
Dance is superior to repetitive physical exercise for brain plasticity (2018) - prostoalex
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0196636
======
hannob
Looking at this:

"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. The latter
finding may indicate that cognitive benefits may develop later and after
structural brain changes have taken place."

May I translate: They saw improvements in things they could easily measure.
They hope this translate into improved cognitive ability. But it actually
didn't. But they still hope it'll do that later.

(FWIW: I'm an active Lindy Hop dancer - ok, I have been before covid... - I
love dancing and I am really looking forward to when I can visit dance
festivals again.)

~~~
nelaboras
Someone else already pointed out that this is actually quite significant, just
the time might have been too short but there is clear indication something is
there.

For me the key question is: what is the key ingredient (or the right mix of
ingredients)? E.g. is it having a programme to follow (having aims/duties is
known to increase longevity, see the famous 'plant study')? Or rhythmic fluid
movements (so like tai chi or qi gong or yoga)? Or the combination with music
(multimodal stimulation)? Or the social component of dancing (so e.g.
encouraging proximity like mutual hair brushing, engagement that encourages
touch, etc)?

Fascinating and raises many new questions. But it's clear the most deadly
thing is probably inactivity.

~~~
goldfeld
I would guess the main driver for brain stimulation is the coordinative aspect
of dealing with many motor skills over different body parts doing different
things, while also coordinating the rhythms and cadence of music in your mind.
So the more coordinated the movement (ballet, flamenco), the more stimulated.
There's also the component of memorizing sequences. In this respect, yoga is
also very fruitful. Many traditional yoga teachers say that yoga makes you
more intelligent.

As a personal experience with ballet for over 5 years (starting in mid-
twenties with no prior dance experience, and taking up other modalities
later), it has completely reorganized my mind; now I have a strong and
reliable memory for body movement, now I have a durable sense of sequentiality
that I apply to everything I do (the gains are most apparent when doing many
chores, cooking, getting ready for an overseas trip, etc), so that my
consciousness is well ordered and doesn't get confused with simultaneity of
inputs, but knows how to prioritize easily and without my ostensive effort.
It's a bit like having trained a highly capable assistant that now takes over
for many tasks that would previously leave my head dizzy with an influx of
urgent demands.

Some of this applies to music and learning an instrument, especially not a
woodwind, melody-only on, but a coordinating instrument like piano or other
strings, especially if you are singing on top of the harmonny. Both dance and
music are fundamentally about harmony, in dance you harmonize your body parts
relative to each other and to the dance, and in choreographies like ballet,
even more so to the other dancers, requiring exacting precision and balance.

Yoga and the classic dances are hard stuff, taxing the mental faculties. It
may only not seems so outwardly because so many natural dancers start from
early ages, and like learning a language, any mildly talented person starting
so early will achieve ease eventually. But building that ease for late
starters is much tougher than, say, programming a single page app, if I may be
so bold.

~~~
stevesimmons
> "I would guess the main driver for brain stimulation is the coordinative
> aspect of dealing with many motor skills over different body parts doing
> different things, while also coordinating the rhythms and cadence of music
> in your mind. So the more coordinated the movement (ballet, flamenco), the
> more stimulated."

Interesting that you mention flamenco [1]. I started dancing flamenco 8 years
ago, at age 42. I am a late starter to dance, which is a polite way of saying
I actively avoided it for most of my life.

When I started, I could barely put together a half-dozen steps. And if I tried
to add arm, hand or head movements, my feet went out of time. My brain just
didn't feel big enough There was no way I could remember even a tiny section
of a choreography like this one I link to from Marco Flores.

Yet as I got more experienced, my brain gradually adjusted to think of body
movements as integrated flows, not individual motions. It learnt how to
"chunk" them together into logical sequences, and how they align to a piece of
music. Much to my surprise, I can now remember complex choreographies several
minutes long.

My next challenge is to internalize all of this, so I can relax and dance more
comfortably. Maybe I'll never get good enough to improvise dancing with a
guitarist and singer. But looking back, I am thrilled how far I've come.

[1] Since few people here will be familiar with flamenco, here is a clip of
Spanish dancer Marco Flores performing a Seguiriya:
[https://youtu.be/ajVmaj6Z93o?t=397](https://youtu.be/ajVmaj6Z93o?t=397).

Notice how Marco beats out what appears a chaotic rhythm with his feet, yet it
keeps coming back to the strict beat clapped out by the singer. If you try to
follow along, note the rhythm here has a 5-beat bar: 1-and, 2-and, 3-and-a,
4-and-a, 5-and. So the 1, 2 and 5 are short, and 3 and 4 are long.

