Dance training superior to physical exercise in inducing brain plasticity (2018)

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0196636

by Tomte • 2 years ago

325 193 2 years ago

journals.plos.org

riffic• 2 years ago

embodied cognition is definitely an interesting concept to explore. I know I get really interesting thoughts when I go for a walk.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/embodied-cognition/

cdiamand• 2 years ago

"Regarding cognition, both groups improved in attention and spatial memory, but no significant group differences emerged."

So, the dance group showed increase volume of brain matter. Is there a benefit to having the extra brain volume, even if it doesn't lead to improved cognition?

Is it possible that increased volume just helped them become better dancers?

aithrowawaycomm• 2 years ago

Musical cognition is loosely connected to attention (maybe disconnected entirely by this metric, music seems special) and spatial memory is irrelevant. So "better dancers" seems a bit myopic, they might be improving their understanding of rhythm and melody in a more general sense.

(IMO the headline-level conclusion of this study is unsurprising - dancing is far more cognitively demanding than gym exercise!)

yapyap• 2 years ago

Is there a benefit to having the extra brain volume, even if it doesn't lead to improved cognition?

ever seen megamind?

fnordpiglet2• 2 years ago

Cognition and memory are easily measurable brain functions but are not the exclusive function of the brain. As a conserving machine a healthy brain building volume is indicative of improvement in some function otherwise it wouldn’t bother building the volume.

marginalia_nu4• 2 years ago

I got into dance a few years ago, and N=1 sure, but the big changes I observed as a result were improvements in proprioception, balance, sense of tempo, and I also gained the ability to deconstruct music in my head, and listen to different parts of it (e.g. only pay attention to the guitar or the drums or the vocals).

Like does this make me better at programming? Probably not. But the skills you gain do have other usages outside of dance, and honestly also kind of enrich life in general.

HPsquared3• 2 years ago

Balance training (standing on a ball type thing) also is supposed to help ADHD.

unshavedyak• 2 years ago

Can you link anything on the subject? Sounds like a simple device you could own at home and spend 10m a day on balancing.

vitaflo• 2 years ago

Really don't even need a device. I practice balancing on one leg with my eyes closed while brushing my teeth every morning (I've progressively made it harder over time). I mostly do this to keep up my balance skills for mountain biking and it's helped quite a bit, especially during winter when I ride less.

svilen_dobrev2• 2 years ago

on the opposite end of simple-or-cheap, e-foiling Does train your balance. esp. in windy "cabbage-salad" waves with medusas and rubbish floating around :/

changing19996• 2 years ago

This (intuitively) makes sense, since standing on a ball requires full focus, can't really get distracted.

marginalia_nu4• 2 years ago

Does it though? Balancing doesn't seem like an active cognitive process, like I don't have to think about not falling over to stay upright on a bicycle. All the little shifts of body weight needed to not tip over seem to be done automatically.

idle_cycles• 2 years ago

"Fifty-two seniors (25 males; 27 females) aged 63–80 years were then randomly assigned to the experimental dance group (DG) and the control sport group (SG) controlling for age, MMSE status and physical fitness." I wonder if these findings remain true for young or middle aged adults.

klyrs6• 2 years ago

For the present exploratory study, we designed an especially challenging dance program in which our elderly participants constantly had to learn novel and increasingly difficult choreographies. This six-month-long program was compared to conventional fitness training matched for intensity.

The result seems bloody obvious to me as a dancer. Dance is exercise. And this wasn't just dance, they were learning moves and choreography. Like, no duh, teaching people new and complicated things increases neuroplasticity! According to the quote there, the activities were matched in physical intensity and one treatment added a significant mental component versus the control.

Compare dance to rowing, lifting, spinning etc. Those activities are regularly accomplished by a brainless motor. That such activities induce neuroplasticity is cool, but it's no shock that more enriching activities are better for the brain.

I think it's obvious that a younger person's brain would be more improved by this class than your ordinary seniors athletics program. I'd be more inclined to compare with other low-impact competitive sport: badminton, table tennis, etc. Like dance, those require full-body coordination, planning, reflexes, etc.

hyperG• 2 years ago

Seems obvious to me too as someone who sucks at dancing but loves fitness.

Like saying the heart worked harder with people on a treadmill at 4 miles per hour than 3 miles per hour.

I think there is also this bogus implication then that dancing would help you write a better novel or painting a picture than just walking on a treadmill.

JamesBarney• 2 years ago

Dancing compared to conventional fitness activity led to larger volume increases in more brain areas, including the cingulate cortex, insula, corpus callosum and sensorimotor cortex. Only dancing was associated with an increase in plasma BDNF levels. Regarding cognition, both groups improved in attention and spatial memory, but no significant group differences emerged casual.

noelwelsh• 2 years ago

I think the difference in outcomes is likely to be down to "continuous learning of new movement patterns and choreographies" vs "participants performed the same exercises repeatedly ... We avoided combined arm and leg movements in order to keep coordinative demands low".

