Embodied groove–synchrony model: movement context reshapes groove–synchrony coupling and its dominant timescale
Frontiers in Psychology May 15, 2026 Hiroko Tanabe, Minami Nakajima, Mai Shiratori et al.
The pleasurable urge to move to music, known as groove, is not simply enhanced by stronger synchronization between body movement and musical rhythm. In a study where participants listened to rhythms with varying syncopation under free, static, or dynamic movement conditions, the urge to move increased synchronization at a beat-level frequency (2 Hz) even when movement was restricted. However, stronger synchronization did not uniformly boost groove; in free and dynamic conditions, overly rigid temporal alignment reduced ratings of urge-to-move and pleasure. The functional role of synchronization depended on movement context: slower metrical synchronization (1 Hz) was key in the free condition, while beat-level synchronization (2 Hz) dominated in the dynamic condition. Groove emerges from a context-dependent balance between entrained bodily engagement and the degree of temporal stabilization.