~~~
goldfeld
Hey! Yes, flamenco is well considered a complex musical instrument of
percussion, much like a Jazz drummer could make complex patterns and
improvise. Hope we get to dance together someday on some improvised street
somewhere in the world! The great thing about flamenco is that, even though
it's almost or quite involved like ballet (the national ballet in spain trains
top ballet dancers to combine flamenco dance in choreographies), it's
something you can start much later and also have a longer career into your
seniority (keeping your wits about and Alzheimer's well away).

Also, some versions of the opera Carmen has almost an hour-long flamenco part,
it's worth watching, a good french opera.

------
networkimprov
I've been a dancer for 30 years, of many forms.

The best way I can describe dancing to non-practitioners is that it's like
playing a silent, wearable musical instrument that demands attention from your
entire body.

It is not like playing a sport, except perhaps if you do it competitively :-)

~~~
ninjaturtlez
Do you seriously not think that playing a sport requires control of your
entire body? Have you ever tried to actively improve at a sport? Everything
from basketball to golf is fine muscle control from the lowest to highest
levels.

Some people cant see their own bias I guess. :)

~~~
networkimprov

        it == dancing && it != sport
        dancing.entails(entire_body)
        sport.entails(entire_body)
    

Clearer now?

~~~
rdp3453
PR comments: \- is this some kind of Shrodinger's "it", the second check is
irrelevant \- Needs indentation

------
skookum
If the postulated basis is correct and acts on a continuum, it wouldn't be a
huge leap to think that doing physically challenging outdoor sports that
require a high degree of reaction to constantly-changing surroundings would be
even better than dancing. Sounds like a case for skiing, mountain biking,
climbing, surfing, whitewater kayaking, etc.

~~~
idclip
I would disagree, dance requires an intimate letting go, while sports is a
more mechanical shutting down. Dance is a sort of trance, and requires alot of
letting go. Sports has a goal, has focus, its very “in the head” (exceptions
do exist ala japanese arts, martial arts comes close but not as it is largely
implemented in the west.)

Not saying no brain plasticity work takes place, but dance has an active
emotional element, a tenderness, which i dont see sports really fulfilling.

~~~
stinos
_Dance is a sort of trance, and requires alot of letting go_

I know what you mean, also when you talk about that certain tenderness, I have
experienced that, and I can get that same thing out of sports like
climbing/bmx/snowboarding. Take climbing: slowly reaching for a difficult hold
you've never touched before, where you carefully lay your fingers on it, just
touching it at first to make sure it'll actually hold you - and if not a fall
an injury is certainly in there - while the rest of your body is at one wth
the rock. That's basically the same for me. Or take snowboarding, just surfing
a gentle slope, all alone while a snow shower slowly becomes heavier. There's
no real goal there, focus fades, it's just you going with the flow. And
getting that trance-like feeling really only works if you let go of certain
natural fears.

~~~
screye
A well executed boulder can often seem indistinguishable from dance. So many
sports have a natural flow and tempo (the zone), that once you tap into, you
really do feel one with the sport.

Sadly, the feeling can be fickle mistress and hard to tap into.

------
aeturnum
This feels like common sense to me.

The dance they describe isn't just physical movement, it's also staying within
a group movement which requires both reading where "the group" is and giving
space to individual differences.

Obviously the focus here is on exercise but I would be curious if a less
physically demanding but similarly grouped activity would have similar effects
on brain function. I suspect that linking physicality and social coordination
is key. We are both brains and bodies and neglecting either is unhealthy in
the long term.

~~~
wutbrodo
I wonder if the same effect is even stronger for many competitive sports,
where the brain-muscle loop includes a more complex modeling of competing
agents vs cooperative ones as in dance. Something like basketball is anti-
inductive; falling into an easy pattern will be immediately exploited by the
other team in a way that isn't prevented in dance.

------
scarface74
I can definitely see this. I have very mild Cerebral Palsy. I can run and end
up in the middle of the pack in most races and sometimes in the top 3 or four
for my age group (pre-Covid). I even taught fitness classes about a decade
ago.

But trying to learn a dance move or take someone else’s choreography heavy
exercise class was like trying to understand a second language when you are
first learning it. I had to translate it to my “native language” and it took
much longer for it to click even when I could physically do it.

It was more mentally taxing than studying for any test or anything I had to do
as a developer.