That said, I think dance is great.

klyrs6• 2 years ago

That said, dance is a really fun way to package repetitive movements. And if younger people did more of it, the men on this site would spend less time bitching about how hard it is to meet women. *cough*

michaelteter2• 2 years ago

Yes, you will “meet” more women by dancing than by playing games on your computer. That doesn’t necessarily mean you will make any meaningful connections.

Simply going places and interacting with people will also help you meet women. In fact, I think you’d sooner find a date by becoming a grocery store employee than a dancer, because you’re more likely to be having conversations with the people you meet.

Dancing, especially where you are learning, is not really socializing.

The structure of our modern society really does make it more difficult to meet new people. Women complain too, not just men.

scotty793• 2 years ago

That said, dancing is super hard. It just doesn't click with some brains. Like at all. With mine for example. I can't repeat full body movements. I can't remember sequences of those movements even as short as 3. Any diagrams that attmempt to teach dancing make no sense to me. Foot placement seems completely arbitrary. I always had a very hard time learning things I don't understand and I'm not sure if I ever actually learnt any. I see no connection between dancing and music. Regardless of the professional level of dancers when I look at them dancing I recognize no connection between what I hear and what they do. Like those two things are at completely separate layers without any meaningful sync between them.

And that's all before even considering things like social anxiety or being a highly sensitive person which makes various stimuli including social ones so strong that they become unpleasant.

The closest I ever was and probably I'll ever be to drawing any pleasure from dance like activity is Light Saber.

kspacewalk2• 2 years ago

...in mice

moi2388• 2 years ago

That would be igNobel worthy

polishdude204• 2 years ago

Anecdotal bur my ex's grandmother would do swing dancing as a hobby with her husband and later when they retired at like 50, they would swing dance like 3-5 times a week at home. Her grandmother is now 102 years old and up until recently was the sharpest, and wittiest resident at her care home despite being the oldest. Her hearing is great, her eyesight is great. The only things going slowly are her short term memory and ability to walk but she still does with her walker.

dunham• 2 years ago

My grandmother kept a flower garden, it got smaller as she got older, but she made it to 113. Maybe the gardening helped keep her going.

She was in a home for the last year (maybe two), lived on her own before that. She was sharp, but her hearing was poor.

changing19996• 2 years ago

I would like to see a comparison with other types of physical exercise that contain an element of continuous learning. Wrestling, BJJ, even boxercise, crossfit and such. Since the argument seems to be specifically about learning new routines and how that impacts neuroplasticity, dance vs other more cognitively challenging workouts would be an interesting comparison.

PUSH_AX• 2 years ago

That’s really interesting, bjj is essentially physical problem solving with dire consequences

BaculumMeumEst• 2 years ago

I think if your exercise involves you regularly getting choked out you probably shouldn’t be expecting neurological benefits

changing19996• 2 years ago

No one is getting regularly choked out in BJJ. You always tap. The goal is not to injure your partner but to learn together. Source: 5 years of BJJ, I have never been choked out, I am not an idiot.

WalterBright8• 2 years ago

With dance you are constantly learning new material. Much less so with an exercise routine, even if you "mix it up".

changing19996• 2 years ago

Not sure if you have experienced martial arts. It's constant learning. Sparring is a small part of the process. See kata in karate, hundreds of moves and transitions in BJJ, etc

gosub100• 2 years ago

So those square dancers are constantly coming up with new material? Ballroom innovators are patenting never before seen ways to articulate the human body? Sure.

harimau777• 2 years ago

With most martial arts you are constantly learning new material comparable to dance (that's to say nothing of martial arts like Capoeira and Silat which incorporate dance into their training).

It is also quite common for martial artists to add new skills that cover different aspects of combat. E.g. once karate-ka have a solid foundation in unarmed combat they often learn to use weapons. Practitioners of striking oriented martial arts commonly cross train in grappling or throwing oriented arts. Practitioners of Northern Kung Fu (generally focused on long range) might train in Southern Kung Fu (generally focused on short range). Many martial artists also incorporate supplemental practices such as meditation, qigong, or hojo undo.

buescher• 2 years ago

Good martial arts instructors are very experienced at working with unathletic beginners who have never had much coaching before. “No, the other left.” Probably easier to find a class at level as a total beginner where you’re still expected to make a lot of progress than some other things.

suzzer99• 2 years ago

Peter Attia had a guest on his podcast who said something along these lines. He was really into training people to do Olympic lifting because of the cognitive component that goes along with the exercise. He also said hiking is good because the terrain is inconsistent, and you have to think about each step to some degree.

anonzzzies3• 2 years ago

Probably some styles of martial arts would (do imho) work well then. Disclaimer ; did not RTFA.

