Quick Study:
November 21, 2024

Jo Reed: Welcome to Quick Study. I'm Josephine Reed. This is the monthly podcast from the National Endowment for the Arts, where we'll share stats and stories to help us better understand the value of art in everyday life. Sunil Iyengar is the pilot of Quick Study and he's the director of research and analysis here at the Arts Endowment. Good morning, Sunil.

Sunil Iyengar: Good morning, Jo.

Jo Reed: So what are we talking about today?

Sunil Iyengar: Dancing robots.

Jo Reed: Really?

Sunil Iyengar: Okay. So that was a little bit of clickbait. There is a part about dancing robots, but we'll get to it later. This is about the relationship between dance and cognitive neuroscience and how dance can help in the rehabilitation of those who suffer from chronic neurological disorders.

Jo Reed: Okay. So dancing robots will be on the docket later.

Sunil Iyengar: Promise. So Jo, this month there's a scientific article out by researchers from Emory University and Colorado State University who've done a review of current research on creative movement IE dance, and how dance improves structural connectivity in the brain and assists with a variety of cognitive processes.

Jo Reed: Okay. Well, I've heard of dance's exercise, so I can imagine it's useful for physical fitness and I know we have talked many times about music in the brain.

Sunil Iyengar: Yes. Right. We've talked about initiatives such as sound health and the research we co support with the National Institutes of Health, for example.

Jo Reed: That's right. So tell me about dance. How has this art form related to brain health?

Sunil Iyengar: It's an interesting story. Quite a lot of studies have emerged in recent years, even though as you suggest more is known about the neuroscience of music than of dance. But consider some basics. It should be obvious to anyone that dance involves and invokes really memory and attention. There's sequential memory and learning new steps, for example, but also spatial memory, moving around and relational memory. Then there's attention with a dancer, learning how to control posture and attend to music. The beat and partner cues. Speaking of dance partners, this type of movement calls on a whole new set of functions having to do with interpersonal communication and social cognition. So the article I'm referring to makes all these points

Jo Reed: As you're speaking about this, it makes perfect sense, and it really becomes kind of obvious that dance would do all those things.

Sunil Iyengar: Yes. But it's only quite recently that we've had the scientific tools to begin to measure these relationships and come up with evidence. For example, functional magnetic resonance imaging or FMRI has been used to look at what parts of the brain light up when expert modern dancers do their thing, or rather, even when they're in their resting state, we're talking about something called functional connectivity in the motor learning system of the brain. Also taking measurements of low body mass index or BMI researchers have found increases in the cortical volume and cortical thickness of expert dancers. But there's still a great deal of work to be done to fully understand these structural alterations in the brain and what they mean. Problematically, you can't very well dance in an MRI machine, at least not full on,

Jo Reed: Not this year anyway.

Sunil Iyengar: Yes, dance researchers hope for more advanced MRI methods to study creative movement. There's also a need to develop cognitive tasks that can better allow researchers to study the memory processes of dancers.

Jo Reed: This is all really, really fascinating. Can you talk about the implications for human health?

Sunil Iyengar: Yeah. As you know Jo, we support dance therapy. The NEA does. Alongside other creative arts therapies, through a partnership with the Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs called Creative forces for military connected populations suffering mild traumatic brain injury, post-traumatic stress, and related psychological illnesses. The authors of this article point out that dance and movement therapy have been shown to decrease stress levels and enhance mood, have reduced depression, and have promoted social bonding. As for other benefits, we already know about dance's value and establishing routine physical activity for the purpose of exercise and all the benefits for the cardiovascular system, for example. But the researchers write that dance training as a form of exercise helped provide some of the first evidence for plasticity or recovery in the aging white matter of the brain. Finally, there's the possibility of using dance and neurocognitive and motor rehabilitation for patients with neurodegenerative diseases.

Jo Reed: Okay, give me an example of that.

Sunil Iyengar: Well, as it happens, we're currently supporting a research grant being led by one of the authors of this research paper, Madeline Hackney at Emory. The grant makes possible a series of studies of advanced program for Parkinson's disease patients. The program is called Adapt Tango, and it's an eight month intergenerational dance regimen. Tango, of course, as the authors of the article say, adapt tango has been linked to significant gains in mobility, balance, and health related quality of life. In particular, based on data so far, they write that adapt tango may help to improve cognition and delay the onset of Alzheimer's disease and related dementias among older blacks or African-Americans who have a parental history of these conditions. I should add that it's also been shown apparently that dancing with partners and thus receiving tactile cues or cues through touch, not just visual or auditory cues, may be especially valuable for motor rehabilitation in Parkinson's patients.

Jo Reed: Tango sounds like a fun way to slow cognitive impairment. I mean, more fun than just medication anyway. Now what about those dancing robots?

Sunil Iyengar: I didn't forget them. So the article ends by exploring the potential of robots, which have already been used in some rehabilitation scenarios to maybe take the role of a dance partner. The researchers describe a study they had previously conducted showing that a robot could indeed be programmed to respond to touch cues by a human and could follow the timing and direction of dance steps further get this, the humans leading the dance steps. Said dancing with a robot was like dancing with a human. The authors report. Now, this is all early days, but it means we might be talking about a dance intervention that is scalable down the road and that possibly could be used in various rehabilitative care settings. Though as with so much in the art sector, I would be concerned naturally about what it could mean for the humans currently employed in this capacity.

Jo Reed: Yes, and maybe that's a good metaphor for humans and technology. It's a dance and who knows who's leading whom.

Sunil Iyengar: Well said. So that's it, Jo, but I wanted to tell listeners that if they want to know more about the science of dance, this article appeared this month and a special issue of the journal BMC Neuroscience. The issue is all about dance in the brain, and it came out of a National Science Foundation supported workshop back in 2022 on the neural and social basis of creative movement. The journal issue carries an editorial to which I contributed giving an overview of the workshop and providing perspectives from federal funders.

Jo Reed: Excellent. So I'll be sure to take a look at it. Sunil. Awesome.

Sunil Iyengar: Thanks a lot, Jo.

Jo Reed: Not at all. Thank you and I will talk to you next month. Next month. That was Sunil Iyengar. He's the director of research and Analysis here at the National Endowment for the Arts. You've been listening to quick study. The music is “We Are One” from Scott Holmes Music. It's licensed through Creative Commons. Until next month, I'm Josephine Reed. Thanks for listening.