Social attention and coordinated movement produce dissociable spectral and network changes during dyadic improvisational dance

Authors

DeLauder, R. M., Tasnim, N., Aychman, M., Gahagan, M., Purevtugs, J., Newpol, J., Frank, R., Grizzell, G., Nobriga, G., Rose, S., Basso, J. C.

Abstract

Dance is increasingly delivered as an intervention for social and affective functioning, but a live dyadic encounter confounds several distinct ingredients - social attention, verbal engagement, coordinated movement, and in-the-moment generation - so its neural effects cannot be assigned to any one of them. We recorded dual-brain mobile EEG from adult human participants of both sexes (16 female, 2 male) and a dance instructor across six five-minute conditions that vary these ingredients independently: solitary rest, direct eye gaze, conversation, teacher-led and participant-led mirroring, and free improvisation, with concurrent head-mounted accelerometry. Referencing each condition to eye gaze - socially engaging but nearly motionless - rather than to solitary rest partitioned the response. The components proved dissociable. Nonverbal social attention alone reorganized the power spectrum, flattening the aperiodic exponent (g = -0.97) and desynchronizing alpha-band oscillations (g = -0.90), while leaving inter-regional connectivity unchanged (amplitude g = +0.15; phase g = +0.11). Verbal engagement added high-frequency amplitude coupling (g = +2.61) without further spectral change. Coordinated movement added a decrease in theta/alpha coupling involving the frontoparietal-control network (g = -0.59), the signature of an externally directed state, alongside a further spectral shift (g = -0.61). Movement-vigor covariates, corticokinematic coherence, and aperiodic-adjusted power indicated that the spectral effects were cortical rather than myogenic. Four weeks of improvisational dance training increased empathic responsiveness to others' distress relative to a movie control (g = 0.82). Coordinated social movement thus acts on the brain componentially, with mutual attention rather than motor load establishing the engaged state.

Preprint server: bioRxiv
The authors list and abstract were imported from bioRxiv on 01 Oct 2026.

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