Given the market value of dance therapy, and the opportunity that dance may become for our aging population, it is a timely question whether and how long-term dance training affects the healthy adult human brain and mind. Surprisingly, similar trials using neuroimaging to study the effects of dance in neurodegenerative disease patients are still in the early stages (e.g., Earhart et al., 2015). Indeed, in a recent randomized clinical trial we have shown subtle yet promising benefits of a 6-month, 3-times per week dance intervention on the microstructure of the fornix in healthy older adults ( Burzynska et al., 2017). Conversely, epidemiological studies found that people with a life-long history of dancing were less likely to be diagnosed with dementia or to experience age-related cognitive decline ( Verghese et al., 2003). Despite the popularity of dance as a cognitive or mental therapy, recent reviews question the effectiveness of short-term dance therapy in neurological disorders such as schizophrenia ( Ren and Xia, 2013) and depression ( Meekums et al., 2015), concluding there is no evidence for or against dance as a treatment. Although practiced for thousands of years in rituals and as a leisure activity, the long-term effects of systematic dance training on cognition, and brain structure and function are not well understood.Ĭurrently, there is increasing interest in dance as a therapeutic intervention for various clinical groups, ranging from developmental disorders such as Down syndrome ( Lifshitz-Vahav et al., 2016), to neurological disorders such as schizophrenia ( Martin et al., 2016) and mood disorder (depression Meekums et al., 2015), neuromotor disorders such as Parkinson’s disease ( McNeely et al., 2015), to dementia prevention and management ( Ballesteros et al., 2015 Adam et al., 2016). Our findings have the potential to inform future study designs aiming to monitor dance training-induced plasticity in clinical populations.ĭance is a pleasurable and captivating activity that involves motor, cognitive, visuospatial, social, and emotional engagement. These functional connectivity differences were related to dance skill and balance and training-induced structural characteristics. Dancers showed altered functional connectivity of the AON, and of the general motor learning network. They also activated the action observation network (AON) to greater extent than Non-Dancers when viewing dance sequences. Dancers had lower anisotropy in the corticospinal tract. We found little evidence for training-related differences in brain volume in Dancers. Dancers showed superior performance in the Dance Central video game and balance task, but showed no differences in cognitive abilities. We used diffusion tensor, morphometric, resting state and task-related functional MRI, a broad cognitive assessment, and objective measures of selected dance skill (Dance Central video game and a balance task). To study the long-term effects of dance training on the human brain, we compared 20 young expert female Dancers with normal body mass index with 20 age- and education-matched Non-Dancers with respect to brain structure and function. Therefore, this study examined actively performing, expert-level trained college students as a model of long-term exposure to dance training. Surprisingly, the effects of dance training on the healthy young brain are not well understood despite the necessity of such information for planning successful clinical interventions. ![]() Today, dance is increasingly used as therapy for cognitive and neurological disorders such as dementia and Parkinson’s disease. ![]() Dance – as a ritual, therapy, and leisure activity – has been known for thousands of years.
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