The way you dance is unique, and computers can tell it's you

Studying how people move to music is a powerful tool for researchers looking to understand how and why music affects us the way it does. Over the last few years, researchers at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Music Research at the University of Jyväskylä in Finland have used motion capture technology -- the same kind used in Hollywood -- to learn that your dance moves say a lot about you, such as how extroverted or neurotic you are, what mood you happen to be in, and even how much you empathize with other people. Recently, however, they discovered something that surprised them. "We actually weren't looking for this result, as we set out to study something completely different," explains Dr. Emily Carlson, the first author of the study. "Our original idea was to see if we could use machine learning to identify which genre of music our participants were dancing to, based on their movements."