Edit: +styles of

klyrs6• 2 years ago

Depends on the martial art: head injuries would complicate that analysis; tai chi isn't terribly aerobic, etc.

anonzzzies3• 2 years ago

Yes, added styles there. Kata's can be quite dance-y depending on the style.

Also, to be contrary old dude into martial arts all his life, I don't really consider many head bashing 'styles' now to be 'arts'. Martial, sure.

gcanyon• 2 years ago

Obligatory mention of the fact that the best exercise is the one you’ll do, regardless of what it is. Dance might be better for your brain than cycling, but neither helps anything if you give up on them after a few months. So find the (best) exercise you’ll actually keep up with, and keep up with that. Even if it’s only walking a few blocks a day, that’s better than nothing.

bogtog4• 2 years ago

I do MRI work, and my gut is that none of the claims about dance vs. exercise would replicate. The behavioral data suggests that activity of some type will improve cognitive function (main effects of time). Such beneficial effects of activity on the brain have been shown before, and this is generally accepted. However, the authors' behavioral data doesn't show any difference between the dance vs. exercise groups. This means that the study is overall off to a pretty bad start if their goal is to study dance vs. exercise differences...

The brain data claims to show that the dance vs. exercise groups showed different levels of improvement in various regions. However, the brain effects are tiny and are probably just random noise (I'm referring to those red spots, which are very small and almost certainly don't reflect proper correction for multiple hypotheses given that the authors effectively tested 1000s or 10000s of different areas). The authors' claims about BDNF are supported by a p-value of p = .046, and having main conclusions hinge on p-values of p > .01 usually means the conclusions are rubbish.

In general, my priors on "we can detect subtle changes in brain matter over a 6-week period" are also very low. Perhaps, a study with this sample size could show that activity of some kind influences the brain over such a short length, but I am extremely skeptical that this type of study could detect differences between dance vs. exercise effects.

zophiana• 2 years ago

I agree that the sample size might be a bit small so it could be noise, but the study did went 6-month not 6-weeks.

And there are findings like these https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...

wdkrnls• 2 years ago

Or it could be a problem of seeking statistical detection of any difference whatsoever versus detecting a practically meaningful difference... a type III error (answering the wrong question).

bogtog4• 2 years ago

Thanks, that sounds more reasonable. I'm still generally bearish on this type of brain-volume-change work (and extremely so on any study trying to compare brain-volume effects between different groups), but I guess 6-months is a finer premise.

westurner• 2 years ago

Cardiovascular exercise correlates with subsequent synthesis of endocannabinoids, which affect hippocampal neurogeneration and probably thereby neuroplasticity.

From "Environment shapes emotional cognitive abilities more than genes" (2024) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40105068#40107602 :

hippocampal plasticity and hippocampal neurogenesis also appear to be affected by dancing and omega-3,6 (which are transformed into endocannabinoids by the body): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15109698

Also, isn't there selection bias to observational dance studies? If not in good general health, is a person likely to pursue regular dancing? Though, dance lifts mood and gets the cardiovascular system going.

Dance involves spatial sense and proprioception and probably all of the senses.

agumonkey5• 2 years ago

My random opinion is that dance or dance like activities are a sweet spot between low intensity and high intensity exercise that involves a lot more balance, coordination and fluidity than most physical activities promoted for health overall (they're either too simple or too hard), these traits are (I believe) very important to your brain. Add the social aspect as an important bonus.

WalterBright8• 2 years ago

Yes, moving as one with your partner is a big part of it, and where much of the pleasure comes from.

pjerem• 2 years ago

Totally anecdotal and probably 99% placebo but I started rollerblading (which also require _a lot_ of balance and coordination) for the first time in my life, like, I take courses in a skatepark and never wore rollerblades before (I’m 33). After some weeks I’m totally perceiving "something" changed in my brain. It’s like doing mental things is somehow easier.

I also happen to microdose since a few months ago but the change I felt coincided exactly about when I felt my fear to fall disappeared, when I "got" the balancing.

That’s totally an anecdote and not science but this feeling of change in my brain was so strong that I perceived it.

0xcde4c3db• 2 years ago

The authors' claims about BDNF are supported by a p-value of p = .046, and having main conclusions hinge on p-values of p > .01 usually means the conclusions are rubbish.

Also, I don't have the references handy, but I recall other studies showing that exercise-induced BDNF changes can be mediated by e.g. air pollution. So even if the difference there is real, it might be premature to attribute it specifically to the mode of training.

tech_ken4• 2 years ago

This is a good point, maybe the dance studio has a better air filtration system than the other exercise location

givemeethekeys• 2 years ago

Do more complex movements stimulate our neural pathways more than less complex movements?

tech_ken4• 2 years ago

The authors' claims about BDNF are supported by a p-value of p = .046, and having main conclusions hinge on p-values of p > .01 usually means the conclusions are rubbish.

