COGS 393 - Minds in Motion: The Cognitive Science of Dance

Semester Offered: Spring
0.5 unit(s)

(Same as DANC 393) How do we dance and how does it affect us? Dancing to a beat is a type of rhythmic synchronization with social origins; it involves watching, listening, and then reproducing and riffing on the sounds and movements of others, in coordinaion with others. As we learn more about how the brain and body co-operate with each other, and interact with their world, the cognitive underpinnings of dance appear to involve the parallel workings of multiple perception-action loops and mental models that learn and predict. From a neural perspective, we see the brain activity of dance partners entrain, and people with Parkinson’s who use music and dance to reorganize their rhythmic movements.

In this Intensive, we explore dance from the perspective of cognitive science and cognitive science from the perspective of dance. Our work includes readings, projects and experiments. John Long, Miriam Mahdaviani.

First six-week course.

One 2-hour period.

Course Format: INT