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.
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.
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.
And for the exercise only group:
> We avoided combined arm and leg movements in order to keep coordinative demands low
I'm skeptical too. You have one group that is doing something that takes full body coordination, with lots of different inputs and improvisation, versus something they attempted to minimize those aspects of. Not to mention the social parts of dancing with others.
But also hey, social dancing bachata is fun! If you're ever in NYC a good friend of mine teaches it at Pearl dance studio.
You might be surprised at how many people enjoy the feeling of grinding out improvement in the gym. In my experience it can be a lot more fun than dancing for certain personality types (mine included)
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.
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).
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.
Yeah I believe that our brains are extremely sensitive to shared experience, work, art, movement or else (singing in harmony would work too). It might even tap in primitive toddler brain phases.
There's thousands of years of human societal development, and millions of years for mammals. Hard to believe we'd learned nothing about promoting social cohesion during that time.
Somehow I believe that the last decades (and post 2010s even worse) completely altered our notion of social-ness. We're running away from forming groups because it has some non trivial entry cost (you have to fit with different people) and instead enjoy remote interactions with people just like "you" want, when you want.
I believe at least some Amish sing at very low BPM.
Two possible interpretations: (a) they share the opinions of Baptists when it comes to dancing, so the BPM is deliberately so low as to be clearly undanceable, and (b) at normal BPM individual participants might just be staying in rhythm, low BPM requires close attentiveness to the whole to stay together.
From reading HN, it sounds as if many (at least among the terminally online?) in the Old Country could stand to verbesser their Vereinsleben*.
When speaking with colleagues and friends still in the Old Country, depending upon whether I wish to shock (or not), I decide between saying I live (in a Gemeinde) or in a commune.
* that said, tinder is still incredibly popular here; kids these days!
EDIT: one notes the legacy of the pike square in that one can still hear cries of "close ranks! close ranks!" in the village square — but these days it's used to mean "scoot over a little on the party benches so the late arrivals can fit in": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ls4eU3txvFI
[could a signifyin' fox pass for a lion? someday I need to track down RvRG, Ich, Claudius, Kaiser und Gott]
* but if you can control transients, mode switching is an excellent way to rummage around under the noise floorboards for signal. (somewhere there's an XKCD about limitations of earth observation that was way too optimistic, and already had been for however long we'd had structured shutters)
Below the waterline? (Waistline if less charitable)
Ah havent read this article yet but anticipating “insider” as a more distinguishing term than “experts” should cover their edge cases
(Which secrets are shameful to share vs merely uh inconvenient, e.g. for waistline, depends on how you draw the party lines, some do it at type ii “zahlungsfaehig” vs “proleten” as nsdap apparently another eg, for waterline)
[do you have a fictional character for each of sigfox & lion?]
(NdBdM apparently said the prince ought to be able to be both fox and lion; like HKH had both Knecht and Designori? What about Tito?
"The lion cannot protect himself from traps, and the fox cannot defend himself from wolves. One must therefore be a fox to recognize traps, and a lion to frighten wolves."
[not yet checked for context/translation])
Sorry, I'd been too quick to assume it fit nicely in with our early tripartitions, based on some blogiating that I'm not finding in my verlauf at the moment. So I'd been imagining TCCAG (in Graves' telling), d-d-disguising himself as one of the clueless, in order to survive the machinations of the psychopaths that had killed off every other male in his family: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julio-Claudian_family_tree#Sim...
EDIT: Pareto definitely thinks of foxes and lions as distinct, but he must've introduced them somewhat earlier than §2178 (The Mind and Society/The General Form of Society/Force and Class-circulation): https://archive.org/details/ParetoTheMindAndSocietyVol4TheGe...
As to Rao-fox-lion quadrantology.. how to classify pear AI problem? (We can say nang et al were barbarians promoted to founders but that is cheap*. Otoh 1 o the more interesting facts from that case is some partners attempting to empirically price their social media marketing thesis)
JPsmith on JCScott Against the Grain has another take on Rao, proweird being the barbarians trading with the State
Tfound the crucial clause on pants from the Psmith-on-Stripe-Clueless that you pointed at
*>derives much of [][] moral and affective sympathies from the claim that [][] is smarter and better and more efficient [s/_/effective] than anybody else
During the XIII, tournaments were open invite, and were pretty much war games held over the fields in between villages. Of course, it's very unlikely that anyone not already an aristo could show up with horses and panoply, let alone show up and prove de facto effective, but the few that did had a chance there to win even more horses and armour by ransoming off any captured actual aristos.
Well before the XVIII, tournaments switched to closed format, held in specially built arenas, and an official part of the tournament included going around the room and having everyone introduce themselves (or be introduced, to be even fancier) which de jure kept out any gatecrashed aspiring riffraff.
Might (for those that have central bank control, anyway) imposing an irregular tidal ebb be a useful variant of mode-switching, in order to effectively signal who's wearing (or not) their budgie smugglers?
Pear AI: according to NdBdM's original* scheme, Nang et al were foxes, who had schemed, yet could not defend themselves from the wolf (according to russians, wolves are the "paramedics of the forest", for despite not being doctors, they take care of the sick and elderly...). YC? I suppose they should, if it isn't already there, add some legalese to closing documents so founders bear full responsibility for bringing a clean venture to the table. (there could be a different split of responsibility, but since YC is running a retail operation I wouldn't expect one)
* Had Machiavelli, in writing (1532):
> You must know there are two ways of contesting, the one by the law, the other by force; the first method is proper to men, the second to beasts; but because the first is frequently not sufficient, it is necessary to have recourse to the second. Therefore it is necessary for a prince to understand how to avail himself of the beast and the man. This has been figuratively taught to princes by ancient writers, who describe how Achilles and many other princes of old were given to the Centaur Chiron to nurse, who brought them up in his discipline; which means solely that, as they had for a teacher one who was half beast and half man...
