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Eric Laufer

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Why can humans, without any prior planning, naturally synch in rhythm and music but if you tell a group to all move together, they can't?

As demonstrated by Steven Strogatz on Sync, a group can all clap together and as demonstrated by Bobby McFerrin (as seen here, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ne6tB2KiZuk) a group can all harmonize, or sync, together naturally without prior planning. I'm confused as to why us humans can sync throughout rhythm and music but if you take a bigger action such as movement they would all follow one person, unlike the birds and fish in the Strogatz's video who move in separate directions but still as one.

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  • Grant Novak

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    Mar 28 2011: The trick is to have some "music" to which people can move to. People can synch to rhythm because it flows in a predictable pattern. One could argue that people do not synch to music without prior planning, people analyze the pattern, then they synchronize accordingly by predicting what happens next. If you can create a collective situation that has a set of rules (when this happens, everyone does this. if that happens, everyone does that, etc) then people can move easily in a group.

    These rules do not have to be set out or planned ahead of time, lets relate back to music. You are at a dance party and the DJ decides to play the Macarena. but at this dance party is a chamber music group from Finland who do not know the Macarena. Everyone who does know the Macarena must dance it, and within a few measures the Finns will have it figured out. They analyze the pattern and predict what happens next (more of the Macarena they just saw) and they adapt accordingly.

    This doesn't have to happen with "patterns" necessarily. If you were standing in time square and a whole lot of people in time square suddenly turned a specific direction and ran, you may be inclined to follow, even if you did not know why they were running. Suppose suddenly the people in the front of this running flock of New-Yorkers dart to the left, it's quite likely the rest of the group would follow suit. Next thing you know, lemmings are running off cliffs. People have a hive nature, and it's not necessarily a bad thing its just the way we are. Do you drive on one side of the road because you are supposed to? Or because that's where everyone else is driving. Go to a mall or a high school and you will discover that people walk on a certain side of the hallway depending which way they are going, and you may even find the odd hallway where people walk on the left side instead of the right.
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    Ecaterina Sanalatii 10+

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    TED Translator
    Mar 27 2011: I think the answer is relativity, in the sense of 'the state or quality of being relative to something or someone'. In this case each individual of one group relates to the sound they hear; therefore all the individuals in the group are related to the same rhythm of the sound.

    To give a visual analogy, imagine that the same group of people were all assembled in one square and asked to look at an object. The likelihood is that each individual would have looked at a different object. If, however, one would have asked the individuals of the group to look at the one central landmark of the square, the likelihood is that all individuals of the group would look at the same object.

  • Ross Kleiman

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    Mar 25 2011: I think that music is something we truly feel, it is a visceral experience that often transcends the conscious part of the mind. Coordinated actions, where individuals must work together often result in clumsy and awkward movements because they reside solely in the active part of the brain. I think an interesting example of this is that when I play guitar, and I am playing a song I know very well, I do not think about the music or the words I just play it out of pure muscle and vocal memory; but if I were to go to teach someone the song, I very often forget the notes chords and lyrics because the actions are no longer coordinated unconsciously but now have to be thought about and those two don't necessarily mix.

    Ultimately, I think that there are a lot of interesting examples of this bifurcation of the mind, and if we want to learn to get people to work together, it should be through something that they truly feel, rather than something they must think about.

  • Rasmus Leth Jørnø

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    Mar 25 2011: The answer is elimination of beat. A beat is an interference between two sounds of slightly different frequencies http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beat_(acoustics)
    See also Arthur Winfree's work on collective synchronization:
    http://www.siam.org/news/news.php?id=289
    If you don't care for mathematics then a short explanation might be:
    The intensity of harmonic waves in constructive interference is proportional to the square of the amplitude; so two people clapping in synchrony sound four times as loud. When two people clapping are slightly 'off' each other a beat occurs. Adjusting their tempo allows the clappers to modulate the beat. They will attempt to eliminate it. that is why it is harder to calibrate when two people adjust, instead of one keeping a steady pace and the other adjusting. The success criteria of the clappers are twofold: Eliminate any beat and maximize the volume. People attempting to move their bodies in unison have no feedback information. You have to place them in front of a mirror or keep a steady rthythm to which they can adjust their movements (e.g. dancing).
    Flocking birds or schools of fish are strictly speaking not synchronized only very rapidly adjusting to each other through three simple rules: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flocking_(behavior)
    Cheers

  • Robertson Klaingar

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    Mar 25 2011: I guess music serves as a meter stick against which we can gauge our movements.

    What I wonder is why bathrooms seem to change us to Bob Dylan wannabes

  • Paulette Chemelli

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    Mar 25 2011: As you say in your question, "naturally synch", and I think that is the answer. With music, we naturally or automatically begin to move when we listen to music. If someone is telling us to move, it's a bit difficult. You cannot force a movement; you have to feel it. I hope this makes sense.