Your other points I agree with but I actually think the BDNF result has some standing. I'm looking at Fig. 4 and just by an eyeball test there's clear difference in the distributions of the intra-individual BDNF increase. It's not like there's some miniscule variation in the means that they make significant with really small error bars, the actual effect size appears to be notable. Moreover there's clearly some effect on the width of the distributions which could support their ultimate conclusion (ex. even if the mean effect is the same, it's possible the population-wide ceiling on gains is higher for dance).

Now with all that said this could definitely still be a multiple comparisons thing, I'm just a statistician with no background in neuro-stuff so possibly the BDNF thing is just a bad indicator here. Certainly the behavioral outcomes not showing an interaction difference isn't a great sign as you point out, but in my personal and unimportant opinion I would at least say this study would be good justification for a follow-up with a better design and bigger population.

bogtog4• 2 years ago

I know nearly nothing about BDNF specifically. Whether it should motivate a follow-up is mostly only something known to the authors, as a p = .046 suggests a chance they may have tested numerous outcome variables and reported only one (e.g,. this could very well be 1/10). The fact that the p-value is almost comically close to p = .05, makes me suspect that this happened. Perhaps, if this goes in line with other BDNF research, then that could motivate it some further work.

Notably, even if we take this p = .046 as a given, and assume there was no p-hacking, then this type of result implies that statistical power is tiny, and a proper "bigger population" study would likely have to be several hundreds of people. Even a study with 50% power, should have a majority of significant results land p < .01.

jon_richards• 2 years ago

See also the dead salmon study https://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/scicurious-brain/ign...

hunter-gatherer• 2 years ago

"The original poster almost didn't make it to a conference, but when it did, it made a major splash"

Best pun ever.

yellow_postit• 2 years ago

Replicability was my first thought as well. These papers make great headlines but how much shaky pyramids of conclusions are built on non-reproducible conclusions?

kukkeliskuu4• 2 years ago

I have done lots of free-form couples dancing (over 20 years, several times per week, some of it in complex styles like argentine tango) and in my first-hand experience the major difference from other kinds of exercise is that you need to harmonize your movements with your partner and music, and you need to improvise. The complexity of the movement is not it, nor the "exercise".

There is lots of other research suggesting that couples dancing is more beneficial to the mental health and memory than other kinds of exercise.

That said (and having no background in an very little knowledge of MRI research), I am also skeptical like you that there would appear such clear visible signs so soon in the brain images.

johtso• 2 years ago

I also wonder if even just the close physical contact itself has a positive impact on brain chemistry.

Notatheist• 2 years ago

I'm a professional dancer and music and freestyle are the most demanding aspects of dance by far.

That said I'm also skeptical. Music and dance are being compared to "bicycle ergometers" and "training with equipment such as barbells and rubber bands". I'm pretty sure only one of these groups was having any fun. Unless the dance group were forced to social dance bachata in which case the misery probably evens out.

aswegs8• 2 years ago

I lack the in-depth knowledge but correcting p-value thresholds for multiple hypotheses is very basic science. I doubt your criticism is valid given that some basic error like this would never pass peer review.

bogtog4• 2 years ago

Correcting for p-values in brain imaging research is kinda elaborate, since you are essentially performing a t-test separately for each brain voxel. A brain image like the authors' will have about a million voxels (0.7 x 0.7 x 0.7 mm voxels). For multiple hypothesis correction, correcting for 1 million tests would be overly strict because neighboring voxels are highly correlated with one another, and it's unlikely for brain effects to really be confined to such a small area. Hence, researchers usually define a primary threshold for voxels (here p < .001 uncorrected), and then look for patches of many p < .001 voxels together. Here, the authors stated that they looked for patches of at least 50 contiguous voxels. The authors are just using some loose old-timey heuristic without justification or citation. These have been getting phased out mostly in the past decade. These types of heuristics don't actually test to establish that these thresholds won't yield tons of false positives (one of the best ways to do this is to basically randomly shuffle your data and see what are the actual cluster sizes generated by chance).

some basic error like this would never pass peer review

It indeed shouldn't pass peer review! Yet, here we are. I think standards have gotten better since the paper's publication (2018), but there are no doubt there are still many reviewers who don't have a good intuition about what a significant cluster size should be. Off the top of my head, I can't give an exact number on the cluster size needed, but I'd be willing to bet a ton that what the authors used is not enough.

bbstats• 2 years ago

I think all the things that dance brings to the table over the mean "exercise" are clear first-principles wins (using your whole body, listening and dancing in rhythm, listening to music, letting yourself go / being silly)

maxwell• 2 years ago

https://youtu.be/BD-z8ZqVpP8?si=yBdJmDrDWXrJMpvz

rqtwteye• 2 years ago

I think that’s why I prefer exercise with some level of freedom. Free weights feel more engaging than machines. A fast hike up a mountain feels better than running on a treadmill indoors.

