Nostalgic songs light up your brain - and get you moving

Music lives in every culture and in every person. Long before recorded sound, our ancestors drummed, clapped, and sang – and movement followed. From ceremonial dances to casual tapping, rhythm has always stirred the human body.

Today, the world dances not just to new beats, but also to familiar songs from the past. That mix of melody, memory, and motion is called groove. But what truly makes us get up and dance? Recent research points to an unexpected player: nostalgia.

Why we groove to music

Groove is more than just enjoying a catchy beat. It is a psychological and physical urge to move. When groove hits, the body responds. You tap your foot, nod your head, or start dancing. Scientists describe it as a pleasurable urge to move to music.

“Groove is the pleasurable urge to move to music. When we are studying the motor system in people with and without movement disorders, the brain spontaneously lights up when they listen to music. It really does seem to be about the rhythmic aspects of it,” explained Professor Jessica Grahn.

Until now, most research has focused on rhythm, beat complexity, and familiarity. But a new study from Western University shows that groove is not just about patterns. It is also about emotion, particularly the warm, bittersweet feeling of nostalgia.

Link between nostalgia and dance

The study involved 102 participants aged 23 to 28, a group chosen to capture peak nostalgia. The researchers selected 40 pop songs.

Twenty of the songs were chart-toppers from 2010 to 2015, a time linked to participants’ adolescence. The other songs, from 2018 to 2021, served as modern but familiar control tracks. Each song clip lasted 25 seconds and included the chorus to boost recognition.

Participants rated how much they wanted to tap, move, and dance to each song. They also rated how much they liked the song, how familiar it was, and how nostalgic it felt.

The team collected data on each person’s musical and dance background. That included dance training and general musical exposure, using validated scales like the Goldsmiths Musical Sophistication Index.

Nostalgic songs boost the urge to dance

The results revealed something fascinating. Both familiarity and nostalgia were linked to higher ratings for tapping and moving. But only nostalgia predicted the urge to dance.

Songs from the earlier period triggered stronger feelings across all categories. Still, nostalgia stood out with the biggest jump, a 32-point average difference between early and late songs.

“The more familiar you are with a song, the more likely you are to enjoy it. And familiarity and nostalgia are inherently very tied to each other, because the more you know a song, and the more it makes you feel, the more it’s going to take you back to a special place and make you want to move,” noted study lead author Riya Sidhu.

Ke$ha’s TiK ToK, which ruled the Billboard Hot 100 for nine weeks in 2009, topped the list in dance desirability. Other high scorers included Uptown Funk and Party Rock Anthem.

More recent songs like Bad Guy by Billie Eilish and Don’t Start Now by Dua Lipa were familiar, but they lacked the emotional punch of nostalgia.

Dancing feels different from tapping

The study made another important discovery. Tapping, moving, and dancing are not equal in how they connect to groove. Tapping had the highest average score, followed by general movement. Dancing scored lowest, which surprised the researchers at first.

But dancing might demand more social or emotional readiness. Some participants may have felt self-conscious about dancing, even in a private setting.

When the researchers ran statistical models, nostalgia again showed a strong link. Familiarity explained tapping and moving. But it failed to predict dancing once nostalgia was included.

That means the emotional content of a song, how much it recalls personal memories, plays a unique role in making people want to dance.

Why nostalgic songs feel powerful

One explanation is arousal. Nostalgic songs activate the brain’s reward and emotion centers. This boost in emotional arousal might make people more likely to get up and move. Previous studies have shown that music and memory are tightly connected.

Music can trigger vivid recollections, sometimes even in people with memory loss. When a song reminds someone of their teenage years, it does more than sound good. It reawakens a feeling, a time, a version of themselves.

This emotional layering seems to amplify groove. It is not just that we recognize the beat. We recognize who we were when we first heard it. That deep sense of self in the music might be why dancing feels easier with older, meaningful songs.

How dance experience changes groove

Interestingly, musical training had no real impact on groove ratings in this study. Dance training, however, did.

Participants with dance experience reported a stronger urge to move and dance to music. This suggests that people comfortable with dancing are more receptive to music’s emotional cues.

Dance training might reduce social anxiety tied to movement. It might also improve motor coordination, making spontaneous dancing feel more natural. Those with no dance background may tap along but hesitate to take that next step into full-body motion.

Nostalgic songs turn memories into moves

The implications of this research go beyond the dance floor. Music-based therapy is already in use for conditions like Parkinson’s disease, where rhythm can help guide motor function.

This study adds a new layer. By choosing songs with personal emotional significance, therapists might improve outcomes. Nostalgic music could help patients re-engage their motor systems more effectively than unfamiliar tracks.

The study focused on young adults, but nostalgia deepens with age. Older adults may experience even stronger responses to music from their youth. Future research could explore these age-related differences, especially in clinical settings.

Ultimately, groove is not just about a catchy beat. It is about who we were when we first heard it. This study reveals that nostalgia holds a powerful key to unlocking movement. It stirs memories, triggers emotions, and gets our bodies moving in a way that newer music cannot always match.

The study is published in the journal PLOS One.

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