~~~
marzell
This is interesting. Once you had a set of moves 'down', could you execute
them accurately on a pretty consistent basis? At that point... I know dancing
requires focus, but once learned was it still more mentally taxing/draining
than other well-rehearsed activities?

~~~
scarface74
I taught a lot of different formats but the two that required any level of
choreography even though I was more drill and athletic focused were step and
cardio kickboxing (this was a decade ago).

I had a “bank” of 32 and 64 count combinations that I could just throw
together on the fly and teaching a class became like driving. Once I memorized
them and trained my body how to do them (my cp affects my left foot slightly
and my left hand a lot) it was easy.

The other part is that I naturally have _no_ rhythm. I could only teach to
songs with heavy, consistent beats. You can buy premixed 32 count music but I
ended up mixing my own using a program called Audacity that Adobe bought and
turned into Audition.

Even _then_ the only way I could mix music is by turning off the sound once I
got near the mix point and mixing based on the waveforms.

------
didibus
Hum... Now this makes me wonder if VR games could achieve a similar effect,
such as Beat Saber. Since VR games could combine physical and mental activity
into one.

~~~
Johnjonjoan
I'd be inclined to think beatsabre is repetitive. Dance often involves moving
your body in ways you haven't before or rarely do whilst beatsabre is pretty
much different variations of the same move.

I believe activating a relatively new pathways is vastly different to
activating a relatively old one in terms of brain plasticity; which is why I
don't think there is much promise with this particular game.

Edit: when I say new and old pathway I really mean one that has been activated
relatively little versus one that has been activated considerably more.

~~~
bradlys
Well, to be fair, I’ve danced quite a bit. Unless you’re actively trying, it’s
quite easy to fall into a groove where you’re just doing the same things over
and over again to every song.

There’s probably more variation with dancing (in general) than some dance
games but I do want to say, it’s possible to fall into a rut within dancing.

~~~
Johnjonjoan
I can totally see your point. Which makes me wonder... Is dance superior to
repetitive exercise for seasoned dancers, or are they actually the same thing?

~~~
gnramires
There are many kinds of dance and styles. I guess the main ways to divide
could be a) Partner dance b) Group dance, and a') Choreography b')
Improvisation.

Even for seasoned dancers there is a lot to offer in all of those. In partner
dance you have to watch and adapt to your partner all the time (no matter the
skill level). In choreography you of course have to learn new programs and
execute them well (displaying the desired artistic expression), in
improvisation you have to come up with things on the fly.

Unless you get stuck in an old routine (same old choreography, not doing
anything new, etc.), there is almost endless variation and learning of new
tricks and nuances.

~~~
Johnjonjoan
Thanks for the info. In that case I guess we can only infer that dance is
better than repetitive exercise providing you are not banging out the same
routines over and over. (In which case it is arguably repetitive exercise
itself)

This aligns much better with my view that creating and accessing relatively
new/rarely used pathways is the mechanism that keeps our brains agile.

------
belorn
Did both group contain similar amount of people who genuinely enjoyed the
activity? An pretty old finding with physical exercise is that health benefits
primarily only comes into effect in people who actually enjoy the activity.
Two people doing the same mechanical physical motion get different health
benefit if one enjoy it and the other disliked it (can't cite the exact study
but remember findings in both human as well as animal studies, and the implied
cause is that one trigger stress hormones while the other trigger growth).

It would not surprise me if the dance group did better than the fitness
training simply because the dance members enjoyed dancing more than the
fitness members enjoyed fitness training, through I might be biased as I am
not one who enjoy fitness training at all.

~~~
marzell
I mean, even if the effect is significant, it might just come down to the fact
that for one person the activity alleviates stress and for the other it does
the opposite. Sure, the physical activity is good for circulation and
cardio/strength will vary a lot, but I imagine most of the mood-altering
aspects and impact on things like GABA/cortisol/glutamate are largely
dependent on whether someone is genuinely enjoying themselves, just ok with
it, or find it to be a chore.

------
netcan
There is parsimony between recent interest in fasting for health and the fact
that so many cultures & religions prescribe ritual fasts. Christianity, Islam,
Hinduism, Judaism...

That doesn't mean traditions and beliefs are necessarily true, but they didn't
evolve randomly either. Successful memes serve a purpose, and that _can_ be
rational outside of cultural rationality.

Dance seems similar. It's something most cultures do... especially when
they're being especially cultural. It may even go deeper. Dancing and music
are kind of wired into us, possibly adjacent to speech. Babies will dance to
music.

I wouldn't be surprised if science confirms that dance is good.

~~~
wutbrodo
TL;DR: it seems trivially true that non-scientific, traditional knowledge can
be a powerful source of understanding, especially when combined judiciously
with science.

> That doesn't mean traditions and beliefs are necessarily true, but they
> didn't evolve randomly either. Successful memes serve a purpose, and that
> can be rational outside of cultural rationality.

The belief that no knowledge exists outside of the scientific establishment is
one of the biggest weaknesses of the center-left technocratic memeplex (of
which I'm proudly a part). It leads not only to the myopia of believing that
your opponents don't deserve a hearing because they're "anti-science" (for
ever more creative interpretations of science..), but also to unforced errors
from the ability to reason about uncertainty, like <everything our public
health authorities have done during the pandemic>.

