Abstract
This paper discusses possible correspondences between neuroscientific findings and phenomenologically informed methodologies in the investigation of kinesthetic empathy in watching dance. Interest in phenomenology has recently increased in cognitive science (Gallagher and Zahavi 2008) and dance scholars have recently contributed important new insights into the use of phenomenology in dance studies (e.g. Legrand and Ravn (Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 8(3):389–408, 2009); Parviainen (Dance Research Journal 34(1):11–26, 2002); Rothfield (Topoi 24:43–53, 2005)). In vision research, coherent neural mechanisms for perceptual phenomena were uncovered, thus supporting correlation of phenomenology and neurophysiology Spillmann (Vision Research 49(12):1507–1521, 2009). Correspondingly, correlating subjects’ neurophysiological data with qualitative responses has been proposed as a means to research the human brain in the study of consciousness (Gallagher and Zahavi 2008), with similar issues in clinical psychology Mishara (Current Opinion in Psychiatry 20(6):559–569, 2007) and biology Kosslyn et al. (American Psychologist 57:341–351, 2002). Yet the relationship between neuroscience and qualitative research informed by phenomenology remains problematic. How qualitative research normally handles subjective experiences is difficult to reconcile with standard statistical analysis of objective data. Recent technological developments in cognitive neuroscience have inspired a number of researchers to use more naturalistic stimuli, outside the laboratory environment, such as dance, thereby perhaps helping to open up the cognitive sciences to more phenomenologically informed approaches. A question central to our research, addressed here, is how the phenomenal experiences of a dance audience member, as accessed by qualitative research methods, can be related to underlying neurophysiological events. We outline below some methodological challenges encountered in relating audiences’ first-person accounts of watching live dance performance to neurophysiological evidence of their experiences.
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Notes
Theatre dance refers to dance as an art form, rather than social dance (and here it should be noted that the viewing conditions we are talking about are those of Western theatre dance).
Proprioception and kinesthesia are often used interchangeably but often and more specifically, proprioception is used to describe static limb position sense while kinesthesia is used to refer to the sensation of movement of one’s own body. The sensory experiences of position and movement derive from signals from several classes of receptors, including those in the muscles, joints, and skin (Proske and Gnadevia 2009). How information from different receptors is integrated in the human brain to a coherent multisensory experience is still an open question. Together with other sensory modalities, in particular vision, proprioception has become a useful way to investigate how the body might be mentally represented (Graziano and Botvinick 2002).
The perception of a coherent motion can be the result of a combination of several different motion vectors. For example, when two grating patterns that shift into different directions are superimposed onto each other, the resulting percept can be that of one coherent moving plaid pattern (see Adelson and Movshon 1982).
Apparent motion describes the phenomenon of perceiving motion when there is none. For instance, when a stationary object is presented first in one position, and then, after a short black out another identical object is shown at another location instead, the observer has the impression of seeing one single object move from one place to the other instead of two alternately presented objects, as first described in Exner (1875).
Any form of perceived motion derived from human or animal movements can be described as biological motion. The term is mostly used, however, to describe a unique form of presentation, by a handful of moving dots only (see Fig. 1). Interesting about the perception of biological motion is that human observers are particularly sensitive to its spatio-temporal parameters (see Johansson 1973).
See examples of created illusions on http://www.neuralcorrelate.com/
A similar approach can be seen in choreography: the question is sometimes posed as to whether neuroscience findings could contribute to choreographic decision making. One way to link neuroscientific findings with productive creation can be found in Hagendoorn (2010, forthcoming). By the use of an imaginary choreography, the author considers where cognitive neuroscience can be linked with the elements of a dance work. This knowledge could be used by dance spectators to reflect on their own responses as well as by choreographers and dancers to understand how artistic decisions might affect the spectators’ responses. Also, attempts have been made to create dance works based on neuroscientific findings or experimental approaches (Hansen and Barton 2009; see also Jola 2010). However, this is a very complex issue. To date, we do not know enough about the multitude of sensory interactions that lead to the audiences’ experience when watching dance which could then be used for choreographic practice. There are clearly enormous differences between choreographing a dance work and creating perceptual illusions for scientific study. We may be able post hoc to infer the contribution of perceptual properties to effects of artistic work (Melcher and Bacci 2008); but (un-)fortunately, it is not simple to use modern neuroscientific methods for artistic creation (for an example, Goebel 2008).
“Reflexivity in this sense means thinking critically about what you are doing and why, confronting and often challenging your own assumptions, and recognising the extent to which your thoughts, actions and decisions shape how you research and what you see” (Mason 2002a, p. 5).
We chose to compare the spectators’ responses to watching ballet and bharatanatyam because these are discrete styles with well-defined vocabularies, by contrast with contemporary dance, which frequently combines elements of different styles. For a recording of each performance as staged in the TMS experiment please see http://paco.psy.gla.ac.uk/project.php?id=13.
Cortex excitability is indicated by the size of the amplitude of a motor evoked potential induced by single pulse transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS, see Fadiga et al. 1995). A number of magnetic stimulations were triggered over the participants’ left motor cortex while they were watching the performance. The magnetic field induces an electric volley in the brain which evokes the neurons to send signals down the axons to move, in the form of action potentials comparable to when the participant would move voluntarily. This method is not invasive or painful. If the moto-corticospinal excitability is high, the amplitude of a TMS induced motor evoked potential on the right hand or arm contralateral to the site of the stimulation is larger, and vice versa.
Owing to the difficulty of recruiting experienced bharatanatyam spectators in Glasgow, these spectators were less experienced than the ballet spectators.
We used the Interpersonal Reactivity Index by Davis (1980).
NVivo software is designed to facilitate qualitative researchers in analysing unstructured data, without relying on statistics or numbers. See http://www.qsrinternational.com/products_nvivo.aspx.
This complements previous studies in cognitive neuroscience. For instance, Molnar-Szakacs et al. (2007) found that motor cortex excitability of the spectator is enhanced when they observed culturally coded hand gestures performed by an actor of their own linguistic, regional or cultural community. However, their study was about the effects of cultural learning on social communication in everyday situations, and did not relate cortical excitability to personal preference. As indicated by qualitative audience research as well as neuroscientific data, our study showed enhanced cortical excitability when the observed movements matched the spectators’ expectations and aesthetic appreciations.
We measured motor evoked responses in the finger and the arm, and therefore, each subject had two averaged graphs, one for the finger, one for the arm, with values for each performance type.
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Acknowledgements
The research underpinning this paper was carried out under the aegis of the ‘Watching Dance: Kinesthetic Empathy’ project, which is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. The authors would like to acknowledge support from the other members of the Watching Dance project team: Prof. Frank Pollick, Dr. Marie-Hélène Grosbras, Dr. Matthew Reason, Dr. Anna Kuppuswamy and Karen Wood, MSc. We would also like to thank Scottish Ballet, the dancers and participants in our studies thus far.
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Jola, C., Ehrenberg, S. & Reynolds, D. The experience of watching dance: phenomenological–neuroscience duets. Phenom Cogn Sci 11, 17–37 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-010-9191-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-010-9191-x