I have been dancing ever since I could walk, but the years have not made it any easier. Coming from a person whose mom owns a dance studio, let me tell you, theres always room to improve and obstacles to overcome. Dance teachers will sometimes teach you a minute long exercise you have never seen before in less than thirty seconds. Picking up these combinations is definitely a skill that every dancer has to acquire and it gets easier with time. I have actually noticed that if I take a week or two off from dancing, I can’t pick up combinations like I used to and have to regain the skill. I really do believe that dancing stimulates the brain almost more than it stimulates the body.
The New England Journal of Medicine has conducted a study reporting the correlation between recreational activities and mental acuity in aging. They examined 469 subjects, all older than 75, on their cognitive activity and asked them to perform, or not perform, in certain recreational activities such as reading, playing board games, playing musical instruments, or dancing for 5 years. After the 5 years, the experimenters tested the participants for signs of dementia. Reading reduced the risk of dementia by 35%, bicycling and swimming- 0%, playing board games- 47%, golf- 0%, and dancing- 76%.
So why dancing? This is unfortunately where the study falls short. We know that dance improves cognitive levels, but we are not sure why. Stanford tries to explain the results of the study, “The essence of intelligence is making decisions. The best advice, when it comes to improving your mental acuity, is to involve yourself in activities which require split-second rapid-fire decision making, as opposed to rote memory (retracing the same well-worn paths), or just working on your physical style.” Dancing also enhances ones neural connectivity. Ones brain’s kinesthetic, rational, musical, and emotional functions are all triggered while one is taking a dance class or even just dancing alone in their room. So, not only does dance help prevent dementia and certain cases of Alzheimers, but it gives your brain a work out!
I am extremely excited about these results, due to the fact that I will probably dance for the rest of my life. I love the fact that this study was experimental because reverse causation can easily be ruled out. However, I am a little disappointed with the study because I would like to know more. For example, what type of dance were the participants doing? How long were they dancing for? Either way, I am now inspired to give my Grandma a call and tell her to take a dance class!
Kristen Robertson
Resources:
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa022252
http://socialdance.stanford.edu/syllabi/smarter.htm
I think this is great! I’m a horrible dancer myself, because I don’t have good coordination. When I do dance I really have to pay attention to everything that I’m doing, so it makes sense that it would help reduce the risk of dementia because it give your brain a serious workout. It’s not only a workout for your brain though, dancing can be a great form of excercise. Here’s an article about the benefits of dance workouts http://www.womenshealthmag.com/health/dance-workout
This is a pretty cool study and something I never really learned about. It’s funny because in a lot of other sports, the head is something that gets injured a lot. When you look at football or soccer players, they are always getting concussions that cause them a lot of harm. It’s really cool to look at a sport from the perspective that it is building your brain power. It actually makes a lot of sense to correlate the two because you are constantly having to remember different combinations. I was never a dancer but I was a figure skater for many years and I remember having to do the same thing. I never knew why it was so easy to remember the dances versus memorizing spelling words for my test. It would be a lot more interesting if the study gave some reasons for this. Fit WebMD wrote a great article on how exercise can help boost brain power. Although it’s not all in the memorization of things, even a good run on the treadmill can be good for your brain! http://fit.webmd.com/teen/move/article/exercise-boosts-brain
This to me is very interesting. I had never thought about the rapid decision making skills needed in order to dance. I danced until my freshman year of high school and so I know how tough it can be on the body but I never thought about what it was doing to my brain. This was also a well conducted experiment because they used a lot of people. Very interesting!