Dancing Combines the Essence for Successful Aging

dementia. A third line of research has focused on how a physically active lifestyle may protect against age related cognitive decline. In several studies it has been shown how elderly that frequently engage in physical activity also have preserved brain structure (Erickson et al., 2009) as well as cognitive functions (Hillman et al., 2008), compared with elderly that do not take part in physical activities, especially cardiovascular activities. Moreover, it has also been shown that sedentary elderly individuals that starts to engage in moderate to low physical cardiovascular exercise actually improve their cognitive performance (Hillman et al., 2008), they increase their brain activity, measured by functional magnetic resonance imaging (Colcombe et al., 2004), and they even show a preserved and increased (!) volume of a brain structure that is important for memory, the hippocampus (Erickson et al., 2011). Thus, these separate lines of research suggests that factors such as keeping your memory system active, socializing, and being physically active may actually help to reduce the decline of cognitive functions associated with increased age. Kattenstroth et al. (2010) hypothesized that dance would combine these different factors and provide superior sensory, motor, and cognitive performance in elderly that had been dancing for quite some time, compared with inactive elderly participants. To test the hypothesize they examined a group of elderly that could be categorized as amateur dancers with a longtime, over 16 years on average, history of dancing. They compared these individuals to a group of non-dancer controls, with no record of neither dancing nor sporting activities. There was no difference between the two groups in terms of education, gender or age. The authors measured a A commentary on