  • steven wright

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    Mar 23 2011: because one requires decision making
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    Debra Smith 200+

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    Mar 22 2011: http://www.brams.umontreal.ca/plab/downloads/Phillips-Silver__Peretz_Neuropsychologia_in_press.pdfThis article documents a case of amusia where a guy has no ability to follow a beat. Sometimes it is in looking into the odd man out that we can understand most about how the average person accomplishes something.

    There is also a talk by Michelle Morningstar on TEDx about aphasias that demonstrates that even languages have rhythms and those rythmes have to be taken into account when people are recovering from strokes so that they can rejoin the speach and music patterns in differing languages.
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    Debra Smith 200+

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    Mar 20 2011: There was some work done awhile back in computers that spun out into cognitive science. It demonstrated that without communication large groups like flocks of birds or crowds in a stadium could quickly adapt to do synchronized tasks. If I remember correctly, people in a stadium quickly learned to cooperatively fly a plane of some sort ( perhaps a virtual plane.)

    When there are many people around us we have a lot of sources of input and quick feedback. The moving together has a lot to do with our desire to fit in and belong even in a crowd of strangers. We are also very intuned to natural rhythm because the beat of a mother's heart and then our own predates even our birth so we are atuned to listening to that beat.

  • T W

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    Mar 20 2011: Increase the scale. I think if you look at a city you'll see beauty in our apparently, but not really synchronised movements.

    We each are concerned with our own movements; hurrying to a meeting or getting a coffee or driving the kids to badminton practice.. but because in a city we are so tightly packed that we can't help but interact (each individual is part of a closed feedback system with the next individual) and this, along with external regulators such as traffic lights, causes a network to form which pulses and breathes rhythmically and flows with an I suspect beautiful dynamism. I doubt the birds and the fish know about their beautiful orchestration either. Like them, we act instinctually, albeit at micro and super-macro scales. So yeah.. increase the scale I reckon.

  • Minnie Kaur H Sangha

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    Mar 19 2011: there is no ego when it comes to music! music needs a listener to be appreciated.
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    anson zearfoss

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    Mar 19 2011: We are always moving together because there is never a moment when there is not motion.

  • Matt Fox

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    Mar 17 2011: your assumption that they can't is false - groups can move together, but have to be properly motivated to do so. Music can inherently motivate people into harmony thanks to beat, rhythm, etc. an ideological movement must have a similar mechanism that resonates within the participant - faith, fear, hate, are commonly used nowadays, while others like love, happiness are more challenging to cultivate into actionable results. Maybe because happiness leads to sedation, while fear does the opposite.
    a movements unison is dependent on its leadership - most movements follow a single individual because it's engineered to do so, not necessarily consciously by the leader, but more a defacto result of traditional leadership styles.
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      Anna Hoffmann

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      Mar 18 2011: Yes.
      And I have experienced short moments of moving together, without leader, in dance improvisation with a group, that have danced together for a while and also in manual work, with people who are relaxed and having fun, so I know it is possible.
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    Jonathan Huffman

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    Mar 17 2011: Because music has a beat, which our minds can predict prior to hearing due to regularity, enabling us to move in synch with the sound. When several people do this at once, there is a perception of unified motion, though in fact each individual is perceiving the music on his own, and would dance in the same motion were he or she alone in the room. Similarly, one can synchronize the movements of a group to a metronome, or the count of a leader (as in a dance class, or a marching army), though neither of these could be classified as music.

    As to the reason why music grips your emotions to the core, and makes you feel the feelings of the composer, though interpreted through your own experience, the fellow who posted below me has explained it quite well.
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    Charles Motowski

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    Mar 16 2011: music is primal and reminds us of that animal connection that we all shun in order to branch out into the brilliance/dual edge of cognition/self-awareness.

    it's pure and vital, and the most excellently expressive form of love or awesome can come through it, i feel. it's the language of the universe- before there were words, there was sound~!
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    Anna Hoffmann

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    Mar 16 2011: I think we might have had that capacity, or something close to it, but have lost it. I have heard that in many of the so called primitive societies, the groups of people who live together also dance together. Sometimes even every night.
    I think our whole educational system, that tell us to sit still and listen and that moving is bad and childish, misses something. It deprives us from a certain intelligence, that is connected with moving TOGETHER. The only outlet for that energy is in in ball games. Which are competitive and hierarchal, not sensual and pleasurable, like dancing can be. And then as puberty comes and all the hormones flood the body of the young person, he or she has already lost the inner urge to move. If dancing happens for that kid, it is very often only about performance. It lacks that magic that moving just for the fun of it has...I also think it is possible to regain it,by practicing.

  • victor saltykov 10+

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    TED Translator
    Mar 15 2011: Ya so sensory overload on the visual thing. And the loop backs on nerve endings that feel the vibrations are VERY close to the ones that move in the same rhythm. Its like when doctor tests your reflex.
    I'm guessing its a defense mechanism. In terms of ability to quickly respond to environment.

    Continuing with visual overload, the sound/rhythm spectrum is MUCH smaller, its like making a guess its a lot easier when theres less choice.
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    Sara Kay

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    Mar 15 2011: Sometimes people can just feel the music. It just come naturally.
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