I believe that the scientific method is the greatest engine for rapid, high-
quality knowledge generation in human history, and consider its manifestation
in the scientific establishment to be one of the crowning achievements of
humanity. But this doesn't make its manifestation perfect: as with all human
systems, it's composed of people who are not immune to pettiness, narrow-
minded, selfishness, and even occasionally stupidity. And as with all
institutions, the human flaws of its constituents are magnified 1000-fold due
to the challenges of incentive design and modeling large systems. Please note,
this is decidedly _not_ a criticism of scientists beyond "they're human"; I
wouldn't be surprised if the average scientist was well below the median for
all of the negative qualities I described. It's just an acknowledgement that
they're human, they have flaws, and those flaws affect how science is
produced.

Proper science is vastly superior in efficiency and confidence to many other
forms of epistemology, but the imperfection of the scientific establishment
means that it occasionally mishandles or abdicates responsibility for certain
whole sections of knowledge-space. In these situations, reasoning under
uncertainty requires cautiously looking at other sources of knowledge; they
may be "lower-quality" in many ways than the scientific method, but they're
better than simply assuming that absence of evidence = evidence of absence.

When I was younger, I had this insight in the context of ayahuasca rituals
while in Peru (I had the insight _before_ the ritual, to be clear haha). The
scientific community had abdicated its responsibility to study the potential
of psychedelics for improving mental health; how else to interpret shaman
guiding an ayahuasca ritual than as an analogue of a therapist[1] trained in
psychedelic therapy, whose expertise is shaped not through RCTs but centuries
of trial and error? The fact that the West is taking slow, halting steps
towards studying psychedelic therapy 70 years after its popularization here is
pretty damning, IMO: as somebody who treated science as a valuable but flawed
source of knowledge, I've been a happy user of LSD for years, and consider it
an immensely helpful tool for mental health.

There are a million examples of this if you stop and think about it. Fifty
years ago, yoga and meditation made you a kook; the scientific establishment
started studying it and now, it's weird among some circles not to regularly do
yoga and meditate. This is again something you can learn easily through
examining "unscientific" tradition + self-experimentation, with an appropriate
model of the downside risks.

[1] I'm using intentionally clinical language here to make the comparison
clear, though I'm aware that it's a little reductive to ignore the spiritual
dimension most shamans would describe their work as having.

~~~
wittyreference
Samzdat has an absolutely excellent article on the distinctions between state-
level (often technocratic) knowledge and on-the-ground knowledge, and the
difficulties of communicating between the two and acting on them. It's part of
a discussion of the book Seeing Like A State. I think you'd find it
stimulating.

[https://samzdat.com/2017/05/22/man-as-a-rationalist-
animal/](https://samzdat.com/2017/05/22/man-as-a-rationalist-animal/)

~~~
wutbrodo
I've read this post, and Seeing Like a State after SSC's review of it (thank
you for the reference though!). Both of these came after my Peruvian epiphany,
but they really helped sharpen my understanding of epistemology. Though my
focus here is a little different: instead of focusing on how top-down policy
privileges techne over metis due to its legibility[1], I'm primarily
interested in how the individual can make better use of metis from outside his
bubble. This is the main thing I look for when I travel, and a nine-month, and
a 6-continent backpacking trip I took in my early 20s was a really
transformative experience for exactly that reason.

[1] The reason I don't focus too much on this aspect is because I've already
found it productive to model politics and policy as a natural disasters, or
millions of monkeys banging on typewriters: I don't think most humans are
capable of what I'd consider critical thinking, and they're certainly not
capable of exercising it in large, complex systems. I get that this is a
little nihilistic, but in practice it just means being selective about how you
choose to spend your time with and not getting too drawn into cases where you
can't control it, like politics.

------
ByThyGrace
> An extensive pre/post-assessment was performed on the 38 participants (63–80
> y)

Mind the n = 38. People already taking the title at face value in this thread.

~~~
hombre_fatal
I thought the "low sample size, checkmate!" without any other analysis was
limited to Reddit dilettantes.

~~~
paulcole
Canceled out by the blind acceptance of the headline without reading the
article here on HN.

------
anonu
The HN headline should match the article's. It's missing "in the elderly"

------
mlthoughts2018
Dancing is one activity I’ve always struggled with. I did musical theater all
through school, have gone to dance parties, different music clubs all my life,
and I have just always disliked dancing and found it to be tiresome and
boring.

I even figured in my early 20s it was one of those things where I had to just
keep trying more until I found the right style, but I took adult classes in
swing, ballroom, disco, various fitness dance and modern dance and just
universally hated it all. I am amazed and wowed by watching professional
dancers, but I find the act of doing any kind of dancing for myself is just a
deeply mentally disinteresting, grating, boring slog that I can’t get into.

