Sensorimotor coupling in music and “being in the groove”
A remarkable aspect of music is the degree to which it compels people to move spontaneously. Related to this is the sense of seamless coupling with music as well as those who share in the responding to and creation of the music. Such sensorimotor coupling is arguably one of the strongest positive emotional experiences to be had as a direct consequence of engaging with music. This experiential state is commonly referred to as “being in the groove.” In this talk I describe experiments aimed at manipulating and describing this experiential state using behavioral and neuroimaging methods. The results suggest that the groove phenomenon is experimentally tractable and may have a basis in the balance of activity in typically antagonistic brain networks underlying cognitive control and socioemotional processing.
presentation slides available here