All, you might have seen the article about Dancing Reverses Signs of Aging in the Brain. Well, think about the fact that your Senior Center offers dancing every Friday night and Line Dancing on the 4th Saturday. Stop YOUR brain aging!!
This article tells you all about it:
Aging brings a decline in mental and physical fitness, but a new study shows an easy, fun way to reverse the signs of aging in the brain — dancing. Researchers examined two different fitness routines and found that while both had an anti-aging effect on the brains of the elderly, dancing had the most profound effect.
"Exercise has the beneficial effect of slowing down or even counteracting age-related decline in mental and physical capacity," says the study's lead author Dr. Kathrin Rehfeld. The study was published in the journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience.
"In this study, we show that two different types of physical exercise (dancing and endurance training) both increase the area of the brain that declines with age. In comparison, it was only dancing that led to noticeable behavioral changes in terms of improved balance."
Both groups showed an increase in the hippocampus region of the brain, the area that is vulnerable to age-related decline and is affected by diseases like Alzheimer's. The hippocampus also plays a key role in learning and memory as well as the ability to balance.
"We tried to provide our seniors in the dance group with constantly changing dance routines of different genres (Jazz, Square, Latin-American and Line Dance)," said Rehfeld.
These extra challenges are thought to account for the noticeable difference in balance displayed by members of the dancing group.