Do you still have the steps to that TikTok dance trend stuck in your head? Is that bass-heavy club banger still ringing in your ears after a fun night out? Ever experienced your hips automatically shaking to every beat of a timeless earworm?
Behind those instincts to groove is a neural network just as harmonious, consistently providing every listener the urge to hit the dance floor regardless of their musical interest.
Why we feel the beat
Some songs demand movement, whether it is an unconscious foot tap or the hypnotizing urge to sway to the beat, that response comes from what musicians call groove—the quality that makes rhythms feel alive. Professor Emeritus Sven Hroar Klempe of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology’s Department of Psychology clarified that while the term is seldom used in formal science, it has long been central to music, describing the feeling that transforms a steady beat into an irresistible urge to move.
On the other hand, Dr. Phillip Pearl, American pediatric neurologist and jazz musician, described groove as “the feel, fundamentally the rhythm, but also the feel of how it feels internally and how someone…internalizes what they’re feeling rhythmically and even emotionally.” This feeling is not simply heard and felt; it is anticipated. Most people have a near-automatic inclination to tap, clap, bob their head, or move to the beat of music. As music unfolds, the brain constantly searches for patterns, predicts what comes next, and responds to what both Klempe and Pearl describe as moments of tension and release.
Even silence or an absent pulse in the music plays a role. Rather than emphasizing every downbeat, syncopation—the technique that causes a rhythm to take a weaker beat or create an off-beat—places rhythmic accents in unexpected moments, creating a subtle tension that keeps listeners anticipating the next beat. This effect can be heard in songs such as PinkPantheress’ “Stateside.” While harmonically familiar, its off-beat rhythmic accents and carefully placed spaces contribute to the song’s unmistakable groove. “The beauty is actually in the gaps,” Pearl exclaims, noting that the brief spaces between notes give the brain time to build expectation.
In many ways, groove mirrors the rhythms already present within us. Every heartbeat, every breath, and every biological cycle follows its own cadence.
Music to my ears
Even infants have been shown to be able to respond differently to rhythmic patterns. Yet groove is not purely innate; it is also shaped by both biology and experience. Long before we decide to dance, our brains have already found the beat.
While Pearl explains that music activates the amygdala, the brain’s emotion-processing center, both he and Klempe emphasize that music is not processed by this single part alone. Pearl offers a correction, calling the brain an “intricate complex of networks working together from motor,…to auditory, to [the] cerebellum…, to [the] basal ganglia…and to sensory centers too.”
This interconnected process is characterized by many working abilities. One is the brain’s plasticity or its ability to adjust and reorganize itself when subjected to many events. “There are studies showing that if you have a concert pianist who started taking piano before the age of nine, they’re relatively protected from musician’s overuse dystonia,” Pearl explicates, referencing a condition that causes involuntary muscular contractions on musicians’ fingers. On the contrary, he adds that abnormal plasticity also affects music ability. “There are musicogenic seizures where we have patients who hear a certain music and have a seizure,” he reveals.
Memory also shapes the way we learn and process music. While there are many forms of memory, such as working memory, that maintains routines, and semantic memory, which remembers facts and academic knowledge, Pearl points out two types which associate most with music: procedural memory and episodic memory.
Procedural memory, he mentions, explains how humans cannot forget how to do motor procedures. “If you’ve played a piece on the piano or your instrument for a certain number of times, eventually you can play it by heart without looking at the music,” he explains.
Episodic memory, on the other hand, is the reason humans remember certain episodes of their lives. Processed by the hippocampus, this type of memory, Pearl clarifies, is activated for music that fits personal preference. The emotional connection of music is also closely associated with episodic memory, as the hippocampus is located next to the amygdala.
Part of a symphony
Yet, beyond episodic associations or even cultural norms, Klempe argues that music “taste” is best distinguished between generations. As he illustrates, music preference is primarily molded by two formative periods: infancy and adolescence. In psychological development, these stages are crucial in language growth and learning.
Klempe mirrors the process of speech development with musical understanding. Employing Lev Vygotsky’s concept of private speech, he likens the coexistence of several thoughts in one’s head to a polyphonic rhythm in music, highlighting an individual’s ability to make complexity meaningful.
Though there are various melodies, layers, and textures vying for attention, an individual maintains a resonant affect that guides them to either “like” or “dislike” a sound. Therefore, in forming music preference, there is no single rule that determines what is truly “groovy.”
Differences in musical experience are further exacerbated by neurological phenomena such as synesthesia, which Pearl describes as the “blurring of the senses.” For individuals with synesthesia, listening to certain tones can evoke colors and shapes across the visual field, while others may even feel physical sensations. Through this process, music becomes a multidimensional journey.
In this obscurity, music proves itself a universal language. When words fail to convey nuanced truths, sound and sight become integral in forming connections and rehabilitation instead. Due to music’s unifying function, Pearl underscores its use in treatments of neurological conditions such as dementia or Alzheimer’s disease, granting individuals brief clarity as familiar songs trigger memories from their past.
Furthermore, in movement disorders such as Parkinson’s disease, Pearl shares, “Music is very powerful at using rhythm to…help their gait and get them moving again.” Meanwhile, for stroke patients who struggle with speech, music can be highly effective at “teaching the person to pick up verbal patterns” once more.
Though the “groove” cannot be contained by a tangible note, chord, or rhythm, its impact undoubtedly runs far and wide. Tuning daily relationships, the harmony of music floats past the sheet to create a language of nostalgia. From repetitive verses to toe-tapping beats, music unites all in movement and emotion without uttering a single word.