djmips• 2 years ago

My hope is that DDR is a form of dance training.

chaostheory• 2 years ago

I found the Les Mill’s XR Dance to be a great workout app in VR.

https://www.meta.com/experiences/app/6212696172191478

The research results aren’t surprising since dance is more complicated than something like HIIT. Martial arts training would likely have a similar effect unless sparring involved lots of hits to the head.

svilen_dobrev2• 2 years ago

One dancer-and-programmer friend of mine invented the below thinking, after i introduced him into the "relation is an object" paradigm in software..:

  When movement becomes dance?
  Dance is the "relation" between movement and meaning. The key is whether someone can put it / sense it .

  someone = a dancer or the-other-kind-of-dancer-called-spectator
  meaning = very-very abstract. Like, even concentration can be meaning

ericmcer• 2 years ago

I don't have any science behind this, but it makes sense that training more complex motions would trigger greater brain improvements.

Dance vs basketball or some other high coordination/skill activity might have less disparity than say dance vs. exercise bike.

macintux• 2 years ago

Speaking as someone who tried to take a tap class as an adult, only to discover it was for people who were already experienced dancers: yes, dance training is vastly more complex than exercise.

Update: what absolutely killed me is that we would run through a complex step two or three times, and we were expected to be able to practice at home. I didn't understand what we were doing while we were doing it, there was no way I could reproduce it.

eep_social• 2 years ago

I think gp’s point was that “exercise” encompasses a range from stationary bike to olympic lifts. Dancing is on the same end of that range as olympic lifting or a sport like basketball insofar as they all require intentional practice.

WalterBright8• 2 years ago

What works is to go through the steps very slowly. As it moves into muscle memory, you can speed it up.

Dance training is a whole body thing. There's steps, ankle position, foot turnout, posture, what to do with your arms, what to do with your fingers, where your eyes are looking, and on and on.

The very first thing, though, is getting the steps into your muscle memory. Then one by one, you start layering on the rest.

alaithea3• 2 years ago

I've danced extensively, and tap can be brutal for the sheer number of steps you need to remember. Other dance disciplines, like ballet, tend to chunk sets of smaller movements into a larger, named one, so once you learn those sequences, it's easy to learn and recall longer routines. The way ballet is put together aligns with advice from brain science about chunking objects in memory for better recall. But tap has few of those chunked sequences, other than the "time step," so you're left trying to parse long strings of very finite instructions. "Left ball right heel left flap ball change..." Personally I found it overwhelming and didn't pursue tap into the most advanced levels for that reason.

Aside: it seemed like neurotypical folks struggled less with tap than I did as an AuDHD person, so tap may land differently with different neurotypes.

UniverseHacker3• 2 years ago

I have experience with a few types of dance including salsa and bachata, and also compete as a strength athlete- and find some of the more complex weight lifting moves- such as the push jerk- a lot harder and more technical than anything I’ve learned dancing. If every aspect of your timing and form aren’t perfect, it simply does not work at heavier weights, and can take years of constant practice to perfect. The extra burden of having to output 100 percent effort while trying to do everything else perfect is very mentally demanding.

viraptor• 2 years ago

You got thrown into a class above your skill level. That's bad on the teacher for not telling you really. Once you know the basics the rest is easier to build on top of that, but otherwise it's like trying to tell someone about design patterns while they're still struggling with syntax in programming.

If you liked the idea, give it a go with beginners again. You'll get back to that higher level soon anyway.

j45• 2 years ago

Another factor also seems to be how learning differs between adult brains, and non-adult brains.

A child's brain isn't finished forming till about age 25-26, when the prefrontal cortex finally matures, from my understanding. [1][2]

Once Adult brain is in the drivers seat, learning isn't how it used to be in school. That can be better and worse. Generally, for adults, it can be more useful to try to start from where they are and learn one step outward from there.

Adults having to learn something new can.. sometimes by different means. A dance instructor friend mentioned they could make two left feet better (not perfect) by teaching them to practice the micro movements, one at a time, sometimes for hundreds of reps, and then putting them together slowly.[3][4]

Anecdotal again, but when I tried learning a move the same way, it wasn't as hard learning it a bit at a time vs just throwing myself into it.

