A new study from the University of Eastern Finland has released an avatar-based dance choreography illustrating the narratives of six study participants regarding their desired future. The hope is that people can find the good in everyday life through dance and that it may help people deal with issues and events through movement without using words.
Senior Researcher Hanna Pohjola found evidence in earlier studies that dance can help free a person from illness and help them see their condition differently. She specifically found that within a dance company where all of its dancers were diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, the role of the dancer was emphasized, and the disease was reduced to the background.
Pohjola said, “A similar phenomenon can also be seen in our depression study.” The participants identified themselves as dancers first, and dance took priority over other things.”
For the study analyzing the relationship between dance and depression, each participant had a collaboratively produced dance narrative that was based on the participants’ own stories and their narration through dance. Named Minuina (“As Me”) the dance choreography paints a picture of the desired future through movement.
The process of performing a dance to help with depression has not been studied much yet, but this new research is paving the way to understanding more. Researchers hope to hope to learn more about the activation of the mirror neuron system in the brain through dance. Mirror neurons are neurons that react to sounds, movements, expressions and gestures and mimic what another person is doing and feeling. This is why they are also called empathy neurons.
When a person sees a dance genre that is familiar to the viewer, the mirror neuron system is activated. In this study, they were activated by the participants recognizing their own movements being performed by the avatar. This brain activity could offer more insight into how dance could help with mental health and cognition.
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