiology, which translates as the study of movement as a science, is a field of study in many universities. It focuses on the study of human movement in physi-cal education, daily activity, work, sport, and play—including dance in this grouping. For many years, academic dance was represented by the Associa-tion of Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance (AHPERD). How-ever, the AHPERD journal (JOPERD) reveals an emphasis on athletic sports rather than dance (see for example, the journal’s Web site, http://www .aahperd.org/aahperd/joperd_main.html). An American Academy of Ki-nesiology and Physical Education was formed in 1926, but physical educa-tion departments in universities date back to the early twentieth century if not before. Dance educators’ response to the perceived AHPERD conflation of dance with sport contributed to the development of the National Dance Education Organization (NDEO) and its corresponding journal. The prob-lem with the conflation of sport and pedestrian movement with dance, from our perspective, is that whereas pedestrian movement, sport movement, and dance movement are not inherently different in form, they are radically different in feeling or intent. Pedestrian movement and sport movement are task oriented. On the other hand, dance movement exists for its expressive potential. From this perspective, dance may have been the last of the arts to be legitimized as a course of study in an academic realm, with the timing of its acceptance varying widely. In the United States dance first became an undergraduate course of study at the University of Wisconsin under the guidance of Margaret H’Doubler in 1917. In 1925 H’Doubler assured her

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leadership role in higher education with publication of her groundbreaking text: The Dance and Its Place in Education. The next year (1926) the University of Wisconsin was the site of the first undergraduate major in dance, placing it at the forefront in putting dance in its place with its sister arts. The pro-cess has progressed through similar stages, if drawn out considerably over time, at other institutions, including the authors’ own institution, Allegheny College, where courses in dance did not carry academic credit until 1999. While the treatment of dance in academia has suffered from the negative attitude toward body and emotion, neuroscience too is historically guilty of following the Platonic prescription. Even Hebb’s analysis of brain action based on neural processing was criticized because it did not distinguish be-tween emotions and thought.37 The neuronally based information theory of human action initially posited emotions as being noise in the system.38 Even some of the recent and exciting works on the neuroscience of visual art have tended to avoid the emotional dimension, but this is less so in the case of music. Fortunately, not all neuroscientists have avoided the body and emotion, and as research has also advanced in our understanding of (what were thought to be exclusively) intellectual processes, new possibilities are opening to serious discussion and investigation. Perhaps the most eloquent spokesperson in this movement, Antonio Damasio, argues that what we call reasoning is, in practice, firmly grounded in our bodies and our emotions.39 He further presents a cogent, if broad-brushed, view of a body-based sense of self, cognition, and even consciousness.40 This movement of neuroscien-tific thought away from a brain/body dualism, as stultifying as the mind-body dualism of Descartes, gives us confidence that neuroscience is ready to begin at least forming questions regarding the neural basis of dance. We can hope further that even in the process of framing these questions we may shed light onto the role of dance and movement in the basic process of learning and education.

The Two Cultures (The Evils of Science?)

In the above section we have attempted to identify some of the historical sources for the cultural tradition that creates an environment that might treat dance as trivial, if not downright evil. Hopefully, the biases created are being overcome, and, while skepticism on the part of neuroscience regard-ing the extension into the humanities, including dance, will continue, it will (hopefully) be an appropriate, healthy skepticism, intrinsic to the scientific endeavor. It must also be acknowledged that in academia, and in our culture as a whole, there exist those who resist scientific excursions and explana-tions in certain realms of inquiry. “The Two Cultures” subheading above, despite the fifty-plus years since its coinage by C. P. Snow41 and a corre-spondingly sizable change in the specific topics of interest, still provides

