{"id":158899,"date":"2025-06-05T00:51:10","date_gmt":"2025-06-05T00:51:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/158899\/"},"modified":"2025-06-05T00:51:10","modified_gmt":"2025-06-05T00:51:10","slug":"nostalgic-tunes-trigger-stronger-urge-to-dance-than-familiar-hits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/158899\/","title":{"rendered":"Nostalgic Tunes Trigger Stronger Urge to Dance Than Familiar Hits"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Summary: <\/strong>A new study reveals that nostalgia plays a powerful role in making us want to dance, even more so than familiarity with a song alone. Researchers asked young adults to rate how much various pop hits made them want to tap, move, or dance, as well as how nostalgic and familiar the songs felt.<\/p>\n<p>While both nostalgia and familiarity boosted enjoyment and movement, only nostalgia predicted the urge to dance. The findings suggest that emotionally charged memories may be key to unlocking our groove, with implications for therapies involving rhythm and movement.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Key Facts:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>Nostalgia Boosts Dance Desire:<\/strong> Songs tied to emotional memories triggered stronger urges to dance than merely familiar tunes.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Familiarity \u2260 Nostalgia:<\/strong> Highly familiar songs like Firework scored low on nostalgia and dance appeal.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Therapeutic Potential:<\/strong> Insights could aid rhythm-based treatments for movement disorders like Parkinson\u2019s.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Source: <\/strong>University of Western Ontario<\/p>\n<p><strong>Getting one\u2019s groove on, A.K.A. busting a move, is an age-old tradition that dates back more than 50,000 years to the time of Neanderthals and Cro-Magnon humans, who rhythmically writhed to drumming and even vocalizations.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Many contributing factors influence why we get a sudden urge to move to music, often referred to as groove, but familiarity with a song or tune is key.<\/p>\n<p>  <img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1200\" height=\"799\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/nostalgia-music-dance-neurosicne.jpg\" alt=\"This shows people dancing.\"  \/> Additionally, both familiarity and nostalgia predicted move and tap ratings, but only nostalgia emerged as a predictor for dance ratings. Credit: Neuroscience News<\/p>\n<p>In a recent Western University study, neuroscientists investigated groove beyond familiarity, digging deeper into the largely unexplored influence of nostalgia. That feeling involves familiarity but also taps into pleasant, sad and even wistful emotions.<\/p>\n<p>The study builds on ongoing research on understanding why we move to music and potential therapeutic benefits of musical rhythm for patients with movement disorders, such as Parkinson\u2019s disease.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGroove is the pleasurable urge to move to music. When we are studying the motor system in people with and without movement disorders, the brain spontaneously lights up when they listen to music. It really does seem to be about the rhythmic aspects of it,\u201d said Grahn, a psychology professor and director of Western\u2019s Centre for Brain and Mind.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cEvery great wedding DJ inherently knows this, and now, we have the scientific results to back it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Grahn, PhD candidate Riya Sidhu and their collaborators studied the impact of both familiarity and nostalgia on the desire to tap, move and dance along to music. They found nostalgic songs elicited a higher desire to get groovy than familiar songs across all three movement categories.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe more familiar you are with a song, the more likely you are to enjoy it. And familiarity and nostalgia are inherently very tied to each other, because the more you know a song, and the more it makes you feel, the more it\u2019s going to take you back to a special place and make you want to move,\u201d said Sidhu, lead author of the study.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Pop hits are familiar, but not always nostalgic<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>To evoke nostalgia, the researchers selected popular songs from study participants\u2019 adolescent years. As the participants were largely in their early to mid-twenties, the playlist included familiar hits released between 2009 and 2015 such as\u00a0TiK ToK\u00a0by Ke$ha,\u00a0Call Me Maybe\u00a0by Carly Rae Jepsen and\u00a0Dynamite\u00a0by Taio Cruz.<\/p>\n<p>These three songs all scored very high for familiarity and nostalgia, but no song scored higher on familiarity than Katy Perry\u2019s\u00a0Firework. Alas, the Grammy-nominated anthem no longer hits quite right for twenty-somethings, as\u00a0Firework\u00a0scored amongst the lowest tested for nostalgia, along with\u00a0OMG\u00a0by Usher and featuring will.i.am and\u00a0Glad You Came\u00a0by The Wanted. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The findings were published in the high impact journal,\u00a0PLOS One.<\/p>\n<p>For the study, participants completed an online experiment, rating songs based on their desire for three different movement types (tap, move and dance), as well as enjoyment, familiarity and nostalgia. Additionally, both familiarity and nostalgia predicted move and tap ratings, but only nostalgia emerged as a predictor for dance ratings.<\/p>\n<p>Ke$ha\u2019s\u00a0TiK ToK, which spent nine weeks atop the Billboard Hot 100 in 2009, scored the highest for the \u2018desire to dance\u2019 category, edging\u00a0Uptown Funk\u00a0by Mark Ronson featuring Bruno Mars and\u00a0Party Rock Anthem\u00a0by LMFAO featuring Lauren Bennett and GoonRock.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOur results suggest a distinctive role for nostalgia, beyond the influence of familiarity, in motivating the desire to dance,\u201d said Grahn, a trained concert pianist who also studies how music is processed in the brains of those who have control movement dysfunction, as happens in\u00a0Parkinson\u2019s disease.<\/p>\n<p>More recent songs like\u00a0Don\u2019t Start Now\u00a0by Dua Lipa,\u00a0Sucker\u00a0by Jonas Brothers and\u00a0Bad Guy\u00a0by Billie Eilish served as a low-nostalgia but familiar control for the study.<\/p>\n<p>About this music and neuroscience research news<\/p>\n<p class=\"has-background\" style=\"background-color:#ffffe8\"><strong>Author: <\/strong><a href=\"http:\/\/neurosciencenews.com\/cdn-cgi\/l\/email-protection#254f57404b4450411c6550524a0b4644\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Jeffrey Renaud<\/a><br \/><strong>Source: <\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/uwo.ca\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">University of Western Ontario<\/a><br \/><strong>Contact: <\/strong>Jeffrey Renaud \u2013 University of Western Ontario<br \/><strong>Image: <\/strong>The image is credited to Neuroscience News<\/p>\n<p class=\"has-background\" style=\"background-color:#ffffe8\"><strong>Original Research: <\/strong>Open access.<br \/>\u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/dx.doi.org\/10.1371\/journal.pone.0318766\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Throwbacks that move us: The dance-inducing power of nostalgic songs<\/a>\u201d by Riya Sidhu et al. PLOS One<\/p>\n<p><strong>Abstract<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Throwbacks that move us: The dance-inducing power of nostalgic songs<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The urge to move to music, often referred to as groove, is influenced by various factors, including familiarity with the music.<\/p>\n<p>The influence of nostalgia, which involves familiarity but also includes pleasant, sad, and wistful emotions, remains largely unexplored.<\/p>\n<p>Here we investigate the impact of both familiarity and nostalgia on the desire to tap, move, and dance along to music.<\/p>\n<p>To evoke nostalgia, we selected popular songs from the participants\u2019 adolescent years. More recent songs served as a low-nostalgia but familiar control.<\/p>\n<p>Participants completed an online experiment, rating songs based on their desire for three different movement types (tap, move, and dance), as well as enjoyment, familiarity, and nostalgia.<\/p>\n<p>Nostalgic songs elicited higher desire to move than familiar songs across all three movement categories.<\/p>\n<p>Additionally, both familiarity and nostalgia predicted move and tap ratings, but only nostalgia emerged as a predictor for dance ratings.<\/p>\n<p>Our results suggest a distinctive role for nostalgia, beyond the influence of familiarity, in motivating the desire to dance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Summary: A new study reveals that nostalgia plays a powerful role in making us want to dance, even&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":158900,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[215,269,219,220,8838,222,70,16,15,67203],"class_list":{"0":"post-158899","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-brain-research","9":"tag-music","10":"tag-neurobiology","11":"tag-neuroscience","12":"tag-nostalgia","13":"tag-psychology","14":"tag-science","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom","17":"tag-university-of-western-ontario"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114628020376039184","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158899","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=158899"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158899\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/158900"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=158899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=158899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=158899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}