our hands clap with the drums  and our hips sway the rhythm.  

We can't help it...but why? Why do we find  ourselves busting a move when we hear music? 

Let's start at the beginning: the  brain and how it perceives sound. 

When our ears perceive sound waves, they send this  information to the auditory cortex in the brain.  

The auditory cortex decodes the information in the  sound: its volume, pitch, frequency, and so on.  

For random and incoherent sound, what we call  noise, the auditory cortex perceives it as such  

and pays no heed to it unless it causes us  pain. But ordered periodic sound, or music,  

yields tickles the brain in interesting ways. You see, the auditory cortex is linked to many  

different parts of the brain: cognition, emotion,  language, and movement. When we listen to music,  

all these regions light up; the motor regions  allow us to bust a move and reward circuits  

secrete neurotransmitters and hormones that  make us feel good. There is also evidence that  

dancing to music releases the body's natural  pain killers making us more tolerant to pain. 

The additional fact music makes us  reflexively dance is curiouser still.  

So, what's so special about dance and music? This points to a long evolutionary link of life  

with music, though why such a link developed in  the first place is unclear. Some hypothesize that  

music began as small rhythmic beats, like tapping  one's foot, maybe to scare away predators. We soon  

learnt to coordinate with others  to create more complex rhythms. 

Synchronising with other people allowed us to  create social bonds. Several archaeological  

sites have found musical instruments that date  back as far as 42,000 years ago. For all this,  

it would be beneficial to have neural connections  that help us sync with our group mates. 

This might help explain why we break out into our  very own air guitar solos while listening to rock.  

Our brains probably think we're  all part of the same orchestra.  

This coordination, at some  point, resulted in dance. 

When we look deeper into the brain, on a  cellular level, a special type of neuron  

might be the reason we can move to the rhythm so  well. These neurons are called mirror neurons,  

and as the name suggests they mirror observation  into actions. What this means is that  

these neurons are activated when we see someone  else perform actions as well as when we perform  

that same action. In short, they help us copy.  They've been implicated in our ability to dance. 

Many species of birds also dance to music.  Research on Snowball, the cockatoo showed  

that the bird has choreography, 14 distinct moves  to be precise. This indicates that other animals  

might also have neural connections  that allow them to appreciate music. 

Besides social grouping, dancing might also  have started a mating strategy. From birds to  

insects, animals dance to impress their mates.  Scientists think it is a representation of the  

animal's fitness, or how good their DNA is. This propensity to dance and make music  

in groups has led scientists to propose that  this might be one reason humans manage to  

form and remain in large groups or societies.  Almost every society has a dance unique to its  

culture and we've found evidence that we've been  dancing since we could first paint on walls. 

All things considered, dance is a pretty wonderful  thing, and though we might not fully understand  

what's going on in the brain and body, it doesn't  really matter as long as we can get groovy.