------
com2kid
I wonder how kickboxing fairs, done properly it is mentally taxing and one of
the highest calorie burning exercises out there (up to 500 calories/30 minutes
as measured by HR strap).

The mentally taxing part comes from the complex weight shifting and footwork
that is constantly needed, complex combos require sophisticated manipulations
of body weight positioning and constant shifting of stances and physical
location around the bag.

It is the only cardio-like activity I can stand, except it is way above the
cardio zone, HR when active is above 150 (or even 160) and stays there for an
entire 3 minute round.

~~~
Klinky
So long as you're not knocking your noggin around. Any contact sport involving
blows to the head (even padded blows) is probably more detrimental than any
benefit gained.

------
mancerayder
Is a complex, full-body coordinated accelerated movement like an olympic clean
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_and_jerk](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_and_jerk))
considered 'repetitive physical exercise'?

People see a barbell and they think bodybuilding, but there's a minority of
weightlifting that involves a degree of complexity that's qualitatively in a
different league than, say, bicep curls. I'm curious how it pans out.

~~~
analbumcover
Snatches and clean and jerks are certainly more technically involved than any
movement you'd see in bodybuilding or powerlifting. You train fewer motor
patterns with much higher frequency than other strength sports. It lacks the
variation in movement that you'd see in bodybuilding, let alone dance. It's
also very rigid, there's no creative element to it. I'd hazard a guess that
it's more similar, in terms of brain plasticity, to strength sports than
dance.

------
evo_9
This is interesting; for the past 4 years as part of my workout I hop in VR
for around 60 minutes. I typically play a mix of music while I play games like
Space Pirate Trainer (highly movement oriented, my heat-rate stays at workout
levels while playing). So I'm basically dancing around to music, dodging
incoming fire, returning fire, etc... quite stimulating + athletic with
eye/hand tracking etc. Perhaps this is doing more than a fun extra bit that's
essentially my cool-down.

------
topkai22
The key here is "repetitive". It sounds like the repetitive exercise was the
exact same cardio + weights routine every day, excluding any coordinative
active, while the dance routines were explicitly varied and sound far more
interactive.

I don't know enough about the underlying science to really understand the
paper at a glance, but it's not surprising that learning a new skill provides
beneficial effects. A neat follow up would be to look at what learning a
musical instrument with a lower physical fitness requirement than dance does
is relationship to a dance routine. Or even something like birding, that
requires a moderate amount of walking with increased skills observing the
physical environment.

I think this probably (with low confidence, because of the low N and a high
dropout rate) answers the question "is dance better for neuroplasticity than
walking on a treadmill and stationary bike + repetitive and uncoordinated
floor exercises" with a yes, but I'll bet plenty of other activities surpass
the repetitive control group as well.

------
ivanhoe
Isn't this perfectly logical, as dance has more complicated pattern of highly
coordinated moves and in addition requires synchronization with the rhythm.
I'd be much more interested in comparison of dance and some more complex
fitness activity that requires high focus, say juggling the soccer ball or
playing the table tennis or even jumping the rope.

------
jasonwatkinspdx
Just an anecdote, but I was at a wedding where I talked with a retirement age
neurologist. He basically said the same thing. It didn't surprise me that
later he and his wife were out on the dance floor start to finish, outlasting
most of the 20 year olds, and dancing everything from tango to hip hop. Put a
real smile on a lot of people's faces.

------
noisy_boy
As a person who loves to dance, I think there is also a distinction to be made
between freestyle and structured dance. I used to make up moves on the spot
depending on the music/beats etc and that requires being completely lost into
the music and tapping into your instinct - my brain was practically doing
nothing else but imagining the moves that would be fun to match the music.
Considering the feeling of euphoria when a move turned out well and/or when my
partner mimicked or matched then with their own, it had to have significant
impact on the brain activity. The highs were truly high without having to
involve any drugs.

I'm sure specific-style of dancing also produces plenty of such feelings but
the structure/grammer must impose some additional restrictions too. Though it
might be a different sort of pleasure to invent something new and see that
work well within that framework.

------
twoleftfeets
I know this is a stupid question but I'm going to ask it anyway. How do you
learn to dance?

Maybe I just have zero natural dance aptitude but ...

I've taken maybe 8 swing dance lessons and 12 salsa lessons and I found them
extremely hard and worst part is I felt horrible being so bad at it because
it's not fun for the other more skilled students to dance with an unskilled
noob. It's that last part that's the most frustrating. One salsa instructor
said to expect at least 18 months of lessons before being able to lead. That
was before seeing how bad I was at it. Another salsa instructor pretty much
just gave up. She didn't want to deal with noobs.

