Dancing May Be Good for Your Brain

Exercise can benefit an aging brain. It can improve cognition and delay dementia, increase attention and focus, and reduce depression, research suggests. But if you’d rather shake your booty than run a marathon, get excited. Dancing offers enormous benefits for your body and brain, from relieving stress to increasing social connections and reducing loneliness, according to a report on music from the Global Council on Brain Health (GCBH).

“Moving to music requires coordination of varied neural activities, involving the brain’s reward center, along with sensory and motor circuits,” the report states. “All that synchronizing enriches the experience and increases the pleasure. This coupling not only feels good but is good — for the brain.”

The type of dance you choose may be irrelevant. Line dancing may protect brain tissue, and ballroom dancing may improve spatial analysis (the part of the brain focused on navigation and remembering layouts), studies show. Latin dances, such as the salsa and merengue, may boost visual recognition and decision-making, among other skills, the GCBH report states. And whether it’s the tango or the twist, dance provides both mental and social stimulation, which may enhance memory. In a University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign study, researchers followed a group of healthy seniors (ages 60 to 79) for six months in four different classes: dance, walking, walking and nutrition, and stretching and toning. Only those in the dance class exhibited improvement in the brain’s fornix, a collection of nerve fibers that play an important role in memory.