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a useful construct, in this case for considering why and how dancers (or artists in general) might consider neuroscientific study of their disciplines as intrusions, if not sacrilege. An encapsulation of the problems of neurosci-ence from the dancer’s perspective would include: (1) a bias for scientists to choose quantitative almost exclusively over qualitative data, (2) the for-mulaic tendency of science to reduce the whole to parts, and (3) the related tendency to analyze categorically rather than wholistically.42 These meth-ods of analysis are diametrically opposed to the ways in which our dancers inquire. Dance, as currently experienced at Allegheny College, is a barrier-less inquiry that attempts to move beyond either-or to consider both-and; a wholistic activity in which insights emerge at the confluence of streams of feedback from body, mind, and spirit; and a synoptic discipline that weaves together a range of outlooks drawn from diverse fields. For example, one can consider how dance draws its expressive/poetic dimension from the humanities, its relational component from the social sciences, and its physi-cality from the natural sciences. The apparent conflict between the methods of inquiry in science and those in the arts goes beyond the Allegheny environment. In face of the ben-efits in health, longevity, and material possessions provided to the majority (although certainly not all) by scientific advances, there is considerable cul-tural resistance to scientific explanations that touch on aspects of religion, spirituality, emotion, self, and consciousness. As it is these very topics that have served as the central themes for art, and some of which we would consider essential to the artistic experience, it seems worthwhile to consider how this gap was bridged in our collaboration. A major contributor to our ability to collaborate was a willingness to ac-knowledge entrained biases evoked by the language of our respective dis-ciplines and to reconsider the definitions we had attached to certain terms and phrases. For example, scientific explanations are often referred to as re-ductionist, as summarized above in the “complaint” of dancers that science reduces the whole to parts. Of course, much scientific advancement does involve developing explanations for a whole based on the functions of its parts, and this has been immensely effective in a wide variety of the physi-cal sciences. There is little problem with this when the topic is not an aspect of human experience. However, just consider the phrase “reduce dance to its component parts.” It implies that the value of dance will be decreased (reduced) by this process. Philosophers of science can argue, much more effectively than we, that this is not what is meant by reductionism (and that reductionism is not the entirety of scientific explanation). Nevertheless, if a scientist is unwilling to discuss this term, its definition, and what it means and does not mean regarding the application of the scientific method to hu-man experience, s/he will often find dancers (artists) unwilling to take part in a productive exchange. One approach to this that we have found useful is to confront the term head on: “reductionism” is a bad term for what we

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would like to do, carrying with it as it does the implication of decreased value. We (scientists) would like to expand our understanding of the whole by understanding its component parts. Hence, a more appropriate term for the process would be expansionism. This way of reconsidering the basic terminology, and process, of sci-ence also helps address the dancers’ concerns regarding categorical versus wholistic and quantitative versus qualitative (as the scientist acknowledge that the qualitative must be considered when looking at the “whole” of human experience). Another important point to consider is the difference in the (prototypical) learning strategies, or ways of knowing, of neurosci-entists and dancers. Whereas most neuroscientists are (most) comfortable learning and knowing pictorially and linguistically, many dancers are more comfortable with learning and knowing somatosensorally, kinesthetically, or, more broadly, experientially. In our own collaboration, we discovered that these ways of knowing were not contradictory but rather could func-tion as useful polarities on a continuum (with the “non-preferred” style pro-viding an increased dimension of understanding). Finally, our discussion required an initial common ground upon which to build this scaffolding of an inquiry. In our case we came to a consensus early on that our common ground would be emotion and that mind could be considered a process.

Status of the Inquiry

At this point, as neuroscientists, we are more confident in our ability to ad-dress the topic of dance because we have a better handle on what our topic is and is not. Restated, dance is an emotionally expressive use of the body-mind (“gives form to feeling”) involving conscious choices made regarding an exquisitely refined motor relation at the interface of motion and dynamic stillness, of voluntary and involuntary neural systems (“consciously orga-nized energy”). As dancers, a greater confidence is also present based on a better handle on what science is and is not. It is an attempt to better under-stand and appreciate through hypothesis, observation, and testing, without devaluing the object of study. It does not exclude, or negate, the experiential, phenomenological, and wholistic. As novel as the concept of the study of “neurodance” may seem, the wil-derness of this inquiry is not entirely uncharted. Others have gone before under other guises, and taking stock of some of what is already known is important before selecting trajectories of our own. The approaches of F. M. Alexander43 and Moshe Feldencrais44 stand in contradiction to the Platonic rejection of embodied intelligence. Alexander proposed a method of mental and physical education with the goal of reducing unwanted muscle tension in all activities. Although his original interest was in breathing and voice con-trol, his work extended into areas of pedestrian postures and movement(s). Alexander’s approach is a self-awareness technique of conscious use that