> ...there are two ways of settling a dispute: first, by discussion; second, by physical force; and since the former is characteristic of man, the latter of the brute, we must resort to force only in case we may not avail ourselves of discussion.
(I'm surprised I've not read this work until now. With a little skimming, it confirms my reverse-engineering of the cardinal virtues as arising as oppositions [albeit not strictly pairwise]:
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.
I'd put all our stories in the same bag as taxi drivers having brain areas very deeply developed.
I'm not surprised by your story. After health issues, my brain was clogged most of the time, and anything involving balance, rotation, rapidly moving surroundings. I tried a lot of stuff to feel my brain working again, one of the most impactful was balancing on a wood beam and trying to pivot (not far from roller skates moves).
Our brain respond very well to some primitive stimuli (visual, balance, geometry).
> 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.
Cardiovascular exercise correlates with subsequent synthesis of endocannabinoids, which affect hippocampal neurogeneration and probably thereby neuroplasticity.
> 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.
> 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.
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.
Agree that this is definitely an assumption one needs to make, could easily be that BDNF was one variable among many unreported ones, and this case would be consistent with the other outcome variables in the paper so seems plausible.
> this type of result implies that statistical power is tiny,
Yes, definitely, BUT the effect in question is an interaction effect so yeah, power's just going to be small from the nature of the design. I was definitely thinking that you'd be looking at a follow up study of the size of multiple hundreds to confirm something like this. I'm realizing that thinking this is a trivial follow-up is is the difference between someone actually might work on real experiments and someone who just works with the numbers.
Just want to re-emphasize though that the thing which makes me give this result (some) credence (assuming it's not a desk drawer p-hack) is just the distributions of the observation variable for the two treatment groups. Like even if the means of the BDNF increase are equal between the two arms of the trial, and this p-value is a false pos (which as you say, seems very possible), there's still clearly some other differences between the groups. I strongly suspect a quantile regression on the p50 or p75, rather than an ANOVA on the means, would show a 'more significant' effect; heck even just a log-linear model or something seems like it would be an improvement since there's clearly some skew in the 'Dance' population.
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?
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)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Tangentially related wittering (I have flu, I'm a bit illucid rn):
I do karate, I find sequenced moves to be a real mental struggle. But then I couldn't skip until I was a teenager. I blame/describe that as arrhythmia. I can't clap in time either.
> The book was written partly as a response to the misrepresented but increasingly commonplace idea of the "10,000-hour rule," popularized by Malcolm Gladwell in his 2008 book Outliers and which Gladwell had based on Ericsson's own research.
Thanks for that reference. Having read Outliers years ago, Peak sounds like a useful follow-on and the concept of “deliberate practice” makes sense to me.
I’ve been learning guitar over the past couple of years and I still struggle with many aspects (with good rhythm and timing being the most difficult). I’m mostly self-taught (justinguitar.com) but have recently started a music class to get feedback on my playing. My wife is also learning Mandarin and it sounds like the kind of book that she’d be interested in.
> I’ve been learning guitar over the past couple of years and I still struggle with many aspects (with good rhythm and timing being the most difficult).
Arrhythmia and trouble doing sequenced moves… that’s interesting. I can’t quite make the connection but wouldn’t be surprised if there is one. On the flip side, I’ve actually used rhythm to help me memorize things at times, e.g. saying multiplication tables like they’re a poem or a chant. My kid just picked this up from me and started doing it on her own and it seemed to accelerate her learning.
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.
I have 20 years experience in dancing couples dances, with lots of private classes on technique in some styles, as well three years in weight training with several times per week with a PT who specialized in and taught me weight training technique. (I am not very muscular, though, so I am not saying this to brag, just to give you some idea of my background).
I have had a really bad body coordination, so I have had to learn everything the hard way. So I know A LOT of theory -- and over time, I have learned to coordinate my body much better. But some kinesthetic people are still naturals and move better than I do.
I agree with you that the major difference between dancing and other sports is probably not in the complexity of the movement. I think that the biggest difference is in improvisation and need to harmonize movement with your partner and music.
I also agree with you that there is almost no limit in either field on how detailed you can be in your body movements.
But even within weight training there appear to be various approaches, based on different goals. In my training, I almost never used 100 percent effort. Rather, the muscles were constantly stimulated with similar but different movements, all the time varying the stimulus. The muscles grow in rest.
It is very similar to how I have learned to dance. On the social dance floor, there are always limitations (such as other couples, tables, walls, music etc.) that come up. When you are improvising, you need to adjust your movements constantly (varying step length, direction, the movement you are doing etc.). And over time, you have experienced everything that can happen, and your body has learned to react to it, so "you" (i.e. your analytical mind) can relax and let the body move.
I don’t use 100 percent effort when actually training- only during competition. Mostly because the risk of injury, equipment required, and safety preparations for 100 percent effort are substantial- and the recovery time afterwards takes a week or more.
That said, when I was a beginner I used ”100 percent effort” a lot- because as a beginner my 100 percent effort was probably only really about 70 percent, I lacked the mental ability and pain tolerance for true 100 percent effort.
I think that's the exception that proves the rule, though, no?
The majority of strength and cardio exercises are fairly simple to learn. Getting your form 100% correct is certainly more work, but generally not much.
Basic partner dancing can certainly seem fairly simple, but you very quickly move out of that and into the realm of most things being complicated. And even with the basics, if you actually focus on the technique, it's already a lot more complicated than most workout exercises.
I do expect that some forms of martial arts could be comparable (or perhaps even higher) in complexity to partner dance, though. But I'm not sure if I'd consider martial arts to be exercise as much as it's a sport or hobby.
(Source: former competitive ballroom and latin dancer.)
At lower weights, it's easy to 'have good form'. The muscles can easily compensate for each other and one doesn't have to think too much about which muscles to contract/focus on.
