Dance Week!
Welcome back all!
Today is the day I’ll be teaching the routine I’ve been practicing and perfecting for over a month now. My advisor says the combo will be a 20 minute warmup for class. After I have completed the teaching and run through the whole thing a couple of times, I will pass out my self evaluation and survey, as I have decided to combine them both into one form the respondents can fill out on their own time to make things more simple. I will be using paper copies for my dance studio group but a digital google form for my K-pop group because I predict that’s the best way I can maximize the number of responses.
Just yesterday I went in for my meeting with Mrs. Bennett and got some valuable insight as to how I can better my survey to obtain more accurate and extensive data, and I am currently working on those edits. Last week on Thursday I also went in and met with my onsite mentor Mrs. Ungar, and she recommended that instead of a lit review I compile a video of my final dance choreography instead. I’m thinking this idea will better suit my particular project since I am focused more on the physical aspect of learning and dancing rather than the science behind it, since I am not equipped with materials and lab space to be able to test biological muscle memory thoroughly. I will, however, include the extensive background research I’ve been engaging with since the start of my project, and incorporate it as a significant element of my final presentation, and my final product itself will be the video.
Finally, I wanted to share a recent study I read. It is entitled “Tracking Plasticity: Effects of Long-Term Rehearsal in Expert Dancers Encoding Music to Movement”. The study tested the effects of motor localizer and music visualization in expert dancers and non-expert dancers, to determine patterns of the brain’s learning and storage process of dance routines. The results showed heightened activity from weeks 1 to 7 in the superior temporal lobe, the SMA region, and the putamen and basal ganglia. However, decreased activity was displayed during weeks 7 to 34, with the exceptions being the putamen and basal ganglia regions. This decreased activity is consistent with other studies who showed that experts had decreased activation levels when compared with non-experts. This is due to neurons in that area possibly changing their connection weights or chunking together to become more efficient. The habitual formation and familiarity may have also moved the motor sequences elsewhere in the brain, for example the SMA region associated with auditory signals might play a significant role in the early stages of the learning process, but over time, the subcortical regions take over, suggesting the transition into a deeper rooted memory. The end conclusion is that increased activity of motor sequences of dance initially takes place in the brain, but eventually declines due to repetition and familiarity.
See you all after I have compiled the data.
- Rhea 🙂