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assumes the existence of a cognitive map of the body; focuses on the re-lationship between the position of the head and the spine; and strives to avoid negative habitual movements and positions. For obvious reasons, the technique has an appeal in physical therapy and recovery from injury, but that is not our area of interest here. Dancers and neuroscientists45 value the concept of a body map and its ability to be reprogrammed both consciously and unconsciously through experience. The value of movement and posture to awareness and behavior is also at the heart of the Feldenkrais technique. Feldenkrais held that one’s self-image “governs our every act . . . (and) is conditioned . . . by three factors: heritage, education and self-education.”46 He proposed that to re-educate the person-ality one must treat the physical body and mental function simultaneously. Feldenkrais held that self-education of movement effects changes in self-image because of the richness of the nervous systems’ ability to experience movement and because these changes occur centrally with links to thoughts and feelings.47

Like Alexander, Feldenkrais suggested that voluntary action is impor-tant to recognize and correct automatic behaviors in order to attain “a state of equilibrium from which minimal muscular effort will move the body with equal ease in any desired direction.48 He concluded that the distinction between the mind and body was fallacious and that voluntary movement could impact pathology in the human condition by facilitating adaptation to the world around us. He believed that through enhanced awareness we can learn to move with astonishing lightness and freedom and thereby improve our living circumstances not only physically but also emotionally, intellec-tually, and spiritually. The approaches of Alexander and Feldenkrais can serve as technical tools for dancers developing their skills and are fascinating examples for neuroscientists interested in neuroplasticity in not only sensorimotor pro-cessing but also in attention, awareness, emotion, and consciousness. De-spite the longevity and popularity of these approaches, they are largely seen as being outside the scientific or therapeutic “mainstream,” and thus there is little empirical data on their effects or the potential underlying mecha-nisms. Given our understanding of use-dependent plasticity in neural sys-tems, investigation of approaches such as these seem merited, both to deter-mine the validity of the heretofore anecdotal data and as tools to study the underlying neural processes. Whereas the Alexander Technique and Feldenkrais School provide at least somewhat systematic frameworks to drive investigations of particu-lar aspects of movement experiences, the more global effects of dance are also of interest. Our own observations, both subjective and more objectively assessed with an adjective checklist, indicate that mindful dancing usually leads to a shift toward more positive emotions. Others, in more controlled studies, have reported similar results for mindful movement, or exercise,

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as a whole.49 Given these observations, it is not surprising to find that dance therapy has had a long history. The efforts of Margaret Chase and the founding of the American Dance Therapy Association in 1966 have led to use of dance therapy for some very serious problems, such as schizo-phrenia, autism, eating disorders, and victims of abuse. Ritter and Low, in a meta-analysis of twenty-eight studies, analyzed dance therapy’s effective-ness on a wide range of neuropsychiatric problems and variables.50 Those authors concluded that there were significant improvements of targeted behavior and that the therapies were very successful. In addition, general improvement was noted in anxiety reduction and in body image, although improvements in self-concept were notably modest. Many studies were found to be limited in control comparisons and before and after measures of success, so this meta-analysis should be repeated on better-controlled studies when they are available. The authors pointed out that the use of traditional scientific tools to assess the effectiveness of what is cherished as a healing and expressive art has been met with resistance. However, given that objective assessment seems to show the power of the techniques, one would hope that further investigations are undertaken to determine what can be effective, for therapy or growth, and what might be ineffective or even counterproductive.

Scientific Framework

The identification of systems or processes that might underlie the beneficial effects of dance has been aided by conceptual work such as that of Howard Gardner51 in his proposal that there are seven kinds of intelligence: kines-thetic-motor, musical, logical-mathematical, linguistic, spatial-visual, inter-personal, and intra-personal; and he later added an eighth kind—naturalis-tic. Of course, in dance spatial, kinesthetic-motor, and musical intelligence are particularly relevant, although certainly a dancer would also exercise inter-personal, intra-personal, logical-mathematical, and linguistic intelli-gence when creating and performing dances. Kinesthetic-motor intelligence implies the use of mental abilities to control one’s own movements, whereas musical intelligence incorporates the ability to identify and create rhythm, melody, and harmony. This concept of multiple intelligences has been very useful in organizing the presentation of educational materials.52 In his ap-proach Gardner suggested that the intellectual tendencies of individuals be assessed and this information be used as an entry point for teaching a particular subject. Whether or not Gardner has identified specific forms of intelligence, it is certainly true that cognitive styles vary among individuals, and culturally we have neglected to focus on movement as a source of intel-lectual development and understanding. Another approach to multiple intelligences proposes a specific “emotion-al” intelligence, and dance, like every other artistic expression, relies heav-