I can jump around to the music at a rave all night. I'm sure I could learn
video game dance (DDR or Just Dance) but getting past the point of being a
disappointment in two person dance seems really difficult for some reason.

------
User23
Improving the capability of your brain is a matter of stressing it in the
hormetic zone, just like improving the capability of every other organ in your
body. Since the brain is the control organ of the nervous system, including
motor neurons, it's expected that physical stimulus would produce neural
stimulus.

I expect that advanced gymnastics is superior to dance with respect to brain
plasticity, but only if the practitioner has already reached a level of
adaption sufficient for the training stimulus to be in the hormetic zone. This
hypothesis may or may not be correct, but it's certainly testable. If true,
one would expect that a competent gymnast would be able to perform as a
slightly less competent dancer whereas a competent dancer would have
difficulty holding a planche or working a pommel horse.

------
SergeAx
Two anecdotes from 10+ years argentinian tango dancer.

1\. I dance leading part, and I found myself more self-confident in my
engineering leader and manager work. Giving team a direction became more
organic and easy. I actually had to start restraining myself to motivate
people's creativity. It is actually kind of dance move too: stand still and
give my follower firm support to decorate her part with small movements with
music.

2\. One of my fellow partners is playing intellectual games (local franchise
of "Jeopardy!" and several others). She says her performance degrades with her
progress in tango, because the follower's part in tango is to listen and not
to step by her own, but only when and where the leader leads.

I also believe in neuroplasticity and overall positive impact of creating and
cohesion of neural links.

------
thesz
It's interesting how they matched the intensity.

Because, in my opinion, dance is a sorta-kinda-like strength endurance
training when you exert a modest loaded movement (say, 40%-50% of your bench
press' 1RM) for 2-4 repetition and there are tens of these bouts.

In calories spent such resistance exercise may match some endurance exercise
but other effects can be dramatically different.

Including, but not limited to, levels and utilization of brain-derived
neurotophic factor. While endurance training increase BDNF level long term and
modestly, the resistance exercise can effect a sharp 60%-90% increase at the
end of training session, then drop to 40% of normal (to the person) level and
slow recovery. This indicates overproduction of BDNF and its complete
utilization of the body to build neurons everywhere.

------
agumonkey
I consider dance the intersection of balance, efficiency / energy conservation
and probably the abstract root of a lot of activities in life. Anything can be
a chore, or an effort, but if you make it into a dance like action.. it
becomes both easy and joyful. And it's also reaching social boundaries.. if
you think work as a set of concurrent changes driven by agents.. dancing is
basically the lowest energy level for that. Everything flows, momentum
conserved, impedance free.. and surprisingly people are very happy seeing and
living that way.

All that said... i'm not surprised it has a lot of leverage in our brain.

------
WmyEE0UsWAwC2i
As a data analyst, I once took an introductory class to modern dance. 5
sessions during one week. I though I was trained, I did calystecnics and yoga.

The class included "floor work" similar but no limited to [1].

It was hard. I received a lot of feed back from the instructor, but of course
I didn't achieve that amount of grace.

Very worth trying if you want to experience learning something new and
challenging.

Incidentally, this is one area where there are many more females than males.
2¢.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-jHrR8vy3OM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-jHrR8vy3OM)

------
war1025
My grandma used to go dancing at the VFW every weekend up until I think
shortly after her 95th birthday. She fell at a dance and broke her arm. She
had lived on her own until then, but moved to a nursing home while her arm
healed and then decided to just stay after she got better.

Her memory has definitely gone downhill since she moved there, which could
just be age. But I also feel like the physical activity and social aspect of
always going out to dance helped keep her going longer than she otherwise
would have.

Hard to say I guess.

------
ak39
Dancing isn't easy for folks who are rhythm-challenged like me.

Try the Jerusamela on for size. Warning: make sure the vase, and precious
items in the living room are packed away before you practise.

Some attempts:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePuGjRRin3c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePuGjRRin3c)

Official video:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCZVL_8D048](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCZVL_8D048)

~~~
johnchristopher
I know it's off-topic but Tik-tok is really refreshing as a social
network/entertainment thing to me. Lots of honest (even though the app
encourages use of video effects) stuff on it, especially if you upvote things
from time to time. User-generated content but haven't yet seen facebook
outrage porn or twitter feud war ; lots of good vibe.

edit: my feed is filled with people with goth make up mimicking lyrics or
movie dialogues, skate boarding tricks, contemporary dancers and weird jokers.

~~~
haram_masala
And all data funneled to the CCP.

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sova
There was a strong article in an Australian magazine claiming that ballet was
one of the strongest preventative measures against dementia, and this lines up
with that.

