Bruce Frankel
Available March 4, 2010 Pre-Order Now
Why Dance? To Maintain Everyday Competence And Stay Fit Physically And Mentally, Study Shows
August 10, 2010
Why dance?
Beyond the joy of bopping to rhythm and staying in shape, a growing tide of research has been pointing to dance’s ability to preserve mental fitness, too.
Now, a new study suggests that following a regular schedule of dancing into old age has far-reaching effects that not only preserve cognitive, motor, and perceptual abilities, but is “a prime candidate for the preservation of everyday life competence of elderly individuals.”
In recent years, dance has been used as a therapeutic tool for the treatment of Parkinson’s disease, dementia, obesity in children, and patients with serious mental illness. Most previous studies have focused on its benefit to the cardiovascular health, muscle strengthening, posture, and balance among the elderly.
Using PET scans, neuroscientists have previously shown that dancing activates many areas of the brain and elicits the interaction of wide-spread neural networks. Other studies have shown that repeated physical activities have the ability to reorganize the brain—otherwise known as neuroplasticity—into old age.
“We here went one step further by hypothesizing that year-long dancing activity in an elderly population should promote general advantages including preservation of cognitive, motor and sensorimotor performance as well as perceptual abilities,” according to the study by researchers, led by Jan-Christoph Kattenstroth, at the Neural Plasticity Lab at the Institute for Neuroinformatics, Ruhr-University Bochum.
They studied the impact on 24 amateur dancers, with an average age of 71 and an average of 16.5 years of regular ballroom dancing, compared with a sedentary group of 38 adults, of the same average age, with no record of sports or dancing activities.
“We found that in each of the different levels investigated,” including cognitive, attentional, intellectual, perceptual and sensorimotor performance, the group of amateur dancers performed at a superior level compared with the group of non-dancers.
Praise for What Should I Do with the Rest of My Life?
“Bruce Frankel’s upbeat, inspiring, timely book shows how taking a risk and fighting to find a passionate career — at any age — can reinvigorate your life...”
— Susan Shapiro, author of Speed Shrinking and Only As Good as Your Word
