Why Do We Dance To Music?

Good music gets us grooving in no 

time. Our feet move with the beat, our hands clap with the drums 

and our hips sway the rhythm. We can’t help it...but why? Why do we find 

ourselves busting a move when we hear music? Let’s start at the beginning: the 

brain and how it perceives sound. When our ears perceive sound waves, they send this 

information to the auditory cortex in the brain. The auditory cortex decodes the information in the 

sound: its volume, pitch, frequency, and so on. For random and incoherent sound, what we call 

noise, the auditory cortex perceives it as such and pays no heed to it unless it causes us 

pain. But ordered periodic sound, or music, yields tickles the brain in interesting ways.

You see, the auditory cortex is linked to many different parts of the brain: cognition, emotion, 

language, and movement. When we listen to music, all these regions light up; the motor regions 

allow us to bust a move and reward circuits secrete neurotransmitters and hormones that 

make us feel good. There is also evidence that dancing to music releases the body’s natural 

pain killers making us more tolerant to pain. The additional fact music makes us 

reflexively dance is curiouser still. So, what’s so special about dance and music?

This points to a long evolutionary link of life with music, though why such a link developed in 

the first place is unclear. Some hypothesize that music began as small rhythmic beats, like tapping 

one’s foot, maybe to scare away predators. We soon learnt to coordinate with others 

to create more complex rhythms. Synchronising with other people allowed us to 

create social bonds. Several archaeological sites have found musical instruments that date 

back as far as 42,000 years ago. For all this, it would be beneficial to have neural connections 

that help us sync with our group mates. This might help explain why we break out into our 

very own air guitar solos while listening to rock. Our brains probably think we’re 

all part of the same orchestra. This coordination, at some 

point, resulted in dance. When we look deeper into the brain, on a 

cellular level, a special type of neuron might be the reason we can move to the rhythm so 

well. These neurons are called mirror neurons, and as the name suggests they mirror observation 

into actions. What this means is that these neurons are activated when we see someone 

else perform actions as well as when we perform that same action. In short, they help us copy. 

They’ve been implicated in our ability to dance. Many species of birds also dance to music. 

Research on Snowball, the cockatoo showed that the bird has choreography, 14 distinct moves 

to be precise. This indicates that other animals might also have neural connections 

that allow them to appreciate music. Besides social grouping, dancing might also 

have started a mating strategy. From birds to insects, animals dance to impress their mates. 

Scientists think it is a representation of the animal’s fitness, or how good their DNA is.

This propensity to dance and make music in groups has led scientists to propose that 

this might be one reason humans manage to form and remain in large groups or societies. 

Almost every society has a dance unique to its culture and we’ve found evidence that we’ve been 

dancing since we could first paint on walls. All things considered, dance is a pretty wonderful 

thing, and though we might not fully understand what’s going on in the brain and body, it doesn’t 

really matter as long as we can get groovy.