Dancing Makes You Smarter? Put It To The Test

For centuries, dance guides and other writings have praised the health benefits of dancing, usually as physical exercise. More recently we've seen research on further health benefits of dancing, such as stress reduction and increased serotonin level, with its sense of well-being.

Most recently we've heard of another benefit: Recurrent dancing seemingly makes us smarter.

A major study added to the growing evidence that stimulating one's mind by dancing can ward off Alzheimer's disease and other dementia, much as physical exercise can keep the body fit. Dancing also increases cognitive acuity at all ages, when you perform at the Dome Theatre Brighton.

What exactly do they mean by "smarter"?

As neuroscience educator Robert Sylwester records,”mobility is central to everything that is cognitive, whether it is physical motion or the mental movement of information. Plants have to stand whatever comes along, including predators eating them. Animals, on the other hand, can travel to seek food, shelter, mates, and to move away from unfavourable conditions. Since we can move, we need a cognitive system that can comprehend sensory input and intelligently make choices.”

Semantics will vary for each of us, but according to many, if the stimulus-response relationship of a situation is involuntary, we don't think of the response as needing our intelligence. But when the brain assesses several viable responses and chooses one, the cognitive process is considered to be intelligent.

As Jean Piaget put it, intellect is what we use when we don't already know what to do.

Why dancing At The Dome Theatre Brighton?

We immediately ask two questions:




· Why is dancing better than other activities for improving mental capabilities?




· Does this mean all kinds of dancing, or is one kind of dancing better than another?



It doesn't answer these questions as a stand-alone study. Fortunately, it isn't a stand-alone study. It's

one of many studies, over decades, which have shown that we upsurge our mental capacity by exercising our cognitive processes. Intelligence: Use it or lose it. And it's the other studies which fill in the gaps in this one. Looking at all of these studies together lets us understand the bigger picture.

The heart of intelligence is making decisions. The best advice, when it comes to improving your mental insight, is to involve yourself in activities which require split-second rapid-fire decision making, as different to rote memory or just working on your physical style.

One way to do that is to learn something new. Not just dancing, but anything new. Don't worry about the probability that you'll never use it in the future. Take a class to challenge your mind. It will stimulate the connectivity of your brain by generating the need for new pathways. Difficult classes are better for you, as they will create a greater need for new neural pathways.

Then take a dance class, which can be even more effective. Dancing integrates several brain functions at once; kinesthetic, rational, musical, and emotional and further increasing your neural connectivity.

http://socialdance.stanford.edu/syllabi/smarter.htm
http://findusfirst.media/the-brighton-dome/