Can't Dance? Blame GABA, Not ABBA

Thursday, March 3, 2011 - 16:50 in Biology & Nature

If you saw the film version of "Mamma Mia!" you may have wondered why some of the actors could act, sing and dance and some, clearly, could not. A new study in Current Biology says that people who are fast to learn a simple sequence of finger motions, like a piano piece, or quick to pick up dance numbers, are also those whose brains show large changes in a particular chemical messenger, gamma-aminobutyric acid(GABA), following electrical stimulation.    GABA is important for the plasticity of the motor cortex, a brain region involved in planning, control, and execution of voluntary movements. read more

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