Human body expands to include partner’s body in a tango dance, suggests study

The human body is capable of becoming an extension of another, suggests a new research on the subject of “body schema.” The study shows that the human body actually expands its boundaries to include that of its partner.

Body schema relates to the postural model of a body, in which the posture of one’s body is registered in space. Simply put, it is the mental perception of physical things that enables one to move in space without bumping into things.

The unique fusion of bodies achieved in a tango dance is one example of what the body schema can achieve in terms of the spatial unison between two human bodies, reports the Scientific American.

The concept of body schema has earlier been used to study the coordination and feeling of integration of the human body with tools. However, in the latest study, psychologist Tamer Soliman and his colleagues used the tool-based studies to find out if a similar sense of integration is also possible between human beings.

The researchers wanted to find out if a human being is capable of integrating another human body in its own body schema in the manner in which objects extend the perception of our physical boundaries.

They asked some of the research participants to use a tool with two handles for jointly sawing through candles. Others were either asked to do the same task independently or just to watch another person do it.

In the first group, the participants were found to actually expand their body boundaries to include their partner’s hand used to saw the candles. This effectively meant they showed increased perception for visual stimuli near the hand of their partner.

In another recent study, researchers found that people who were asked to move together in tandem with a beat had a more interdependent mindset and cooperative behaviour as compared to those who moved to separate things, or were simply doing their own individual things to the same beat.