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ily on emotion—both from the dancer and the audience (see H’Doubler’s quote above, p. 91). In addition, modern physiologists are accepting the im-portance of emotions in everyday life. As quoted above, Damasio has con-cluded that basic problem solving is first done at an emotional level.53

Unlike other cognitive experiences, evidence for emotion is found all over the body. Among the most obvious clues to emotion are facial expres-sions, which have been discussed since the time of Darwin.54 Evidence for the innate nature of emotional expressions comes from a wide variety of sources (developmental,55 cross-cultural,56 and neurological57), indicating a strong connection between the experience of emotion and control of the facial musculature. Correspondingly, evidence suggests that recognition of these facial expressions of emotion is also largely innate, providing a basic form of nonverbal communication to all members of the species. Although less systematically studied, control of nonfacial musculature, through pos-ture and gait for example, also appears to be a natural conduit for emotional expression and may be recognized just as naturally. The obvious, if specu-lative, extension of this is the suggestion that there is an entire language for bodily expression of emotion, a language that the dancer accesses when engaging in dance and the observer taps into while watching. One particularly intriguing observation arising from the study of facial expression of emotions is the potential distinction between neural systems engaged in the emotional versus volitional control of musculature. Studies of muscle activation have indicated different patterns of activity in facial muscles during smiles produced on command versus spontaneously—spe-cifically, genuine smiles involve contraction of the lateral orbicularis oculi, muscles not contracted while producing smiles “on command.”58 In our laboratories we have focused on the zygomatic muscles, which pull the lips into a smile and the corrugator muscles, which pull the forehead into a frown.59 When we tell jokes participants, of course, are more likely to smile, and when we ask them to think of depressing thoughts they are likely not to smile but rather to corrugate their brows. This may be complicated if they think the jokes are bad (corrugation is seen) or if they somehow think some-thing is funny about a depressive thought. Of course, individuals can vol-untarily make a facial expression opposite to their emotions and not change the emotion much, so we must look for clues that the emotion is “real.” Ekman and Friesenhave made a science of this by dividing the face into various “action units” and analyzing clues to deceitful facial expressions.60 They have found that “full face” smiles with lip corner pulling and cheek elevation are more likely to be valid indicators of happiness than the mere turn of the lips. They have also found that, in the absence of a previous emotion, a voluntary facial action generates a specific pattern of emotion-specific responses in the autonomic nervous system. The significant link between emotion and musculature is also evident in cases of brain damage. Facial paresis has been described in two different

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forms. Emotional facial paresis involves the inability to produce a “natural” facial expression of emotion (for example, a smile). It has been observed in cases of damage to the insula, frontal white matter, and some regions of the thalamus. In contrast, volitional facial paresis involves the inability to produce an “artificial” facial expression of emotion (for example, a smile) and most often results from damage to the face region of the primary motor cortex.61 The engagement of different neural systems in emotional versus volitional expression has been suggested to underlie some of the effective-ness of “method acting” in successful acting. Once again, if these concepts can be extended beyond facial expressions of emotions to other muscula-ture, it may help explain some of the power of dance for both the dancer and the observer. If this is the case, the entire body provides a medium for emotional expression and communication, and dance provides a vehicle for tapping into this evolutionarily ancient system. These processes, so often suppressed in the modern world, may contribute to a more complete and fulfilled human experience.

Mirror Neurons

The identification of a class of neuron that appears to reflect the actions and intentions of others, so-called “mirror”62 neurons, has stimulated extensive research and theorizing with regard to the role of such neurons in normal and abnormal human learning, development, and behavior (e.g., obser-vational learning, theory of mind, autism). Initially described as being in the premotor cortex by Rizzolati et al.,63 these neurons were activated both when a monkey engaged in a specific motor act and when that monkey ob-served the same motor act performed by another. Subsequent single unit studies have extended these observations to suggest that not only motor acts but also intentions may be coded by such neurons in both ventral pre-motor and inferior parietal cortices.64 While this has not been observed at the single-cell level, imaging studies in humans have yielded results con-sistent with the presence of mirror neurons, for example, in the frontal cor-tex reflecting emotional facial expressions65 and in the insula coding of the emotion of disgust.66

