Dance expertise modulates the visuomotor perception of body motion

ABSTRACT. The modulation of visuomotor processing of various body movements by motor expertise due to dance practice was investigated in 12 professional contemporary dancers and 12 right-handed controls. 212 video pairs of dance actions lasting 3 seconds were shown to participants, while their event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded. The second video of each pair might be either the repetition of the previous one, or a slight variation of it, along 3 main dimensions (time, space and body). The task consisted in responding to static images of a dance action by pressing a button. A repetition suppression (RS) effect elicited by a repetition of the same video was visible in both groups, whereas only in dancers it was found a significant modulation of brain responses to deviant stimuli indexing a strong effect of neural plasticity due to motor practice. SwLORETA source reconstruction, performed on the ERPs difference waves "different" minus "same" videos (450-550 ms) recorded in dancers, showed a widespread network of activations related to visuomotor perception including the limbic (BA 38, 23) and the fronto-parietal systems (BA 40, 3, 4, 9), plus areas devoted to biological motion (BA 20, 21, 41), face and body processing (BA 20, 37).