Dance Your PhD -- Miriam Sach

tags: neurobiology, arts, dance, science, streaming video

There's been a movement recently to "dance your PhD" and this is the first video I've seen where someone has actually done this -- what do you think? [2:55]

Dissertation Title: Cerebral activation patterns induced by inflection of regular and irregular verbs with positron emission tomography.

The findings of this thesis demonstrate that regular and irregular verbs are processed in the same neural network as opposed to separate cortical areas for regular and irregular verb inflection.

This piece is subdivided into 3 sections: 1.) Introduction of regular verbs, 2.) Introduction of irregular verbs, 3.) Common neural network of regular and irregular verb inflection.

1. Regular verbs are represented by the walking at the very beginning of this piece.
   The walking is simple, straight forward and without irregularities. It is accompanied by the sound of crackling fire a metaphor for the firing neurons.
2. In contrast, irregular verbs are represented by a huge variety of different movements: jumps, slides, turns, rolls, level changes. Irregularities are also displayed musically by using syncopes and off-beat emphasis in percussion as well as further changes in instruments.
3. The sound of the falling rain is a cleansing moment with no movements to introduce the final section of the dance: the common neural network of regular and irregular verb processing. It is the first time that symmetrical movements occur to emphasize the common network for both verb forms. In addition, both regular and irregular movements are shown to elucidate the presence of both entities in this network.

Overall, fiber connections in the brain representing the connections between regular and irregular verbs are shown by wavy arm movements.