The existence of such a class of neurons in humans has tremendous im-plications for dance, where dancers may tap into the mirror neurons systems of their observers to evoke a sensual and emotional experience. Many char-acteristics and capacities of mirror neuron are still unknown, but one would expect that they share most basic aspects of neural function with more well-studied neural systems. One dimension in which this is particularly relevant to dance is in the extent to which mirror systems are innately determined and to what extent they are subject to modification through experience. Their localization (to date) in cortical regions may suggest a high degree of plasticity, so the neurons could reflect learned actions (or approximations

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during observational learning). On the other hand, the nonhuman work has focused on relatively simple motor acts (basic components of the behavioral repertoire) and the human imaging studies on facial expression of emotions, which are, at least for primary emotions, largely innate (with cultural dis-play rules learned to influence their expression). As is the case with other “Nature-Nurture” debates, the outcome of this is likely to be a combina-tion of the two, with hypothetically a stronger innate component for simpler emotions and motor acts and progressively greater learned components for more complex ones. In this light, one can see the dancer as playing the mir-ror neuron systems of the observers, tapping into potentially innate motor and emotional systems and/or social-cultural-environmentally conditioned systems.

Where Now?

One basic problem of dance from a neuroscience perspective has been its insubstantiality. Until recently dances could not be recorded. In contrast, the visual arts, in the form of cave paintings and stone carvings, have en-joyed permanence since the Paleolithic era. Music has enjoyed some degree of permanence since the invention of written music in the medieval period and later the metronome in Beethoven’s time. (Of course, Edison’s phono-graph and its modern versions have completely changed how and when music is listened to.) Similar attempts to codify dance have ranged from noting the steps involved as in ballroom dancing to elaborate notes regard-ing choreography. One form of systematic codification has been the Laban67 system of movement analysis, but, no doubt because of its complexity, La-banotation has not gained widespread use. Currently, video technology has had a great deal of impact on the substantiality of dance in much the same way audio technology impacted that of music. This may help considerably with the study of the experience of dance observation, and perhaps con-trolling for some aspects of the dancer’s experience, but its limitations (live versus recorded, visual record of an observer versus sensory experiences of performer, etc.) must be recognized. Perhaps the greatest technical problem for the neuroscientist attempting to study dance is to record the neurological process of the moving/dancing body. This may be similar to some of the general problems of kinesiology, but in dance that aspires to artistry, as opposed to athletics, there is an over-arching need to understand consciousness and emotion, whereas in athlet-ics motor efficiency is generally the central issue. (Parenthetically, this diffi-culty of capturing data from a moving participant is one of the main reasons why neuroscientists also have not examined the dramatic arts even though media figures command the greatest public interest in all the arts, and, of course, they also command much of the money.) We propose two approach-es: one is to limit movement and study those processes of inhibition that

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are very important to understanding dance movement; the other is to use new technology to study the body (with the brain) as the body is moving. For example, new devices permit sophisticated remote EEG recording while a participant is moving with much less movement artifact than previously possible. Currently, however, movement is incompatible with devices such as brain scanners (fMRI and PET machines) that have been so helpful in building up our knowledge of the processing of music.68

In addition to problems of insubstantiality and movement, neuroscien-tists have also avoided studying dance because of a number of confound-ing variables affecting the dancer and/or audience at any particular time. In dance, usually music, lights, costumes, and sometimes staging changes occur along with the changing rhythms, dynamics, shapes, and locomotive patterns of the dancers, while the changing relationships between these variables add a further level of complexity. All of these would certainly cre-ate changes within the brain of the dancer(s) as well as both passive and engaged observers. The study of music has faced similar problems, and sci-entists have been quite inventive in creating prototypical music to study evoked changes in the brain. Similar inventiveness may be useful in the study of dance. Applying a typical “reductionist” approach of elimination to the processes physically external to the dance could allow us to learn about the process of dance observation. It is possible to record brain activity from subjects viewing a video recording taken from a fixed camera, of a dance sequence having no light, stage, or costume changes, presented without any music or sound score. “Reassembling” the dance, by adding the variables removed from this scenario, would provide a picture, albeit fragmented, of the process of dance observation. A less typical, but still “reductionist,” approach is to start with the essential components of dance (as identified by dancers), for which gross and/or rapid bodily movements are not necessar-ily required. Slower movements, with limited locomotion or even the fixed poses often taken in dance, such as hanging in a bow or dancing as a tree, could incorporate the essentials of dance (as we define it) while minimizing technical problems. It is even possible that such an emphasis on nuance in such dance would maximize the use of those neural processes most related to the interface between motion and dynamic stillness, thus maximizing our ability to study and learn from them. From this base a more complete study would involve reassembling a more complete representation of the range of dance movement as our understanding and technology develop. Thus, through appropriate consideration of issues of research design and application of developing technology, it has become increasingly possible for neuroscientists to overcome technical obstacles to the study of dance. However, none of these solutions to technical problems directly addresses the critical questions of “when walking becomes dancing” and “how the brain knows it is dancing.” The problem of determining how to apply these