------
rondennis
I agree. In case of physical exercise, the mind does not need to apply itself.
But in case of dance, you have to think about your next move. But sports can
surely be a money earner for many. source: [https://wpbizblog.com/how-to-
start-a-sports-blog/](https://wpbizblog.com/how-to-start-a-sports-blog/)

------
nine_k
Certain folk dances are quite a lot of exercise. Some likely descend from a
ritualized exercise / demonstration, like the Ukrainian "gopak". Just estimate
the level of physical fitness which allows to dance like this:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvD21OntHgI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvD21OntHgI)

------
WMCRUN
Novel behavior could increase plasticity. Whether that’s novel exercise, new
dances, or brushing your teeth with the opposite hand.

~~~
WMCRUN
The novelty is the important part IMHO

------
WalterBright
Dance (at least dancing with a partner) is also very much a social activity,
and social activity has very good effects on cognition.

------
scollet
I am rhythm challenged, so for me martial arts have been mentally stimulating
like improv jazz on a Go board. In sparring you can follow muscle memory to
build a dynamic procedure based on your opponents' actions or reactions. You
quickly learn the "dance" and when to change tempo because the alternative is
pain or discomfort.

------
werber
This makes me wonder about getting “lost in the music” type dancing on your
own where you connect your physical movement and it becomes intuitive. I’ve
done lots of club kid to slam dancing on my own and formal dancing and the
headspace is so different but the former was always more intellectually
satisfying and aerobic for me

------
stevehiehn
Nice, been 'raving' for years ;)

~~~
louwrentius
Offsets the damage of XTC usage a bit ;-)

------
acd
This probably also translates to martial arts as that is also moving in
complex patterns.

------
hi41
I am extraordinarily bad at dancing. You can get traumatized for life watching
me dance. Can someone please suggest online videos you have found useful.

------
deltron3030
Dancing is a sport. I bet that it's the same with other sports that require a
lot of body control and coordination (being your own puppet master).

------
kraig911
I wonder how Beat Saber fairs... I'm being dead serious. Since the gyms have
closed it's become my new passion and i love it.

------
dokem
Weight lifting is better for making you more attractive and confident. If you
are in good shape men and women will both take notice. Not everything's about
squeezing out that last IQ point. I enjoy dancing, don't get me wrong, but
weightlifting is the obvious choose when it comes to quality of life
improvement. I used to run a lot too, no one gives a shit about your 5 minute
mile and no one is impressed by your skinny body. Weightlifting; dudes figured
it out 80 years ago.

------
afterwalk
Does anyone have suggestions on how to learn dancing during a time of social
distancing? (i.e any good mooc or video courses?)

~~~
jbroman
Kinda specific, but breakdancing:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIDaadRNPpg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIDaadRNPpg)

------
Pamar
I wonder if this would work for Martial Arts too (apologies if someone asked
this already).

------
TulliusCicero
Really cool. Would love to see this done with Beat Saber or some similar game
(e.g. DDR).

------
PaulDavisThe1st
Obligatory favorite obscure book that everyone should at least have read a
Medium summary of citation:

[https://www.amazon.com/Keeping-Together-Time-Dance-
History/d...](https://www.amazon.com/Keeping-Together-Time-Dance-
History/dp/1597406740)

Super-tiny summary: humans have used coordinated rhythmic movement and the
feelings it evokes as an aid to build communities and create efficient
synchronized behavior. This behavior may even predated the human separation
from other apes, and there is some evidence that certain other modern apes may
use this too, though to a more limited degree.

If this is truly such an ancient mechanism (the author's case is not ironclad,
but good), it wouldn't be surprising to find connections between "coordinated
rhythmic movement" and brain function.

------
InquilineKea
Is yoga approximately the same? What of physical therapy?

------
nhlx2
What about juggling a soccer ball?

------
whatnidnogg
hell yeah! dancing is kick ass.

------
mrfusion
How about tennis or Pickleball?

