Spontaneity and diversity of movement to music are not uniquely human.

Spontaneity and diversity of movement to music are not uniquely human. Curr Biol. 2019 Jul 08;29(13):R621-R622 Authors: Jao Keehn RJ, Iversen JR, Schulz I, Patel AD Abstract Spontaneous movement to music occurs in every human culture and is a foundation of dance [1]. This response to music is absent in most species (including monkeys), yet it occurs in parrots, perhaps because they (like humans, and unlike monkeys) are vocal learners whose brains contain strong auditory-motor connections, conferring sophisticated audiomotor processing abilities [2,3]. Previous research has shown that parrots can bob their heads or lift their feet in synchrony with a musical beat [2,3], but humans move to music using a wide variety of movements and body parts. Is this also true of parrots? If so, it would constrain theories of how movement to music is controlled by parrot brains. Specifically, as head bobbing is part of parrot courtship displays [4] and foot lifting is part of locomotion, these may be innate movements controlled by central pattern generators which become entrained by auditory rhythms, without the involvement of complex motor planning. This would be unlike humans, where movement to music engages cortical networks including frontal and parietal areas [5]. Rich diversity in parrot movement to music would suggest a strong contribution of forebrain regions to this behavior, perhaps including motor learning regions abutting the complex voca...
Source: Current Biology - Category: Biology Authors: Tags: Curr Biol Source Type: research