We know muscle memory is a thing for using tools like Vim and keyboard shortcuts, so I don't think it's out of the realm of possibility.[5][6]

References:

[1] Development Period of Prefrontal Cortex "Prefrontal cortex matures around age 25." https://www.intechopen.com/chapters/70083

[2] Development of the Prefrontal Cortex "Prefrontal cortex development extends into adulthood." https://www.nature.com/articles/s41583-019-0149-4

[3] Neuroplasticity Subserving Motor Skill Learning "Motor skill learning involves neuroplasticity." https://www.cell.com/neuron/fulltext/S0896-6273(11)00903-9

[4] Motor Learning and Plasticity "Practice leads to changes in motor cortex organization." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3921001/

[5] Experience-Dependent Structural Plasticity in the Adult Human Brain "Adult brain changes structurally with new experiences." https://academic.oup.com/cercor/article/15/4/458/312872

[6] Micro-learning in the Age of Neuroscience https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.6401... "Micro-learning enhances retention and mastery."

sitkack• 2 years ago

Try taking modern dance. They have the huge choreography that you need to memorize, with like 19 degrees of freedom and then 40 minutes through the class the instructor says, "flip it over" and you need to perform the mirror image of all those movements. You can't handle the chirality!

noufalibrahim• 2 years ago

I teach Karate to kids and many of the forms require some amount of coordination and quick movement. A little thinking ahead and awareness of where your own limbs are (I think it's called proprioception). I've been doing this for a long time and can make reasonable accurate judgments about my physical abilities (how far I can jump etc.). But it's a skill that's quite demanding for new learners and that became quite apparent to me when I started teaching. I think it would be similar learning dancing (especially complex moves).

For forms, we had to practice it till it became muscle memory and then it would automatically come up when we needed it and influence our moves even outside of the forms. I can relate to your experience about not understanding. However, the knowledge is additive and if you start small and keep practicing, you develop a skill to understand the forms/patterns at a larger level with some kinds of cues and it's vastly easier to remember and perform. THis also requires a teacher who can ease you into the complex stuff without dumping it all on you.

fnordpiglet2• 2 years ago

In fact dance based exercise like Zumba, or boxing even, is very helpful with folks suffering Parkinson’s because it require multiple tasks be processed at once - rhythm, hand, foot, observation of the lead. This induces plasticity which is crucial in staving Parkinson’s decline. So I find it strange to assert exercise alone is the beneficial component as it’s clear in pathological situations where increasing plasticity yields slower declines dance and complex exercise that requires many integrated tasks is superior to simple exercise.

vunderba2• 2 years ago

I was thinking the same thing too. I mean shocker: high cardio + spatial awareness > high cardio alone.

For your money, you can't beat games like Pump It Up for a combination of HIIT (High Intensity Interval training) and the additional cognitive load that comes from the choreography of your steps and rhythmic timing.

bsder• 2 years ago

It could also be the social aspect of dance. Dancing requires interacting with people that general exercise does not.

Social interaction has been shown over and over and over to have a beneficial effect on people.

dangom• 2 years ago

Depends on what you mean by "improvements". Is it coordination? Is it sustained increased blood flow? I would imagine that different bike exercise regimens could induce more variation in fitness than the comparison dance vs exercise alone.

kelnos3• 2 years ago

Sure, it sounds like it would make sense, but that's not necessarily how the brain actually works.

This study doesn't really seem to prove or even suggest anything either way, assuming GP's evaluation of their methodology is correct.

"Armchair neuroscientist" is not a game anyone can play well. (I say this because I know several actual neuroscientists, and they are constantly telling me about ways the brain works that are very counterintuitive.)

mewpmewp2• 2 years ago

Out of curiousity do you have any examples of some of the ways?

blueyes• 2 years ago

Dance requires balance and often involves social interaction, while lots of physical exercise does not. Balance and more precisely imbalance is a good way to stimulate adrenaline in the brain, which can accelerate learning. Claude Shannon, fwiw, loved unicycles.

ziofill• 2 years ago

I don't find this hard to believe. I'm no brain scientist, but dance puts together several senses and proprioception: music, rhythm, one's position in 3D space, balance, and physical exercise...

pandemic_region• 2 years ago

.... in the elderly.

alunchbox• 2 years ago

A book I read 'spark' by John J Ratey, discussed this in a few chapters. Cardio/Running at 70% maximum heart rate lead to brain plasticity and even allowing new synapses to make connections and grow. However, he did argue an exercise that also required concentration e.g dancing, basketball, skateboarding would have better results.

It's absolutely crazy, that we misunderstand how our brains are intended to work in the old world. Our brains are for movement, the ability to think, plan and utilize tools appears to have been a happy accident that allowed our ancestor an advantage in survival.

brains be braining.

agumonkey5• 2 years ago

sophisticated coordination and balance are the most effectful brain stimulation i know, it also makes you develop a different understanding of space and time which makes you calmer (larger planning abilities maybe ?)

__turbobrew__• 2 years ago

I like trail running. It combines cardio with balance and problem solving (where do you place your feet, dodging obstacles, recovering from stumbles, very dynamic compared to running on a road or treadmill).

