By UTMB’s David Niesel and Norbert Herzog: Have you ever noticed when someone in the audience can’t clap along with a beat at a concert? Beat deafness actually is a form of a musical brain disorder that is extremely rare. Rhythm appears to be sensed by a widespread network in the brain, not in a defined region like speech. When it comes to dancing to music, though, neural processing of rhythm is only the beginning. Orchestrated or planned movements start in the motor cortex, which is divided into sections that each govern a different part of the body. Signals from the motor cortex travel down 20 million nerve fibers in the spinal cord to an arm or finger, telling it to respond in a particular way. To achieve a rhythmic, well-coordinated style of dance, the brain must coordinate all these efforts for joints to act in proper order and muscles to contract to the perfect degree. So as complex as all this is, perhaps it is not all that surprising that some people are better dancers than others.