~~~
willdearden
Do you have people saved in your phone with the last name “Pickleball” so your
phone capitalizes pickleball?

~~~
mrfusion
Now that you mention it, yes I do. That explains it.

------
InquilineKea
How about yoga?

------
wittyreference
Sorry to be a wet blanket, but:

When looking at studies, there are two types of validity to pay attention to,
"external" and "internal." Internal is the sort that says: does this study
actually test what it claims to? If a study looks in a black box, sees there's
no elephant inside, and says "there's no elephant in there! Huzzah, we've
proven it's a tiger!", that's an internally invalid study. External validity
is about applicability: if I give a dose of abx to a bunch of people with
advanced AIDS to treat an infection, and find it doesn't work, it doesn't mean
"this abx doesn't work." It means "this abx doesn't work /in this population/.
Don't extrapolate it to an immune-competent population."

1\. The study begins with what they describe in their registration documents
as "healthy elderly." That's a bit kind: "Sixty-two normal volunteers, who
responded to a local advertisement, were screened. Subjects with any
neurological condition, metallic implants, claustrophobia, tinnitus, BMI ≤30,
high blood pressure (systolic≤140 mmHg), diabetes mellitus, intensive physical
engagement (more than 1 hour/week) and abnormal performance in a cognitive
screening test (MMSE < 27)[32] and a test devoted to depressive symptoms (BDI-
II > 13) [33] were excluded." In short, they started with an _anomalously_
healthy population, who likely have a lifetime of exposure to exercise and
physical activity. Do the results here extrapolate to the general population?
Do they extrapolate to the same degree? It's a decent question mark,
considering their results are non-significant in everything except their
"looks like false positives" brain volume measures to begin with - even a
little bit of "ehh... maybe not so much" takes them into the realm of "no
effects", alongside every other measure in the paper. External validity is
doubtful here.

2\. Internal validity is a bit doubtful too, first for reasons of selection
bias. They recruited 62 healthy volunteers; they had 14 dropouts. A 22%
dropout rate isn't atrocious, but it's more than enough - if it's not random -
to skew a study. Their enrollment figure describes the dropouts as almost
entirely pre-randomisation (10/14), but the study description notes that 6
drop-outs were due to failure to achieve frequency of adherence, which clearly
had to occur post-randomization, and 2 due to dissatisfaction with group
assignment (obviously post-randomization). 6 got seriously ill - I'd love to
know _in which group_ , and with what.

3\. Their way of controlling for equivalent physical load was to measure heart
rate twice. On the one hand, not crazy. On the other hand, if you've ever seen
your HR during a workout session, you'll see how noisy that is - and with a
sample of a whole 38 pairs, that's a relatively huge amount of noise.
Moreover, it doesn't appear that they used that to guide intensity of
intervention, just "to control" (which I take to mean, to plug into a
multivariate model at some point - except they don't, as they describe the
covariates they plug into their model to be age, sex, and intracranial volume
for brain volume t-tests) I'm skeptical this is an adequate control - I'd at
least have wanted a time-weighted average HR.

3.b. The sports intervention had one effort-controllable component (sport
bike), but had 3 different components. It's not at all clear they could
capture the effort under the regimen above, especially as the relatively light
strength exercise that the elderly tend to tolerate is the place where I'm
most suspicious of them failing to capture an effort delta.

4\. The differences in brain volume swung in different directions in each
group, without making an awful lot of sense (more right cerebellar development
in standard exercise group?? So, asymmetrically, the less-coordination-
demanding intervention showed more development of the primary coordination
center of the brain?). But more generally, looking at supplementary table S3,
note that dancing showed improvements in anterior and posterior white matter,
and standard exercise in temporal and occipital. The brain isn't that cleanly
delineated - to find such statistically strong effects in such broad
brushstrokes sets off a red flag for me.

The fact that there was scattered growth *in both groups suggests we're
looking at false positives. Not precisely a new problem for this study
methodology. Their p-threshold of .001 is considered best-practices (aka, the
bare minimum) for cluster-based adjustment of multiple testing in
neuroimaging: so that's good. They don't report the p-values on their brain
volume testing; table S3 simply notes "p<.001". An actual effect size would be
better, but hard to get with cluster-based thresholds - they're sensitive to
"any signal, at all, is it there?" but they're shitty at locking down precise
volumes.

5\. Dance group had lower BDNF plasma at baseline vs. standard exercise (1500
vs. 2100) (p .14), and equal at post (2200 to 2100, p .6). In short, they
showed regression to the mean in the dance group. They report this as "the
dance group had an increase in plasma BDNF from baseline." Serum levels
likewise were not significantly difference pre and post between the two groups
(dance went from 35K to 36K, sport went from 30K to 29K). In short, nothing
happened. But they hid the "fucking nothing happened" in supplementary table
4, and dressed it up real pretty in the included figure 4.

6\. Cognitive outcomes, the only thing that actually matters here: no
differences.

7\. At least some physical fitness differences? No, none there either.

TL;DR they found nothing, made some misleading figures out of it. There are no
perfect studies, but this one just boils down to "found nothing, needed
publication."

------
paulcole
Funny how HN eats up an n=38 study when it confirms their biases as opposed to
when it doesn’t.

~~~
secant
Ah yes, dance being the superior exercise, I have to admit my father engrained
it into me as a child.

~~~
paulcole
I meant HN’s irresistible catnip being anything that contradicts mainstream
conventional wisdom — not dance specifically.

~~~
veggieburglar
I think HN also has a very strong anti-sports leaning, especially for
“traditional” sports.