I strongly believe that trail running is much less prone to cause repetitive stress injuries, I see so many people pound thousands of kilometres on pavement and then wonder why their knees give out at 45.

On the other side I know people getting injured when trail running, but it always seems to be acute (like scraping a knee or spraining an ankle) and they are back at it within a week or two.

Finally, at a pseudoscience level I believe that we as humans evolved to run over uneven semi-soft ground and therefore trail running is one of the most natural movements.

tgv• 2 years ago

One should really not draw conclusions based on this.

* It's a (small) group of 63-80 year olds.

* There's no evidence for increased neuro-plasticity. How could there be? There's only an dubious effect on BDNF plasma and "BDNF may be a possible mediating factor of adult neuroplasticity".

* The groups start out with a difference, but by misapplying statistics, they conclude there's no difference.

laristine• 2 years ago

For a research article, modifiers may be more important in imposing constraints and necessary insights in cause and effect. The full title of this article is "Dance training is superior to repetitive physical exercise in inducing brain plasticity in the elderly".

While the current title on HN is "Dance training superior to physical exercise in inducing brain plasticity".

lukas099• 2 years ago

Yes, came here to say that the HN title is misleading.

polishdude204• 2 years ago

On the same note, has anyone joined any dance classes alone? What did you join? How was it going alone? Did you make friends? Do you still do it?

momojo• 2 years ago

Can I ask how old you are? How many of your friends are interested in dance? Are you interested because others are going or does it stem from an intrinsic desire?

Many of my friends (late 20's, early 30s) wouldn't dream of being the first on a dance floor, or trying a class. I think most would rather shoot hoops or go hiking. Dance doesn't even occur to them as an option.

My personal theory is that there's a stigma. Social dancing is what old people do. (Although I don't want to discount the k-pop dance scene I witnessed in college. That had a more performative aspect to it though, like marching band).

polishdude204• 2 years ago

I'm 31. None of my friends are interested. I mainly wanna try swing dancing because I saw a video of a competition and it looked like so much fun. It's really cool seeing people be able to command their body confidently and I see that and think "I wanna do that".

allenu• 2 years ago

I did about ten years ago and danced weekly for 5+ years (swing dancing). I joined classes alone and it went totally fine. You make friends in the class and if you go dancing regularly, you see the same people, so you start forming a community. Best of all, people who go to the dances are there to dance and not get drunk, so it's a great, safe way to meet other people who want to socialize, too.

I stopped going regularly after a little over 5 years, mostly because I was plateauing in my dancing and getting bored with it. In my experience, you plateau multiple times, just as with any skill, but you find a way to get better and more creative, but at that point, my heart wasn't into improving anymore so I wasn't enjoying it as much. I definitely keep telling myself to get back into it, however, because it's such a great social outlet.

I'll also add that it's a really great activity because it's physical, it's creative, and it's social. Partner dancing forces you to learn how to work with other people and communicate better. Not everyone you dance with has the same skill level and you might think you're doing well communicating (when you're leading) but after dancing with several people you find out right away where you're not doing a good job.

I also did find that it made me more aware of my movements and improved my musicality. I got better at watching other people dance and seeing what movements they made and how they choreographed their "routines". That kind of tickled a different part of my brain I hadn't used before in any other activity. The "plateauing" I mentioned earlier forced me to get better at watching others and repeating what they did as well as seeing what I was doing and trying to change it up if it was getting stale.

3523582908• 2 years ago

My own personal experience, but my 80 year old FIL changed a lot after he started going to dance classes. He was always in decent physical health, but prior to the classes he was a very stressed, unhappy, solitary type of person. Since then he's become much more extroverted, social, and generally happier.

Obviously I think the benefits are more than just the dancing itself, such as the community, but even when you ask him directly about what he thinks caused the change he points to dance classes.

veidelis• 2 years ago

I've heard that learning new types of motions helps to increase brain plasticity. I would assume it works best with some amount of cardio exercises.

not5150• 2 years ago

It would be interesting to see the results compared to martial arts, specifically martial arts which require you to perform kata/forms or a set of prearranged moves/strike. So it's basically like a dance, but something like block, punch, turn, kick low, kick high, spinning back kick, etc for 1-3 minutes.

American Kenpo brown belt kata I'm looking at you!

riedel• 2 years ago

I remember that going through a lot of media (actually back in 2015 already) in Germany. My parents in law (in their 80s) dance a lot and can assure it actually keeps them really fit. However, I never learned to dance and I wonder really if I can really learn it when I go to pension age..

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23946732

mikhmha• 2 years ago

A bit unrelated to the main topic but whenever I exceed a certain threshold of smoking cannabis (>0.3g) it seems to induce some automatic rhythmic movement in me. If there's music playing I can tune into the rhythm of the music. If there's no music, I will move around a lot while twisting my limbs, stretching my arms, holding positions and breathing, in various rhythmic and also strange ways. Some people have described it resembling a form of yoga or tai-chi. Whatever it is, it feels like a benefit? I've noticed my posture has improved and in the gym my numbers have also gone up despite 0 diet changes. Its like a full body stretch that activates all these minor muscles in my body.