As the weight increases, it requires more focus to ensure that you are keeping your form and positioning and even just to engage your muscles `in the right way`. Form becomes more important/a pre-requisite in a way that ramps up as the weight increases as mistakes become harder to correct on-the-fly. The tolerances decrease and so the technique becomes more important.
Beyond fundamental moves in any partner dance style, the complexity increases significantly.
It's not just your coordination and flexibility in placing legs, feet, arms, hands, torso in various positions at the right time, it's also leading your follower, adapting to their own abilities, tension, movement, mobility, and mood, connecting with them energetically, with the music, with the floor, and practicing dance floor awareness to avoid collisions with other dancers, adapt your moves to a rapidly shifting available dance space, and being creative and spontaneous.
I imagine, being an art form, there is almost limitless possibility for complexity and difficulty in dance. However, I would argue the same is also true for strength sports, which ultimately are a type of martial art. I don’t think one is categorically simpler than the other- they both offer people of any skill and ability level lifelong challenges. My point was not to claim dance was easy but that “exercise” is not always something simple and mindless that once learned you just tune out and let your body do. Personally, I can’t stick with something boring- having ADHD, exercise is only possible for me if it is also fully mentally engaging.
I'd argue dance has a higher skill floor but both have a high skill ceiling.
With dance you need minimum 4 limb coordination (its more than this) to get started. You need rhythm and you need to memorize choreo.
At low weights lifting is pretty straightforward even for Olympic lifts. But your form only gets found out as you increase load and there's high risk of injury, and as you say you need a high focus.
As someone said - you chose the exception to the rule and the average person needs to use exercise machines because they lack the body awareness to even attempt strength sports.
That said the technical timing to strength sports is different to rhythm in dance/music. They both take focus but I think the brain is engaged differently. Especially as lifting is usually one movement and the movement is performed in a short burst. Whereas dance is a long sequence and usually a very different energy profile which is important. I do a lot of stuff but I recommend dance to people (as someone who doesn't really dance myself) because it forces you to relax in a way a lot of other exercise forms don't
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.
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!
Truth. Sometimes the modern dance movements don’t even have names; it’s a wiggle in this direction or that, so you’re using either photo- or kinesthetic memory to mimic and remember if you’re able.
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.
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.
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]
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.
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.
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.)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
100% agree. Not to mention that the goal of a dance partner isn't usually to surprise you, whereas in most forms of sparring, you are constantly trying to anticipate your opponent and adapt to them.
Anticipating and adapting is how lead-follow dances work, especially when your partner is not your usual partner. The follower anticipates and adapts to the leader, the leader anticipates and adapts to the follower's skill and knowledge level. A good lead will make the follower look good and feel good. A leader is also responsible for collision avoidance with other couples, and enables the follower to have confidence in moving backwards.
Think of it this way. It requires enough of your brain that you cannot carry on a conversation at the same time. If you're out jogging, you can have a conversation.
I generally agree with you, but GP and above were talking about martial arts, not jogging. I expect there's likely not much conversation going on between sparring partners, either.
I'm confused. All of the posts you replied to in this chain mentioned martial arts -- maybe you didn't understand that sparring is part of the practice of martial arts?
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.
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.
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.
"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?
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!)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 ?)
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".
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.
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, 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*
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.
I think I met the majority of my dating partners including my wife on a dancefloor. (Well, technically I had met my wife before. But we reconnected at a club.)
Dancing at nightclubs is great. Assuming you can find one whose crowd is your kind of people, it's one of the few remaining venues where people of all genders and orientations mix and it's considered socially acceptable to initiate a conversation with someone with romantic intent.
The problem with being a grocery store employee to meet people is that there are a very logical taboo against hitting on employees that are obligated to interact with you. Likewise, employers generally don't want employees hitting on their customers. So, sure, you might be able to meet people this way, but you have to skirt some social norms to do so.
Nightclub dancing is usually social dancing, not dance training. Yes, nightclubs can be good places to meet people (and potential lovers/mates). But dance classes (dance training as per the study) is very different.
> 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.
This. I have been learning Argentine Tango for over 10 years. Going from the "dancing together in close embrace" to "let's meet later for coffee" is still has difficult as ever. More so with tango: the phrase "why buy the cow when you get the milk for free" comes to mind, often. Note that I've made some very good friends through the dance, but it's tough getting out of the friend zone.
If you want to meet people, there's a lot of skill and patience required, no matter the venue.
Dancing is rather uniquely suited to meeting people. Dancing signals fitness and physical competency directly to the lizard brain. Of course, if you're bad at those things, you won't succeed in an environment of such honest signalling.
And of course, if you go to a dance class and ask somebody out after the first session, that's desperation. If you're there just to meet people, your dishonest intent will shine through. Note that I didn't say young people should dance just to meet people -- I said that they should be dancing more, and that meeting people is a side effect. Don't be sleazy.
The real trick to meeting people is that you can't try to make people like you. You need to relax and be yourself. It takes time to establish mutual fit, and the moment that's clear, you must act decisively. At that point, any effort you put towards that specific person will have a good chance of being received well. After you've been in and out of the arms of every other person in the room over the course of several months, you'll have much better perspective on how each feels about your presence. You won't flub it, you won't ask the wrong person, and your confidence will be well-earned.
Not specific to dance here, but just replying to your general thesis:
The "just be yourself" advice is so hard, because it's what actually works, but it's also difficult to do when you care about the outcome.
And, of course, it has a prerequisite of a whole lot of work to make "yourself" into something worthwhile and interesting. Of course one would like a shortcut that still works if you've not done the prior coursework. ;)
Of the dozens of men I work with, two are eligible bachelors. Both are above-average in their physical attractiveness. I promise you, that is not what women are looking for.
Nah. I'm not conventionally attractive. But still, figuring out how to better myself, and then just -relax- and be myself, was what built meaningful connections.
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.
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.
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!
"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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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..
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.
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.
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).
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".
