Babies spontaneously dance to music, and so do Lake County residents at Taste of Lakeport.
Researchers filmed 120 babies listening to music on the laps of their mothers, who were wearing sound-blocking earphones, and found that the babies would spontaneously dance to music, National Public Radio reported. Psychologist Marcel Zentner and Tuomas Eerola reported in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that though the babies were not great dancers because of their limited motor skills, they smiled more when they hit the beat.
Dancing comes naturally to human beings. What stops us from dancing is something different ? embarrassment, physical pain, laziness or simply a dislike of the music.
Not only can music get us to dance, it makes us work out harder, something that might be obvious to everyone who owns an iPod and goes to the gym.
A study of 12 college students published last year monitored men riding bicycles listening to music that “reflected current popular taste among the undergraduate population,” the New York Times reported. They rode the bike three times, one with a normal tempo of music, another with the tempo bumped up by 10 percent and one with a 10 percent lower tempo than normal. The study found that the men riding bicycles with music bumped up in tempo covered more miles in the same period of time, produced more power with each pedal stroke and increased their pedal cadences. Their heart rates rose. They reported enjoying the music ? the same music ? about 36 percent more than when it was slowed.
I found this to be true when I started working out this year ? fast music motivates and measured beats slows my pace. So I downloaded upbeat songs for working out and slow ones to cool down. I asked for workout song recommendations from my friends on facebook and got a number of good responses.
“Multiple experiments have found that music both increases a person”s subjective sense of motivation during a workout, and also concretely affects his or her performance,” the New York Times reported. “The resulting interactions between body, brain and music are complex and intertwined. It”s not simply that music motivates you and you run faster. It may be that, instead, your body first responds to the beat, even before your mind joins in; your heart rate and breathing increase and the resulting biochemical reactions join with the music to exhilarate and motivate you to move even faster. Scientists hope to soon better understand the various nervous system and brain mechanisms involved. But for now, they know that music, in most instances, works. It eases exercise. In a typical study, from 2008, cyclists who rode in time to music used 7 percent less oxygen to pedal at the same pace as when they didn”t align themselves to the songs.”
With babies” inclination to smile less, in turn having less fun, when they danced off beat, I can see maybe that”s the nature of every person on the sidelines at Taste of Lakeport saying, “I can”t dance,” or “I don”t dance without X amount of alcohol.” Dancing isn”t as fun when you think you”re really bad at it.
But when I dance with someone whom I like, it doesn”t matter whether he or she has good moves. It”s entertaining either way.
I always wondered what aliens would think if they came to Earth and found us dancing. It seems like moving without making progress is senseless.
But who cares what aliens or any human thinks about an exercise that”s natural and makes us happy? I certainly didn”t when I twisted to the LC Diamonds Friday night at Taste of Lakeport with new friends and old.
Humans and songbirds are the only creatures that automatically feel the beat of a song, a researcher said. The human heart wants to synchronize to music, the legs want to swing, metronomically, to a beat.
Katy Sweeny is a staff reporter for the Record-Bee. She can be reached at kdsweeny@gmail.com or 263-5636, ext. 37.
