Dancing? For your brain!?

There was an older European lady I knew.  In fact, she was in her late eighties. She had completed two degrees since retirement.   She took up aqua aerobics with gusto, because she thought she needed to give her body some attention - she had already been looking after her brain after all, and it was time to work on her fitness.

Little did we know, however, how beneficial fitness was to the functioning of the brain.

Scientists have known that the white matter in our brains is responsible form transmitting signals.  To quote the New York Times*:-
"White matter consists of specialised cells and their offshoots that pass messages between neurons and from one part of the brain to another."
As we age our white matter frays and becomes thinner. The fraying of the white matter means our brains'processing speeds slow down as we age.

A study conducted by the University of Illinois, Urbana, wanted to know whether exercise would slow down this fraying process and while they were at it, what type of exercise would be most useful.

This was an interesting experiment because,  in addition to testing processing speed of participants' brains. Brain scans were administered to measure their white matter.

The participants were aged 60 to 70 years of age and were divided into three groups.
Three different exercise regimes were  undertaken.
1.  A walking regime,  a total of three hours per week.
2. Stretch and balance class, three times a week
3. Learn country-dancing, three lessons a week

Six months later their white matter was measured and their processing speeds were tested.
Results were amazing and should really cause a stir.

All groups improved in the speed of mental processing.   However the brain scans showed a degeneration of the white matter in the six months, to an extent that was surprising even to the researchers.
" The degeneration was especially noticeable in the oldest volunteers and those who had been the most sedentary before joining the study.", New York Times.

 Except the dancers, whose white matter IMPROVED. .

What is the lesson here?

Keeping active in old age has consequences for our conserving mental ability. It is worth taking a closer look at the content of the dance class:-

" These men and women showed up to a studio three times a week for an hour and practiced increasingly intricate country-dance choreography, with the group shaping itself into fluid lines and squares and each person moving from partner to partner." New York Times

During our exercise class, we form lines, circles, square. We do partner work.  We try to learn new routines.  It might just be worth perservering those frustrating new routines, because we lose our marbles from the feet up.

From the New York Times  Article by Gretchen Reynolds, "Walk, Stretch or Dance? Dancing may be best for the brain."