Just do it! Most venues have a beginner class that is specifically designed for people who have never danced (there will likely be others in the same boat as you). I started a few years ago, now I teach it and it's all I do in my spare time. It's also a great hobby because you can either go all in like me, or show up once a week for 1h and still have good time, meet people etc
(based on your username), Poland has a great scene by the way.
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!
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.)
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.
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.
> 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'.
Which ones would you consider to be "arts", and worth getting into?
I was recently thinking that I would like to get back into martial arts, but having done taekwondo in the past, I'm absolutely not interested in going back to any form of bashing impact..
I will try to do Aikido until I die. I started in the 80s with Kyokushin and I trained with top trainers; when I was young they wanted to move me to thai or kick boxing as I would, like numerous dutch guys did of the same school, kick the fuck out of the competition. Never had that interest. I like the movements and indeed the art behind it. Someone in this thread said boxing is like ballroom dancing; I really don't see that. Maybe it can be; but if you want to win, it's not dancing and the aspect of wanting 'to win' makes it not at all like dancing (or maybe I don't know this dance).
Anyway; as a kid I did Judo and after that Kyokushinkai and Jiujitsu 3-4 hours a day for many years.
I am 50 now and I can do things many 50 year olds cannot do, but the joy for me is that I feel like when I go to aikido class 3 times a week, it is an art and it doesn't feel like I have to ever stop doing it as I don't need (but can I guess) to bash in faces in a rings.
I really wanted to try Aikido, and went as far as doing an introductory class at university. Everything was fine until the next morning when I couldn't bend my elbow anymore, with an over strain pain that lasted more than a week. I was quite in shape at the time, so I took it as a sign that maybe it wasn't for me. (Or at least not in that school..) And that stopped me in my tracks unfortunately.
But I'll keep your feedback in the back of my head, and let's see what the future brings.
In an actual fight it may only look like dancing temporarily but look up a good shadow boxing video. In training its very much about footwork, moving rhythmically and gracefully.
Im not a great boxer or anything but I used to do melbourne shuffle a lot and it definitely has the same vibe to me
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?
To anyone who knows: have their been similar comparison studies between non-exercise movement and exercise movement? Like cycling vs. learning the piano?
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.
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.
You mentioned progressively making it harder, I’ve seen the following strategies to make balancing more difficult. Combining them all can be challenging:
1. Arms crossed on your chest
2. Eyes closed
3. Swinging your head left and right, like an exaggerated “no”
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 :/
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.
The most likely outcome, provided it doesn't lose too much speed, is to hit an obstacle. This happens all the time with motorcycles which are just heavy bicycles. The angle of the forks causes the bicycle to self-balance.
Not on a balancing ball. It's far far harder than staying upright on a bicycle. You have to stay focused and control several muscle groups. Not falling even for a minute is a very challenging task. Being able to balance for 10 minutes is basically elite level.
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.
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.
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.
And for the exercise only group: > We avoided combined arm and leg movements in order to keep coordinative demands low
I'm skeptical too. You have one group that is doing something that takes full body coordination, with lots of different inputs and improvisation, versus something they attempted to minimize those aspects of. Not to mention the social parts of dancing with others.
But also hey, social dancing bachata is fun! If you're ever in NYC a good friend of mine teaches it at Pearl dance studio.
You might be surprised at how many people enjoy the feeling of grinding out improvement in the gym. In my experience it can be a lot more fun than dancing for certain personality types (mine included)
I also wonder if even just the close physical contact itself has a positive impact on brain chemistry.
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...
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.
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).
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.
Yes, moving as one with your partner is a big part of it, and where much of the pleasure comes from.
Yeah I believe that our brains are extremely sensitive to shared experience, work, art, movement or else (singing in harmony would work too). It might even tap in primitive toddler brain phases.
There's thousands of years of human societal development, and millions of years for mammals. Hard to believe we'd learned nothing about promoting social cohesion during that time.
Somehow I believe that the last decades (and post 2010s even worse) completely altered our notion of social-ness. We're running away from forming groups because it has some non trivial entry cost (you have to fit with different people) and instead enjoy remote interactions with people just like "you" want, when you want.
Dance is very Gemeinschaft: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemeinschaft_and_Gesellschaft
> singing in harmony would work too
I believe at least some Amish sing at very low BPM.
Two possible interpretations: (a) they share the opinions of Baptists when it comes to dancing, so the BPM is deliberately so low as to be clearly undanceable, and (b) at normal BPM individual participants might just be staying in rhythm, low BPM requires close attentiveness to the whole to stay together.
Max Damien’s Riverian monologue:
>>Gemeinsamkeit<<
(usually translated to English as neither C nor S)
(Also contrasted with Gesangverein)
From reading HN, it sounds as if many (at least among the terminally online?) in the Old Country could stand to verbesser their Vereinsleben*.
When speaking with colleagues and friends still in the Old Country, depending upon whether I wish to shock (or not), I decide between saying I live (in a Gemeinde) or in a commune.
Lagniappe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKIaS0lh-uo
* that said, tinder is still incredibly popular here; kids these days!
EDIT: one notes the legacy of the pike square in that one can still hear cries of "close ranks! close ranks!" in the village square — but these days it's used to mean "scoot over a little on the party benches so the late arrivals can fit in": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ls4eU3txvFI
To riff on the risque, I advertise
[if forex, SPJ is allowed these days to be remembered for idealizing the shitting of pants..]
(With the caveat that some might enjoy seeing instead what the experts are hiding when the tide [of fashion] goes out)(& one can e.g. with this explain, with mauvaise foi, Hipour’s smile)
Shirts are topologically indistinguishable from crotchless pants; do we have a metric here?
https://www.thepsmiths.com/p/review-scaling-people-by-claire... goes into the differences between (in 1984 terms) inner- and outer-party expertise (aka foxes and lions? psychopaths and clueless? morlocks and eloi?).
