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Dance training superior to physical exercise in inducing brain plasticity (2018)

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Re: Dance training superior to physical exercise in inducing brain plasticity (2018)

#91

Post by munificent »

michaelteter wrote: post #42
klyrs wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, esp…

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.

Re: Dance training superior to physical exercise in inducing brain plasticity (2018)

#92

Post by givemeethekeys »

bogtog wrote: post #19

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. Thi…

Do more complex movements stimulate our neural pathways more than less complex movements?

Re: Dance training superior to physical exercise in inducing brain plasticity (2018)

#93

Post by polishdude20 »

momojo wrote: post #80
polishdude20 wrote: post #60

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?

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.…

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".

Re: Dance training superior to physical exercise in inducing brain plasticity (2018)

#94

Post by WalterBright »

vunderba wrote: post #78
changing1999 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Re: Dance training superior to physical exercise in inducing brain plasticity (2018)

#95

Post by astura »

alaithea wrote: post #68
macintux wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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 fe…

People are different, I tap danced for years but I found ballet almost impossible to pick up for it's complexity and dumb poses.

Re: Dance training superior to physical exercise in inducing brain plasticity (2018)

#96

Post by bsder »

ericmcer wrote: post #37

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.

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.

Re: Dance training superior to physical exercise in inducing brain plasticity (2018)

#98

Post by dangom »

ericmcer wrote: post #37

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.

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.

Re: Dance training superior to physical exercise in inducing brain plasticity (2018)

#99

Post by pbhjpbhj »

alaithea wrote: post #68
macintux wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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 fe…

>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.

Re: Dance training superior to physical exercise in inducing brain plasticity (2018)

#100

Post by tech_ken »

bogtog wrote: post #19

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. Thi…

> 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.

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