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Dance is superior to repetitive physical exercise for brain plasticity (2018)

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Re: Dance is superior to repetitive physical exercise for brain plasticity (2018)

#161

Post by biswaroop »

d_silin wrote: post #23
skookum wrote: post #5

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

I love indoor climbing, really makes physical exercize the opposite of boring.

Absolutely. I highly recommend going outdoor climbing: the mental aspect is even more intense. A lot of the time is spent route reading and figuring out safety gear, which are mostly cerebral.

Re: Dance is superior to repetitive physical exercise for brain plasticity (2018)

#162

Post by Johnjonjoan »

pteraspidomorph wrote: post #153
Johnjonjoan wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be inclined to think beatsabre is repetitive. Dance often involves moving your body in ways you haven't before or rarely do whilst beatsabre is pretty much different variations of the same move. I believe activating a relatively new pathways is vastly different to activating a relatively old one in terms of brain plasticity; which is why I don't think there is much promise with this particular game. Edit: when I…

Beat Saber does have a very large amount of patterns, though. If you restrict yourself to the best designed maps, you're likely to find a unique feel to each. It does feel a lot like dancing, although, yes, it's a style of dancing that benefits from your body already knowing the basic positions. I seem to recall some of the best custom mappers are specifically into dancing/choreography, but don't quote me on this; I…

I would like to point out we're not questioning whether repetitive activity enhances plasticity but if dancing is better.

Also when the study says dance they mean learning a new dance. If you were to do variations of the same dance over and over this study doesn't prove you would also get the benefits. I'd imagine if we did study it that case would show results very similar to the benefits from repetitive activity.

Re: Dance is superior to repetitive physical exercise for brain plasticity (2018)

#163

Post by veggieburglar »

paulcole wrote: post #57
secant wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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

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

Re: Dance is superior to repetitive physical exercise for brain plasticity (2018)

#164

Post by gfxgirl »

didibus wrote: post #2

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

Beat Saber is great but I find that Audica and Synth Rider feel more like dancing than Beat Saber. In all those games you really need to play at the higher levels for them to be interesting.

I don't understand the comments that say the games are repetitive. In my experience most dance is repetitive. You practice certain moves and then that's it. Repeat those moves.

Re: Dance is superior to repetitive physical exercise for brain plasticity (2018)

#165

Post by sitkack »

gbuk2013 wrote: post #141
networkimprov wrote: post #52

I've been a dancer for 30 years, of many forms. The best way I can describe dancing to non-practitioners is that it's like playing a silent, wearable musical instrument that demands attention from your entire body. It is not like playing a sport, except perhaps if you do it competitively :-)

I’m an (international level) competitive ballroom dancer and a martial artist of 15 years and there’s a lot of overlap between the two. And it’s really valuable to me as a software engineer - at the very least it forces me out of my chair at 6.30pm 5 days a week to go to the studio, when otherwise I could easily find myself working 12-14 hours days because I am “in the zone” (which is easy for me to do because of the…

Why ballroom and not Tango? I find Tango pairs much more naturally to martial arts.

Re: Dance is superior to repetitive physical exercise for brain plasticity (2018)

#166

Post by User23 »

pizza234 wrote: post #135
AareyBaba wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Swing/lindy, west coast swing, waltz maybe. But it takes at least a year to become a good salsa dancer and Argentine tango even longer. The difference in these dances is the level of coupling (no pun intended) between the lead and follower. In Argentine tango both dancers meld into one moving unit and the brain has to learn how to do that.

It's unclear what the parent intends with "competent", and also not clear what "weekly" means (once a week? three times? daily?). I've been an amateur dancer for years, and definitely, for what I personally intend for "competent", it takes 2/3 years at least, with multiple times per week of practice, a few workshops every year etc.etc. There's certainly some people who dance pretty much daily and gets good in less th…

I assume by competent he means knowing the steps, how to lead or follow, and other basics. Kind of like how you can learn how to move the pieces in chess and learn basic strategy in a few months. You can get good enough to be better than 95+% of the population. You may set the bar for "competence" higher, but it's not a facially crazy assertion. That said my dance knowledge ends with a box step and I would definitely not call myself competent.

Re: Dance is superior to repetitive physical exercise for brain plasticity (2018)

#167

Post by User23 »

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

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

Re: Dance is superior to repetitive physical exercise for brain plasticity (2018)

#168

Post by codr7 »

mtalantikite wrote: post #142
codr7 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm far from objective, having practiced and taught Wing Chun for more than 25 years; but from the martial arts I've been in contact with, WC excels at teaching physical and emotional awareness. Cuts both ways, I've been looking for oppurtunities to teach but people are so nervous and spinning now that it's mostly impossible to reach through.

Well if you know anyone in New York I’d be happy to take a recommendation for a WC teacher. I tested positive for the sars-cov-2 antibodies already, so I’m not as worried about being around people at this point of the pandemic (within reason).

Go for it!

Not personally, but I have a rough idea by now about who knows what out there.

This looks like a good start to me:

https://sifuchowwingchun.com/

Re: Dance is superior to repetitive physical exercise for brain plasticity (2018)

#169

Post by twoleftfeets »

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

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

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

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

Re: Dance is superior to repetitive physical exercise for brain plasticity (2018)

#170

Post by onemoresoop »

dmd wrote: post #145
dnquark wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My first dance teacher used to refer to a similar study from 10 years ago in NEJM ( https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmoa022252); his commentary is at https://socialdance.stanford.edu/syllabi/smarter.htm But yeah, getting into lindy hop 15 years ago was literally the best thing that ever happened to me. It's incredible, being able to go to any major city on the planet and instantly finding a community.

Similarly, contradance (though that's much more limited to the US).

What is contradance? Do you have any experience you’d like to share?
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