Yeah, when you've already known since ever to discount the wandering ones, what're a few more transients* to ignore? :)
Lagniappe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molniya_orbit
[could a signifyin' fox pass for a lion? someday I need to track down RvRG, Ich, Claudius, Kaiser und Gott]
* but if you can control transients, mode switching is an excellent way to rummage around under the noise floorboards for signal. (somewhere there's an XKCD about limitations of earth observation that was way too optimistic, and already had been for however long we'd had structured shutters)
Below the waterline? (Waistline if less charitable)
Ah havent read this article yet but anticipating “insider” as a more distinguishing term than “experts” should cover their edge cases
(Which secrets are shameful to share vs merely uh inconvenient, e.g. for waistline, depends on how you draw the party lines, some do it at type ii “zahlungsfaehig” vs “proleten” as nsdap apparently another eg, for waterline)
[do you have a fictional character for each of sigfox & lion?]
So, where is the line for YC?
My bad: I got the fox and lion analogy wrong.
(NdBdM apparently said the prince ought to be able to be both fox and lion; like HKH had both Knecht and Designori? What about Tito?
"The lion cannot protect himself from traps, and the fox cannot defend himself from wolves. One must therefore be a fox to recognize traps, and a lion to frighten wolves."
[not yet checked for context/translation])
Sorry, I'd been too quick to assume it fit nicely in with our early tripartitions, based on some blogiating that I'm not finding in my verlauf at the moment. So I'd been imagining TCCAG (in Graves' telling), d-d-disguising himself as one of the clueless, in order to survive the machinations of the psychopaths that had killed off every other male in his family: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julio-Claudian_family_tree#Sim...
Found it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circulation_of_elites#Governin... ; it must've been the Burnham connection that set me off on 1984 and then to Rao. Note that here the foxes and lions are distinct people; hence my confusion.
EDIT: Pareto definitely thinks of foxes and lions as distinct, but he must've introduced them somewhat earlier than §2178 (The Mind and Society/The General Form of Society/Force and Class-circulation): https://archive.org/details/ParetoTheMindAndSocietyVol4TheGe...
As to Rao-fox-lion quadrantology.. how to classify pear AI problem? (We can say nang et al were barbarians promoted to founders but that is cheap*. Otoh 1 o the more interesting facts from that case is some partners attempting to empirically price their social media marketing thesis)
JPsmith on JCScott Against the Grain has another take on Rao, proweird being the barbarians trading with the State
Tfound the crucial clause on pants from the Psmith-on-Stripe-Clueless that you pointed at
*>derives much of [][] moral and affective sympathies from the claim that [][] is smarter and better and more efficient [s/_/effective] than anybody else
Insert insider,expert,Feynman,YC,lion,officer,peer,etc
& Whatever is the Other’s (prole,designor,founder,funder,clueless,loser,customer,peer)’s fave metric!
wrt https://www.thepsmiths.com/p/review-scaling-people-by-claire... , something else about the early middle ages:
During the XIII, tournaments were open invite, and were pretty much war games held over the fields in between villages. Of course, it's very unlikely that anyone not already an aristo could show up with horses and panoply, let alone show up and prove de facto effective, but the few that did had a chance there to win even more horses and armour by ransoming off any captured actual aristos.
Well before the XVIII, tournaments switched to closed format, held in specially built arenas, and an official part of the tournament included going around the room and having everyone introduce themselves (or be introduced, to be even fancier) which de jure kept out any gatecrashed aspiring riffraff.
Might (for those that have central bank control, anyway) imposing an irregular tidal ebb be a useful variant of mode-switching, in order to effectively signal who's wearing (or not) their budgie smugglers?
Pear AI: according to NdBdM's original* scheme, Nang et al were foxes, who had schemed, yet could not defend themselves from the wolf (according to russians, wolves are the "paramedics of the forest", for despite not being doctors, they take care of the sick and elderly...). YC? I suppose they should, if it isn't already there, add some legalese to closing documents so founders bear full responsibility for bringing a clean venture to the table. (there could be a different split of responsibility, but since YC is running a retail operation I wouldn't expect one)
* Had Machiavelli, in writing (1532):
> You must know there are two ways of contesting, the one by the law, the other by force; the first method is proper to men, the second to beasts; but because the first is frequently not sufficient, it is necessary to have recourse to the second. Therefore it is necessary for a prince to understand how to avail himself of the beast and the man. This has been figuratively taught to princes by ancient writers, who describe how Achilles and many other princes of old were given to the Centaur Chiron to nurse, who brought them up in his discipline; which means solely that, as they had for a teacher one who was half beast and half man...
been referring to Cicero, De Officiis (44 BC)?
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%...
> ...there are two ways of settling a dispute: first, by discussion; second, by physical force; and since the former is characteristic of man, the latter of the brute, we must resort to force only in case we may not avail ourselves of discussion.
(I'm surprised I've not read this work until now. With a little skimming, it confirms my reverse-engineering of the cardinal virtues as arising as oppositions [albeit not strictly pairwise]:
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%...
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%...
and has interesting things to say about Castalia:
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%...
about immigration:
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%...
Gemeinschaft vs Gesellschaft:
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%...
and even Pareto Optimality:
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%... )
EDIT: no, lifted, negated, and expanded to chapter length!
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%...
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.
I'd put all our stories in the same bag as taxi drivers having brain areas very deeply developed.
I'm not surprised by your story. After health issues, my brain was clogged most of the time, and anything involving balance, rotation, rapidly moving surroundings. I tried a lot of stuff to feel my brain working again, one of the most impactful was balancing on a wood beam and trying to pivot (not far from roller skates moves).
Our brain respond very well to some primitive stimuli (visual, balance, geometry).
> 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.
This is a good point, maybe the dance studio has a better air filtration system than the other exercise location
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.
> 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.
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.
> assume there was no p-hacking
Agree that this is definitely an assumption one needs to make, could easily be that BDNF was one variable among many unreported ones, and this case would be consistent with the other outcome variables in the paper so seems plausible.