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solutions requires additional refinement of the topics, providing common ground for the exchange of information.

Conclusion

The present analysis is offered in a continuance of the tradition of art as an example of an embodied inquiry, where insights emerge at the confluence of streams of personal experience and theoretical knowledge. As Margaret H’Doubler suggested, “The art which expresses emotional values in move-ment is dance.”69

Dance offers neuroscientists a unique perspective on problems of neuro-science, while neuroscience offers dancers a unique window into their art. Many problems, both attitudinal and technical, make this exchange particu-larly challenging. As we have seen above, the Platonic tradition of separa-tion of the bodily from the rational gave way to the Christian confusion between the body and sexuality and the rejection of the body. Even early information theory rejected emotions as noise in the system. Some theorists continued to explore the relationship among emotion, movement, and intel-lect. Recent video imaging and choreographic notation has somewhat over-come the insubstantiality of dance. Recent technology has also allowed at least electrophysiological studies of moving dancers, but we are unable to study brain images with other scanning techniques. Intelligence theorists have discussed movement abilities from the perspective of a unique and separate form of intelligence. Because dance integrates emotion and intel-lect, the resulting “think-feel” neurological activity presents an exceptional view of the nervous system. The neurological activity also more richly casts the vital forces expressed in dance. These forces that give power to dance are time, space, energy, and relationship expressed on a continuum of feeling and form. These elements informed our personal childhood dances. Our cultural groups have shaped and formed our inherited predisposition to dance in particular ways. Cul-tural dances not only serve to pass on the traditions and values of a commu-nity through the medium of the body but also serve as a form of resistance to social norms. Of course, dance can be artistic expression, recreation, and exercise as well. What seems important to acknowledge is that dances are irrevocably interconnected to personal biological needs and cultural values, and that our revised definition of dance as “consciously organized and ex-quisitely refined motor relation at the interface of motion and stillness, of voluntary and involuntary neural systems that gives form to feeling” sig-nificantly enriches our understanding of the moments “when walking be-comes dancing” and “why it matters.” This definition of an inquiry path has additional implications for the field of education that will be addressed in detail in a separate publication.

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NOTES

This work was funded in part by a grant from the Keck Foundation. 1. Robert Zatorre, Pascal Belin, and Virginia Penhune, “Structure and Function of

Auditory Cortex: Music and Speech,” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 6, no. 1 (2002): 37-46.

2. Semir Zeki, Inner Vision: An Exploration of Art, Vision and the Brain (Oxford, Eng-land: Oxford University Press 1999).

3. Robert Solso, The Psychology of Art and the Evolution of the Conscious Brain (Cam-bridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004).

4. Ivar Hagendoorn, “Cognitive Dance Improvisation: How Study of the Motor System Can Inspire Dance (and Vice Versa),” Leonardo 36 (2003): 221-27; and Ivar Hagendoorn, “The Dancing Brain,” Cerebrum 5, no. 2 (2003): 19-33.

5. Margaret H’Doubler, Dance: A Creative Art Experience (New York: Crofts and Co. 1940).

6. John Dewey, Art as Experience (1934; reprint, New York: Capricorn Books, 1958). 7. William James, The Principles of Psychology (1890; reprint, Cambridge, MA: Har-

vard University Press, 1981). 8. Erick Hawkins, The Body Is a Clear Space and Other Statements on Dance (Penning-

ton, NJ: Princeton Book Company Publishers, 1992). 9. Ellen Dissanayake, Homo Aestheticus: Where Art Comes From and Why (Seattle:

University of Washington Press, 1999); Roderyk Lang, The Nature of Dance: An Anthropological Perspective (New York: International Publication Service, 1976); Judith Hanna, To Dance Is Human: A Theory of Non-verbal Communication (Chica-go: University of Chicago Press, 1979); and Paul Spencer, Society and Dance: The Social Anthropology of Process and Performance (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985).

