Dr. Mattia Rosso reviews of a fascinating foray into flamenco and the brain.
The Neurohumanities Network had the pleasure of hosting Dr. Constantina Theofanopoulou, a Neuroscientist, an assistant professor at Rockefeller University, and an accomplished flamenco dancer. Her tour-de-force seminar covered the fascinating relationship between dance, speech, and the brain. What do parrots and humans have in common when it comes to this?
As it turns out, both are both the most advanced vocal communicators and the only species with evidence of being able to dance, which sets them apart from the remainder of the animal kingdom. Dr. Theofanopoulou’s research has aimed to uncover the meaning and the effects of complex vocal communication (as in speaking and singing) and dancing. Both parrots and humans are advanced vocal learners, which suggests a high level of auditory to motor integration. This integration is required for the movements that are necessary for vocal learning, specifically the movements of the larynx, for humans, of the syrinx, for parrots. Specifically, these laryngeal and syringeal muscles execute complex motor patterns, which allow us to speak and allow us and parrots to sing. Such an auditory to motor integration should be equally important for the body movements involved in dancing.
In her work in preparation, using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), Dr. Theofanopoulou examined in humans the primary motor cortex with the goal of identifying and localizing the areas that underlie dance (rhythmic hand, arm, and leg movements) and speech (laryngeal movements). Her findings here were fascinating – the motor regions controlling hand, leg and laryngeal movements are closely overlapping, suggesting that at times the same region may execute both actions. Her findings were presented following a distinction of two separate regions for laryngeal movement, a dorsal and a ventral one, with the functional distinction being that while both the dorsal and ventral regions control voicing, the dorsal region more heavily controls pitch.
As an accomplished flamenco dancer, Dr. Theofanopoulou was not content with studying movement and dance in the rigid confines of an MRI scanner. She developed a mobile electroencephalography protocol that uses a wireless cap that records brain waves, which she could employ in live dance. During a public performance, the choreography of dancers was accompanied by a projection of the interbrain synchrony of their brainwaves on a screen. The visualizations highlighted the synchrony of each dyad of five dancers, while they were dancing in real time. This showed that dance is not mere “muscle memory” but requires complex brain activity, which spans the confines of one’s brain and creates complex connections with dance partners.
Next, Dr. Theofanopoulou and her team aimed to understand which genes enable the expression of speech and dance. They looked closely at the gene expression in the primary motor cortex in humans, showing that oxytocin pathway genes were upregulated. While there was not a gene with such name in birds (“oxytocin”), she and her team found through comparative genomics that a gene that was traditionally named differently (“mesotocin”) was actually the same gene as the oxytocin found in mammals and other vertebrates. Furthermore, when oxytocin antagonists were applied to a zebra finch, the complexity of female finch-directed singing was significantly reduced. In other words, complex songs used during courtship were reduced to regular song, thereby suggesting a role of oxytocin in social (courtship) singing.
Finally, Dr. Theofanopoulou wanted to apply these lessons to humans. One of her studies in preparation aimed to examine the effects of tango-based therapy on patients with Parkinson’s disease, where she showed that dance enhances connectivity between key areas of the primary motor cortex and the precuneus. She contrasted this with the effect of mere walking, which enhances different brain connections between the primary motor cortex and the cerebellum, which are known connections that people with Parkinson’s overconnect in the progression of the disease. She is now planning to study the neural effects of dance in Alzheimer’s disease, where patients have already been shown to experience benefits at a behavioral level.
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Dr. Mattia Rosso is a clinical fellow in movement disorders at Yale University. Inspired by his experiences at the Boston Society of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry, and he found other like-minded scholars and practitioners to help form the NeuroHumanities Network.
References
1. Theofanopoulou, C. (2025) Dancing towards speech improvement: Repurposing dance for motor speech deficits in neurodegenerative diseases. Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease 0(0).
2. Theofanopoulou+, C., Paez+, S., Huber, D., Todd, E., Ramirez-Moreno, M.A., Khaleghian, B., Munoz Sanchez, A., Gand, V., Contreras-Vidal+, J.L. (2024) Mobile brain imaging in butoh dancers: from rehearsals to public performance. BMC Neuroscience 25,62.
3. Theofanopoulou, C. (2024). Tapping into the vocal learning and rhythmic synchronization hypothesis. BMC Neuroscience 25, 63.
4. Sartorius, A. M., Rokicki, J., Bettella, F., Barth, C., de Lange, A. G., Haram, M., … Theofanopoulou+, C., Quintana+, D. S. (2024) An evolutionary timeline of the oxytocin signaling pathway. Communications Biology.
5. Theofanopoulou+, C. and Jarvis+, E. D. (2023) Reply to: The case for standardizing gene nomenclature in vertebrates. Nature 614, E33–E36.
6. Theofanopoulou, C. (2023) A journey from speech to dance through the field of oxytocin. Compr. Psychoneuroendocrinology 16, 100193.
7. Theofanopoulou*+, C., Andirkó*, A., Jarvis, E.D., Boeckx+, C. (2022) Oxytocin and vasotocin receptor variation and the evolution of human prosociality. Compr. Psychoneuroendocrinology 11, 100139.
8. Theofanopoulou+, C., Gedman, G., Cahill, J.A., Boeckx, C., Jarvis+, E. D. (2021) A universal evolution-based nomenclature for the oxytocin and vasotocin ligand and receptor families. Nature 592, 747–755.
9. Theofanopoulou, C. (2021) Reconstructing the evolutionary history of the oxytocin and vasotocin receptor gene family: insights on whole genome duplication scenarios. Developmental Biology 479, 99-106.
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