> this type of result implies that statistical power is tiny,
Yes, definitely, BUT the effect in question is an interaction effect so yeah, power's just going to be small from the nature of the design. I was definitely thinking that you'd be looking at a follow up study of the size of multiple hundreds to confirm something like this. I'm realizing that thinking this is a trivial follow-up is is the difference between someone actually might work on real experiments and someone who just works with the numbers.
Just want to re-emphasize though that the thing which makes me give this result (some) credence (assuming it's not a desk drawer p-hack) is just the distributions of the observation variable for the two treatment groups. Like even if the means of the BDNF increase are equal between the two arms of the trial, and this p-value is a false pos (which as you say, seems very possible), there's still clearly some other differences between the groups. I strongly suspect a quantile regression on the p50 or p75, rather than an ANOVA on the means, would show a 'more significant' effect; heck even just a log-linear model or something seems like it would be an improvement since there's clearly some skew in the 'Dance' population.
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?
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)
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.
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.
Do more complex movements stimulate our neural pathways more than less complex movements?
See also the dead salmon study https://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/scicurious-brain/ign...
> "The original poster almost didn't make it to a conference, but when it did, it made a major splash"
Best pun ever.
[flagged]
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.
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.
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.
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.
>chunking objects in memory for better recall //
Can you share your source on this?
Tangentially related wittering (I have flu, I'm a bit illucid rn): I do karate, I find sequenced moves to be a real mental struggle. But then I couldn't skip until I was a teenager. I blame/describe that as arrhythmia. I can't clap in time either.
The book “Peak” - and other works by that author detail studies related to this.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak:_Secrets_from_the_New_S...
> The book was written partly as a response to the misrepresented but increasingly commonplace idea of the "10,000-hour rule," popularized by Malcolm Gladwell in his 2008 book Outliers and which Gladwell had based on Ericsson's own research.
Thanks for that reference. Having read Outliers years ago, Peak sounds like a useful follow-on and the concept of “deliberate practice” makes sense to me.
I’ve been learning guitar over the past couple of years and I still struggle with many aspects (with good rhythm and timing being the most difficult). I’m mostly self-taught (justinguitar.com) but have recently started a music class to get feedback on my playing. My wife is also learning Mandarin and it sounds like the kind of book that she’d be interested in.
> I’ve been learning guitar over the past couple of years and I still struggle with many aspects (with good rhythm and timing being the most difficult).
Same, same and same, here.
Good luck to you!
Sure. There’s a Wikipedia page on Chunking.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chunking_(psychology)
Arrhythmia and trouble doing sequenced moves… that’s interesting. I can’t quite make the connection but wouldn’t be surprised if there is one. On the flip side, I’ve actually used rhythm to help me memorize things at times, e.g. saying multiplication tables like they’re a poem or a chant. My kid just picked this up from me and started doing it on her own and it seemed to accelerate her learning.
>>chunking objects in memory for better recall //
> Can you share your source on this?
I haven't seen the research on this, but it makes intuitive sense to me as a musician. It was the only way I could learn long complex pieces.
Have you tried verbalizing as an aid to learning sequenced moves?
People are different, I tap danced for years but I found ballet almost impossible to pick up for it's complexity and dumb poses.
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.
I have 20 years experience in dancing couples dances, with lots of private classes on technique in some styles, as well three years in weight training with several times per week with a PT who specialized in and taught me weight training technique. (I am not very muscular, though, so I am not saying this to brag, just to give you some idea of my background).
I have had a really bad body coordination, so I have had to learn everything the hard way. So I know A LOT of theory -- and over time, I have learned to coordinate my body much better. But some kinesthetic people are still naturals and move better than I do.
I agree with you that the major difference between dancing and other sports is probably not in the complexity of the movement. I think that the biggest difference is in improvisation and need to harmonize movement with your partner and music.
I also agree with you that there is almost no limit in either field on how detailed you can be in your body movements.
But even within weight training there appear to be various approaches, based on different goals. In my training, I almost never used 100 percent effort. Rather, the muscles were constantly stimulated with similar but different movements, all the time varying the stimulus. The muscles grow in rest.
It is very similar to how I have learned to dance. On the social dance floor, there are always limitations (such as other couples, tables, walls, music etc.) that come up. When you are improvising, you need to adjust your movements constantly (varying step length, direction, the movement you are doing etc.). And over time, you have experienced everything that can happen, and your body has learned to react to it, so "you" (i.e. your analytical mind) can relax and let the body move.
I don’t use 100 percent effort when actually training- only during competition. Mostly because the risk of injury, equipment required, and safety preparations for 100 percent effort are substantial- and the recovery time afterwards takes a week or more.
That said, when I was a beginner I used ”100 percent effort” a lot- because as a beginner my 100 percent effort was probably only really about 70 percent, I lacked the mental ability and pain tolerance for true 100 percent effort.
I think that's the exception that proves the rule, though, no?
The majority of strength and cardio exercises are fairly simple to learn. Getting your form 100% correct is certainly more work, but generally not much.
Basic partner dancing can certainly seem fairly simple, but you very quickly move out of that and into the realm of most things being complicated. And even with the basics, if you actually focus on the technique, it's already a lot more complicated than most workout exercises.
I do expect that some forms of martial arts could be comparable (or perhaps even higher) in complexity to partner dance, though. But I'm not sure if I'd consider martial arts to be exercise as much as it's a sport or hobby.
(Source: former competitive ballroom and latin dancer.)
At lower weights, it's easy to 'have good form'. The muscles can easily compensate for each other and one doesn't have to think too much about which muscles to contract/focus on.
As the weight increases, it requires more focus to ensure that you are keeping your form and positioning and even just to engage your muscles `in the right way`. Form becomes more important/a pre-requisite in a way that ramps up as the weight increases as mistakes become harder to correct on-the-fly. The tolerances decrease and so the technique becomes more important.
