Why do we find ourselves bobbing our heads or tapping our foot to the beat of a song? How do musical bass beats trigger us to move? Here’s the science behind why our brains can’t get enough of a good beat.

Naomi takes us on a journey through some of the latest brain science and research to find out why we can’t help but move to the beat of our favorite songs.

SOURCES

Minute 00:35

“Undetectable very-low frequency sound increases dancing at a live concert” in Current Biology.

https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(22)01535-4

Minute 2:45

240 Hz Sound

https://onlinesound.net/download/audio/lowmid-tone-freq-240hz

Minute 4:25

“Tagging the Neuronal Entrainment to Beat and Meter” in The Journal of Neuroscience.

https://www.jneurosci.org/content/31/28/10234.full

Minute 6:44

“Neural tracking of the musical beat is enhanced by low-frequency sounds” in PNAS.

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1801421115

Minute 7:51 to 17:23

Brain regions being activated by musical beats and the vestibular system connection:

“The sensory-motor theory of rhythm and beat induction 20 years on: a new synthesis and future perspectives” by Neil P.M. Todd and Christopher S. Lee

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2015.00444/full#B97

Minute 8:38

Brain models generated in BodyParts3D/Anatomography

BodyParts3D, © The Database Center for Life Science licensed under CC Attribution-Share Alike 2.1 Japan

Minute 9:16

Homunculus Image

Illustration from Anatomy & Physiology, Connexions Web site. http://cnx.org/content/col11496/1.6/, Jun 19, 2013.

Image downloaded from: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1421_Sensory_Homunculus.jpg

No changes were made

Minute 11:58

“Effects of ethanol on the cerebellum: advances and prospects” by Jia Luo

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4492805/