10. H’Doubler, Dance, 47.11. Ibid.12. Antonio Damasio, Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain ( New

York: Avon Books, 1994), xv.13. David Chalmers, “Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness,” Journal of Con-

sciousness Studies 2, no. 3 (1995): 200-219.14. H’Doubler, Dance.15. Ibid.16. Ibid. 5.17. Dissanayake, Homo Aestheticus, 96.18. Hanna, To Dance Is Human.19. Paul Krack, “Relicts of Dancing Mania: The Dancing Procession of Echternach,”

Neurology 53, no. 9 (1999): 2169-72.20. David Gentilcore, “Ritualized Illness and Music Therapy: Views of Tarantism in

the Kingdom of Naples,” in Music as Medicine: The History of Music Therapy Since Antiquity, ed. P. Horden (Brookfield, VT: Ashgate, 2000), 255-72.

21. Wade Davis, Passage of Darkness: The Ethnobiology of the Haitian Zombie (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1988).

22. Krack, “Relicts of Dancing Mania.”23. Scott Hutson, “The Rave: Spiritual Healing in Modern Western Subcultures,”

Anthropological Quarterly 73, no. 1 (2000): 35-49.24. Norma Canner, “Marian Chace Foundation Annual Lecture: Going to the

Source,” American Journal of Dance Therapy 24 (2002): 7-16; and Judith Hanna, “The Power of Dance: Health and Healing,” Journal of Alternative and Complemen-tary Medicine 1 (1995): 323-33.

25. Roger Albin, Anne Young, and John Penney, “The Functional Anatomy of Basal Ganglia Disorders,” Trends in Neuroscience 12, no. 10 (1989): 366-75; Roger Albin, Anne Young, and John Penney, “The Functional Anatomy of Disorders of the Basal Ganglia,” Trends in Neuroscience 18, no. 2 (1995): 63-64; and Marie Chesse-let and Jill Delfs, “Basal Ganglia and Movement Disorders: An Update,” Trends in Neuroscience 19, no. 10 (1996): 417-22.

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26. Rahil Jummani and Michael Okun, “Sydenham Chorea,” Archives of Neurology 58 (2001): 311-13.

27. Jorritt Hoff, Bob van Hilten, and Raymond Roos, “A Review of the Assessment of Dyskinesias,” Movement Disorders 14, no. 5 (1999): 737-43; and Claudio Pac-chetti, Francesca Mancini, Roberto Aglieri, Cira Fundarò, Emilia Martignoni, and Giuseppe Nappi “Active Music Therapy in Parkinson’s Disease: An Integra-tive Method for Motor and Emotional Rehabilitation,” Psychosomatic Medicine 62, no. 3 (2000): 386-93.

28. Oliver Sacks, Awakenings, rev. ed. (New York: Dutton, 1983).29. Oliver Sacks, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales

(New York: Summit, 1985).30. Thomas Elliot, Burnt Norton, in Four Quartet (Orlando, FL: Harcourt, 1943), 62-

67.31. Jamake Highwater, Dance: Rituals of Experience (Toronto Canada: Metheun Pub-

lication, 1978).32. Plato, The Republic, trans. Benjamin Jowett (New York: Limited Editions Club,

1944).33. The Orations of Marcus Tullius Ciciero, Vol. 2, trans. C. D. Younge (London: G. Bell

and Sons, 1917), 336.34. Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents, trans. James Strachey (New York:

Norton, 1962).35. David Levin, The Body’s Recollection of Being: Phenomenological Psychology and the

Deconstruction of Nihilism (London: Routlege, 1985).36. Roland Takaki, Iron Cages: Race and Culture in Nineteenth-Century America (Ox-

ford, England: Oxford University Press, 2000).37. Donald Hebb, The Organization of Behavior (New York: Wiley, 1949).38. George Miller, Eugene Galanter, and Karl Pribram, Plans and the Structure of Be-

havior (New York: Holt, 1960).39. Damasio, Descartes’ Error.40. Antonio Damasio, The Feeling of What Happens (Orlando, FL: Harcourt, 1999).41. Charles Snow, The Two Cultures (London: Cambridge University Press, 1959).42. After some discussion, we (the authors) agreed to adapt this spelling, rather than

“holistic,” to distance it from the explicitly antireductionist concept as defined by Jan Smuts in Holism and Evolution (New York: MacMillan, 1926).