Yeah, still way way easier than even basic dancing though
Beyond fundamental moves in any partner dance style, the complexity increases significantly.
It's not just your coordination and flexibility in placing legs, feet, arms, hands, torso in various positions at the right time, it's also leading your follower, adapting to their own abilities, tension, movement, mobility, and mood, connecting with them energetically, with the music, with the floor, and practicing dance floor awareness to avoid collisions with other dancers, adapt your moves to a rapidly shifting available dance space, and being creative and spontaneous.
I imagine, being an art form, there is almost limitless possibility for complexity and difficulty in dance. However, I would argue the same is also true for strength sports, which ultimately are a type of martial art. I don’t think one is categorically simpler than the other- they both offer people of any skill and ability level lifelong challenges. My point was not to claim dance was easy but that “exercise” is not always something simple and mindless that once learned you just tune out and let your body do. Personally, I can’t stick with something boring- having ADHD, exercise is only possible for me if it is also fully mentally engaging.
I'd argue dance has a higher skill floor but both have a high skill ceiling.
With dance you need minimum 4 limb coordination (its more than this) to get started. You need rhythm and you need to memorize choreo.
At low weights lifting is pretty straightforward even for Olympic lifts. But your form only gets found out as you increase load and there's high risk of injury, and as you say you need a high focus.
As someone said - you chose the exception to the rule and the average person needs to use exercise machines because they lack the body awareness to even attempt strength sports.
That said the technical timing to strength sports is different to rhythm in dance/music. They both take focus but I think the brain is engaged differently. Especially as lifting is usually one movement and the movement is performed in a short burst. Whereas dance is a long sequence and usually a very different energy profile which is important. I do a lot of stuff but I recommend dance to people (as someone who doesn't really dance myself) because it forces you to relax in a way a lot of other exercise forms don't
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.
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!
Truth. Sometimes the modern dance movements don’t even have names; it’s a wiggle in this direction or that, so you’re using either photo- or kinesthetic memory to mimic and remember if you’re able.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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.)
Out of curiousity do you have any examples of some of the ways?
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.
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.
That’s really interesting, bjj is essentially physical problem solving with dire consequences
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.
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.
With dance you are constantly learning new material. Much less so with an exercise routine, even if you "mix it up".
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
100% agree. Not to mention that the goal of a dance partner isn't usually to surprise you, whereas in most forms of sparring, you are constantly trying to anticipate your opponent and adapt to them.
Anticipating and adapting is how lead-follow dances work, especially when your partner is not your usual partner. The follower anticipates and adapts to the leader, the leader anticipates and adapts to the follower's skill and knowledge level. A good lead will make the follower look good and feel good. A leader is also responsible for collision avoidance with other couples, and enables the follower to have confidence in moving backwards.
Think of it this way. It requires enough of your brain that you cannot carry on a conversation at the same time. If you're out jogging, you can have a conversation.
I generally agree with you, but GP and above were talking about martial arts, not jogging. I expect there's likely not much conversation going on between sparring partners, either.
The post I responded to did not mention martial arts.
I'm confused. All of the posts you replied to in this chain mentioned martial arts -- maybe you didn't understand that sparring is part of the practice of martial arts?
I interpret sparring is something boxers do. I never thought of it as a martial art.
No, I'm not familiar with martial arts. I didn't consider it an exercise routine.
Wax on, wax off?
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.
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.
There are many, many styles of ballroom dancing. You're never going to run out of things to learn.
I think if your exercise involves you regularly getting choked out you probably shouldn’t be expecting neurological benefits
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.
The only reason you'd ever get choked out in BJJ is because you lost the fight with your own ego.
That's a good way to put it. I trained in many gyms across two continents and never saw anyone getting chocked out in class.
"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?
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!)
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.
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.
> Is there a benefit to having the extra brain volume, even if it doesn't lead to improved cognition?
ever seen megamind?
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.
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.
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 ?)
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".
Yes, came here to say that the HN title is misleading.
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.
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.
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*
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.
I think I met the majority of my dating partners including my wife on a dancefloor. (Well, technically I had met my wife before. But we reconnected at a club.)
Dancing at nightclubs is great. Assuming you can find one whose crowd is your kind of people, it's one of the few remaining venues where people of all genders and orientations mix and it's considered socially acceptable to initiate a conversation with someone with romantic intent.
The problem with being a grocery store employee to meet people is that there are a very logical taboo against hitting on employees that are obligated to interact with you. Likewise, employers generally don't want employees hitting on their customers. So, sure, you might be able to meet people this way, but you have to skirt some social norms to do so.
Nightclub dancing is usually social dancing, not dance training. Yes, nightclubs can be good places to meet people (and potential lovers/mates). But dance classes (dance training as per the study) is very different.
> 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.
This. I have been learning Argentine Tango for over 10 years. Going from the "dancing together in close embrace" to "let's meet later for coffee" is still has difficult as ever. More so with tango: the phrase "why buy the cow when you get the milk for free" comes to mind, often. Note that I've made some very good friends through the dance, but it's tough getting out of the friend zone.
If you want to meet people, there's a lot of skill and patience required, no matter the venue.
Dancing is rather uniquely suited to meeting people. Dancing signals fitness and physical competency directly to the lizard brain. Of course, if you're bad at those things, you won't succeed in an environment of such honest signalling.
And of course, if you go to a dance class and ask somebody out after the first session, that's desperation. If you're there just to meet people, your dishonest intent will shine through. Note that I didn't say young people should dance just to meet people -- I said that they should be dancing more, and that meeting people is a side effect. Don't be sleazy.
The real trick to meeting people is that you can't try to make people like you. You need to relax and be yourself. It takes time to establish mutual fit, and the moment that's clear, you must act decisively. At that point, any effort you put towards that specific person will have a good chance of being received well. After you've been in and out of the arms of every other person in the room over the course of several months, you'll have much better perspective on how each feels about your presence. You won't flub it, you won't ask the wrong person, and your confidence will be well-earned.