I don't know - whenever I think about quitting this "bad" habit, I remember that it would just be replaced by sitting around looking at my phone. Being put into this physical trance by a drug has to be infinitely more healthy than that right? I trade one addiction for another.

dsclough• 2 years ago

THCs effects on proprioception are interesting enough to be worth pursuing if you have any interests in the physical realm. Dancing, climbing, lifting weights, running. Clearly one should be careful and I wish weed was still good for me but it’s just anxiety city so I’ll leave it to the folks who haven’t ruined their brains to enjoy.

pgt• 2 years ago

Dance is more social than solo physical exercise. Would make sense that it triggers more brain activity in different areas.

tech_ken4• 2 years ago

To anyone who knows: have their been similar comparison studies between non-exercise movement and exercise movement? Like cycling vs. learning the piano?

yowayb• 2 years ago

Anecdotally, I've found that dancing feels good physically, but also connects you psychologically and culturally with others. More intense activity like CrossFit for example also builds connection, but I don't think you need to go that hard to reap physical benefits, especially as we age.

ropable• 2 years ago

My personal assumption (unsupported by evidence) is that the social aspect of dance training might be as big of a factor in any supposed difference here. Dance classes are inherently more social group activities than many type of structured "physical exercise" (e.g. strength training in the gym, running, etc.)

lamnguyenx• 2 years ago

I have the same question to playing the piano. By every piano playing (30-60 mins per day), can we enhance our brain capacity and delay the age of dementia?

Nevermark• 2 years ago

For me, exercise with physical-mental integration, it’s Beat Saber. But played with strict adherence to edged weapon form.

I must only cut with the “sharp side” of my light saber, and cutting must take the form of contact then pulling back hard to slice (you don’t push a blade through meat).

Also, you can’t stand there. The enemy is going to slice you, and avoid your attacks much more easily if you just stand in one place. So never stop moving, high, low, side to side, back & forth.

Attack and cut from every angle. From over, from under, from every possible stance. Dance, motherflamingo, dance!

All this with maximum speed & force.

And no blade crossing. Duh!

Now work your way up in difficulty. You learn to move like a samurai. You don’t have a choice!

I wish the game had settings that enforced these constraints, along with more complex target motion & rotation. And moving/rotating shielded target sides that reduced your attack options. But just imagining the constraints, just as it is, works fine.

It also helps to have a large enough area where your VR boundaries are all but irrelevant. And no pauses between songs - one album at a time, straight out. You don’t get a break in battle!

One thing I have learned. If I ever had to fight in a real epic 合戦 (gah-sen), I would want my AirPods and tunes!

snapcaster2• 2 years ago

This sounds so awesome. Beat saber but actually sword fighting seems fun as hell. Surprised now this doesn't already exist

binkethy• 2 years ago

What a weird human mistake to create such a false dichotomy. Don't tell me longboard surfers aren't dancers. Lessons schmessons, move your body and learn how to control its movements to better express yourself and better manipulate it with respect to its context, whether in water, suspended from a giant sash, or rolling on a wooden floor.

omayomay• 2 years ago

This conclusion on "Dance" is to narrow i think. What about TaiChi/QiGong? Or martial arts? or yoga?

Instead, maybe, the research might have focused for "exercises that requires high coordination and awareness of body is superior to weightlifting"

wvh• 2 years ago

I'm an avid trail runner, which requires a lot of (quoting another poster) balance, coordination and fluidity. How would dance differ from that? My mostly uneducated guess is that moving in lots of different ways, having lots of social contact and ensuring variety in what you eat just exercises the brain and body and challenges them to stay at peak performance, in balance and not atrophy.

Being a modern human being is about learning to fight comfort and energy conservation.

game_the0ry• 2 years ago

Strange title -- isn't dance training a physical exercise?

neves• 2 years ago

I really like the studies that Dancing is better for depression than antidepressants: https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/dance-best-exercise...

mythrwy• 2 years ago

Not surprised in the least if this is the case.

I have no experience with this app/company but I understand there is some evidence for timing based exercises helping cognition.

https://www.interactivemetronome.com/

vrighter• 2 years ago

And here I was just finishing reading an unrelated article about neurobollocks, which mentions, among other things, that anyone making a blanket statement about "neuroplasticity" is probably bullshitting. Because neuroplasticity isn't a well defined term. This is like someone claiming they cured cancer... (which one of the over 200 distinct, and mostly unrelated ones do you mean exactly?)

Dance training superior to physical exercise in inducing brain plasticity (2018)

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