43. Frederick Alexander, Man’s Supreme Inheritance: Conscious Guidance and Control in Relation to Human Evolution in Civilization (New York: E. P. Dutton and Co., 1918).

44. Moshe Feldenkrais, Awareness through Movement (New York: Harper and Row, 1977); and Moshe Feldenkrais, Body and Mature Behavior (New York: Interna-tional Universities Press, 1983).

45. Christoph Braun, Udo Heinz, Renate Schweizer, Katja Wiech, Niels Birbaumer, and Helge Topka, “Dynamic Organization of the Somatosensory Cortex Induced by Motor Activity,” Brain 124 (2001): 2259-67.

46. Feldenkrais, Awareness, 3.47. Ibid.48. Ibid., 76.49. Yael Netz and Ronnie Lidor, “Mood Alterations in Mindful Versus Aerobic Ex-

ercise Modes,” Journal of Psychology 137, no. 5 (2003): 405-19.50. Meredith Ritter and Kathryn Low, “The Effects of Dance/Movement Therapy:

A Meta-analysis,” Arts in Psychotherapy 23 (1996): 249-60.51. Howard Gardner, Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences (New York:

Basic Books, 1983).52. Howard Gardner, Multiple Intelligences: The Theory in Practice (New York: Basic

Books, 1993).53. Damasio, Descartes’ Error.54. Charles Darwin, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872; reprint,

Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1965), 15.

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55. Robert Woodworth and Harold Schlosberg, Experimental Psychology, 2nd ed. (New York: Holt, 1954); and Carroll Izard, The Psychology of Emotions (New York: Plenum, 1991).

56. Paul Ekman and Wallace Friesen, Unmasking the Face: A Guide to Recognizing Emotions from Facial Clues (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1975).

57. Hanns Hopf, Wibke Mueller-Forell, and Nikolai Hopf, “Localization of Emo-tional and Volitional Facial Paresis,” Neurology 42 (1992): 1918-23.

58. Guillaume Duchene, The Mechanism of Human Facial Expression, ed. R. A. Cuth-bertson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990); and Robert Levenson, Paul Ekman, and Wallace Friesen, “Voluntary Facial Action Generates Emotion-Specific Autonomic Nervous System Activity” Psychophysiology 27 (1990): 363-84.

59. James Dale, Mary Hudak, and Paula Wasikowski, “Effects of Dyadic Participa-tion and Awareness of Being Monitored on Facial Action During Exposure to Humor,” Perceptual and Motor Skills 73 (1991): 984-86.

60. Ekman and Freisen, Unmasking the Face.61. Hopf et al., “Localization of Emotional.”62. The term “mirror” is not entirely accurate in this application: the neurons are

active as though the individual were mimicking, rather than mirroring, the ac-tivity of the observed.

63. Vittorio Gallese, Luciano Fadiga, Leonardo Fogassi, and Giacomo Rizzolatti, “Action Recognition in the Premotor Cortex,” Brain 119 (1996): 593-609.

64. Leonardo Fogassi, Pier Francesco Ferrari, Benno Gesierich, Stefano Rozzi, Fabi-an Chersi, and Giacomo Rizzolatti, “Parietal Lobe: From Action Organization to Intention Understanding,” Science 308, no. 5722 (2005): 662-67; and Koen Nelis-sen, Giuseppe Luppino, Wim Vanduffel, Giacomo Rizzolatti, and Guy A. Orban, “Observing Others: Multiple Action Representation in the Frontal Lobe,” Science 310, no. 5746 (2005): 332-36.

65. Marco Iacoboni, Roger Woods, Marcel Brass, Harold Bekkering, John Mazziotta, and Giacomo Rizzolatti, “Cortical Mechanisms of Human Imitation,” Science 286, no. 5449 (1999): 2526-28.

66. C. Keysers, E. Kohler, M. A. Umiltà, L. Nanetti, L. Fogassi and V. Gallese, “Au-diovisual Mirror Neurons and Action Recognition,” Experimental Brain Research 153 (2003): 628-36.

67. Rudolf Laban, Mastery of Movement on the Stage (Boston: Plays, 1971).68. See, for example, Zatorre, Belin, and Penhune, “Structure and Function.”69. H’Doubler, Dance, xxix.

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