Dance training influences how the brain processes facial emotions

Dance training can influence how we perceive not only movement but also everyday emotional expressions, according to new research from the Centre for Cognition and Neuroscience at City St George’s, University of London.

The study, published in the journal Cerebral Cortex, found that dance expertise influences the brain’s early visual and somatosensory responses when observing emotional facial expressions.

The findings build on Professor Beatriz Calvo-Merino’s previous research, which showed for the first time that motor training, such as dance expertise, can modulate how we perceive actions. This latest study broadens that understanding, suggesting that the effects of dance training extend beyond familiar, dance-specific movements to influence the perception of emotions in other people’s faces.

Professor Calvo-Merino, Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at City St George’s, said: “The impact of dance expertise goes beyond movement and taps into social perception mechanisms, such as face processing and emotions. This is fascinating as it provides direct evidence for the impact of the arts on social cognition.”

To investigate the relationship between dance expertise and emotion processing, the researchers recruited 26 professional or trainee ballet dancers from dance schools across London, alongside 26 people without dance experience.

The team, formed by Dr Vasiliki Meletaki, Professor Bettina Forster and Professor Calvo-Merino, recorded participants’ brain activity using specialised equipment as they completed a task involving the identification of emotions and whether faces were perceived as male or female. Participants were shown images of happy, afraid and neutral facial expressions.

Professor Forster developed the EEG analysis approach used to examine when and where brain responses to emotional expressions differed between dancers and non-dancers, allowing the researchers to investigate how dance expertise influences both visual and somatosensory processing.

The results revealed distinct patterns of brain activity between dancers and non-dancers, indicating that dance expertise influences how emotional expressions are processed through both visual and somatosensory systems.

In particular, dancers showed early differences in their brain responses to neutral and emotional faces, suggesting a distinctive way of processing emotional expressions. They also demonstrated early somatosensory responses to facial emotions, particularly neutral and afraid faces.

By contrast, non-dancers showed emotional effects primarily at later stages of emotional processing compared to dancers.

As a result, the findings suggest that dance expertise shapes both the visual and embodied perception of emotions, providing new evidence of how specialised motor and artistic training can influence human perception.

Professor Bettina Forster said: “What is particularly interesting is that dance expertise appears to influence how the somatosensory cortex responds to emotions expressed by others. This suggests that our own bodily experiences can shape how the brain processes other people's emotions, providing further evidence for the embodied nature of emotion perception.”

Dr Vasiliki Meletaki added: “It was exciting for us to find empirical evidence for the profound impact professional dance training has on how dancers perceive not only their bodies and dance movements but also other people’s emotional expressions.”

Read the full paper