Perceiving and Participating in Synchrony

QUESTION. Why does music make us want to move? The link between music and movement is observed across cultures, develops early in life, and is exceptionally rare in other animals. BACKGROUND. Key to answering this question is musics capacity to induce synchronized motor behavior among one or more individuals. Research has shown that synchronized motor behavior leads to increased prosocial behavior between synchronizers. These observations have led to the synchrony and sociality hypothesis of music evolution, which explains our tendency to move to music as the signature of an evolutionary process in which the prosocial consequences of synchronous behavior conferred a fitness advantage on individuals in groups that practiced music. GOAL. To rigorously and empirically evaluate predictions of the synchrony and sociality hypothesis using physiological and behavioral data. METHODOLOGY. Manipulate the degree of synchrony between elements in visual and auditory stimuli, as well as between participants in real and simulated interactions, while measuring eye movements, pupillary, cardiac, and respiratory activity, levels of oxytocin, cortisol, and endogenous opioids, and affiliation and cooperation among participants. INNOVATION. The experiments in this proposal outline a state-of-the-art empirical methodology to evaluate a leading hypothesis for the biological origins of music, i.e., the synchrony and sociality hypothesis. It combines new experimental paradigms with rigorous physiological methods previously unexploited in this field. SIGNIFICANCE. The synchrony and sociality hypothesis is well-defined and makes testable predictions, providing a unique opportunity to make an empirical contribution to a biological account of music and its evolution, and thus shed light on a fundamental component of human experience.

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