Not specific to dance here, but just replying to your general thesis:
The "just be yourself" advice is so hard, because it's what actually works, but it's also difficult to do when you care about the outcome.
And, of course, it has a prerequisite of a whole lot of work to make "yourself" into something worthwhile and interesting. Of course one would like a shortcut that still works if you've not done the prior coursework. ;)
> The "just be yourself" advice is so hard, because it's what actually work
For attractive people or at least those whose attractiveness is not totally niche
Of the dozens of men I work with, two are eligible bachelors. Both are above-average in their physical attractiveness. I promise you, that is not what women are looking for.
Is it being yourself then?
Nah. I'm not conventionally attractive. But still, figuring out how to better myself, and then just -relax- and be myself, was what built meaningful connections.
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.
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.
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!
This sounds so awesome. Beat saber but actually sword fighting seems fun as hell. Surprised now this doesn't already exist
"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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
One dancer-and-programmer friend of mine invented the below thinking, after i introduced him into the "relation is an object" paradigm in software..:
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
I really like the studies that Dancing is better for depression than antidepressants: https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/dance-best-exercise...
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/
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
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.
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?
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.
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).
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".
Just do it! Most venues have a beginner class that is specifically designed for people who have never danced (there will likely be others in the same boat as you). I started a few years ago, now I teach it and it's all I do in my spare time. It's also a great hobby because you can either go all in like me, or show up once a week for 1h and still have good time, meet people etc
(based on your username), Poland has a great scene by the way.
I will see if there's places near me! And I'm actually in Vancouver hehe.
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!
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.)
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"
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.
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.
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/
Probably some styles of martial arts would (do imho) work well then. Disclaimer ; did not RTFA.
Edit: +styles of
Depends on the martial art: head injuries would complicate that analysis; tai chi isn't terribly aerobic, etc.
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.
> 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'.
Which ones would you consider to be "arts", and worth getting into?
I was recently thinking that I would like to get back into martial arts, but having done taekwondo in the past, I'm absolutely not interested in going back to any form of bashing impact..
I will try to do Aikido until I die. I started in the 80s with Kyokushin and I trained with top trainers; when I was young they wanted to move me to thai or kick boxing as I would, like numerous dutch guys did of the same school, kick the fuck out of the competition. Never had that interest. I like the movements and indeed the art behind it. Someone in this thread said boxing is like ballroom dancing; I really don't see that. Maybe it can be; but if you want to win, it's not dancing and the aspect of wanting 'to win' makes it not at all like dancing (or maybe I don't know this dance).
Anyway; as a kid I did Judo and after that Kyokushinkai and Jiujitsu 3-4 hours a day for many years.
I am 50 now and I can do things many 50 year olds cannot do, but the joy for me is that I feel like when I go to aikido class 3 times a week, it is an art and it doesn't feel like I have to ever stop doing it as I don't need (but can I guess) to bash in faces in a rings.
Thank you for your reply.
I really wanted to try Aikido, and went as far as doing an introductory class at university. Everything was fine until the next morning when I couldn't bend my elbow anymore, with an over strain pain that lasted more than a week. I was quite in shape at the time, so I took it as a sign that maybe it wasn't for me. (Or at least not in that school..) And that stopped me in my tracks unfortunately.
But I'll keep your feedback in the back of my head, and let's see what the future brings.
In an actual fight it may only look like dancing temporarily but look up a good shadow boxing video. In training its very much about footwork, moving rhythmically and gracefully.
Im not a great boxer or anything but I used to do melbourne shuffle a lot and it definitely has the same vibe to me
Chen style tai-chi.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chen-style_tai_chi
Boxing is more dance than katas
Boxing is ballroom dance; katas are choreography.
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?
To anyone who knows: have their been similar comparison studies between non-exercise movement and exercise movement? Like cycling vs. learning the piano?
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.
https://youtu.be/BD-z8ZqVpP8?si=yBdJmDrDWXrJMpvz
Dance is more social than solo physical exercise. Would make sense that it triggers more brain activity in different areas.
My hope is that DDR is a form of dance training.
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.
Strange title -- isn't dance training a physical exercise?
Balance training (standing on a ball type thing) also is supposed to help ADHD.
Can you link anything on the subject? Sounds like a simple device you could own at home and spend 10m a day on balancing.
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.
You mentioned progressively making it harder, I’ve seen the following strategies to make balancing more difficult. Combining them all can be challenging:
1. Arms crossed on your chest 2. Eyes closed 3. Swinging your head left and right, like an exaggerated “no”
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 :/
This (intuitively) makes sense, since standing on a ball requires full focus, can't really get distracted.
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.
Once it's moving, a bicycle basically balances itself. That's why the hardest part of learning to ride one is starting and stopping.
You still need to adjust your balance. If you send a bicycle off without a rider, it will tip over after a while.
Same with standing up. Needs constant small adjustments.
A bicycle without a rider will keep going straight (maybe on a slight curve if the frame is misaligned) so long as it has enough speed.
On a mathematical plane in vacuum it will. On uneven ground and turbulent air, it will not.
The most likely outcome, provided it doesn't lose too much speed, is to hit an obstacle. This happens all the time with motorcycles which are just heavy bicycles. The angle of the forks causes the bicycle to self-balance.
Examples over "rough conditions": https://youtu.be/yNbOh0N3BSs https://youtu.be/9ewqeheLL_I
Not on a balancing ball. It's far far harder than staying upright on a bicycle. You have to stay focused and control several muscle groups. Not falling even for a minute is a very challenging task. Being able to balance for 10 minutes is basically elite level.
.... in the elderly.
[flagged]
There is nothing to fix. HN doesn‘t allow such long titles.
It does not need to be long to be accurate.
"Dance superior to repetitive exercise in inducing brain plasticity in elderly" - this fits.
...in mice
That would be igNobel worthy