Give Latin Dancing a Try

The rhythms get the heart beating, and learning the steps with a partner can pay social and mental benefits

Kim Painter

Updated April 15, 2025

A close-up view of the feet of both a male and female Latin dancer

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For some Chicago-area adults, Latin dance classes appear to be the ticket to a more physically active life. And studies suggest that learning those salsa moves (along with the merengue, bachata and cha-cha) may also produce cognitive benefits.

When it comes to exercising for body and brain health, “the key is doing what you like to do,” says David X. Marquez, director of the Exercise Physiology Lab at the University of Illinois Chicago.

In focus groups more than a decade ago, Spanish-speaking older adults told Marquez and his colleagues that they enjoyed dancing but had too few opportunities to do it. So the researchers started inviting some of them to twice-a-week Latin dance classes to see what regular dancing sessions might do for them.

After some small studies with those participants showed promise, the researchers recruited more than 300 Latinos ages 55 and over to take either the dance classes or, for comparison, a health education course. Over 4 months, the dancers learned moves from professional instructors who encouraged them to stay active between classes as well. The dancers then got another four months of classes, led by trained classmates, to practice their steps and learn new ones.

The result: The dancers reported a boost in their overall physical activity and showed memory improvements, while their peers taking health classes did not, Marquez and his colleagues reported in 2022 in Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience.

In particular, the dancers improved on tests of working memory. That’s the kind of memory you use to recall and use a phone number or address you just learned. They didn’t get any boost in executive functioning, the kind of thinking that helps you plan and solve problems, But some other dance research has shown broader brain benefits, including improvements in other kinds of memory and executive functioning, Marquez says.

Good for the heart...and social life

If dancing has cognitive benefits, it might be because it is good cardiovascular exercise. After all, what’s good for the heart is generally good for the brain. But dancing might do even more, Marquez says.

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“Dancing gets your heart rate up, just like walking,” he says. “But dancing also has a social component, and we know that can be important. Music might also enhance the effects. Another key may be that you are challenging your brain and having to remember all those dance steps. You also are dancing with a partner and having to be aware of what they are doing.”

There’s also the fact that dancing “is a fun way to get your exercise,” so you might be more likely to keep doing it, says Joe Verghese, M.D., chair of the Department of Neurology at the Renaissance School of Medicine at Stony Brook University, in New York. Any kind of social dancing that requires learning increasingly complex moves may have similar benefits, he says.

In his own preliminary research, Verghese has found that older adults at heightened risk for dementia saw improvements in executive functioning from both walking on a treadmill while listening to music and ballroom dancing (including salsa). The dancing offered a slight advantage in the six-month study, of 16 people, published in 2022 in the Journal of Aging and Physical Activity.

Brain scans done on 12 participants showed less shrinkage of the hippocampus, a key memory hub, in dancers than in treadmill walkers. But larger studies are needed, Verghese says.

Whether the benefits of dancing come from an increased heart rate, social contact, music, mental challenge, or all of the above, “it really doesn’t matter,” Marquez says. Dancing, he says, is “the total package.”

Still to come from Marquez: Results from a study comparing a modified version of the Latin dance program with a conventional fitness program in people with mild cognitive impairment.

Those eager to give Latin dancing a try can look for lessons offered by community centers, dance studios and dance clubs.