Neuroscience of music and movement

When listening to music, neurons in the brain can synchronize their firing with the beat. This neural entrainment is how we are able to predict when the next beat will occur, and thus how we can tap our feet or dance along. The ability of different music to compel movement in a listener varies, and this is likely also true of neural entrainment. This project investigates certain psychological, acoustic, and musical features of music—that have previously been found to create a desire to move—in their ability to entrain neurons in premotor areas of the brain. If a certain feature is good at entraining neurons that are related to planning movement, then it is likely that this is a feature that will create a desire to move in the listener.

Code on Github