Tanzen lindert die Depression, die mit der Parkinson-Krankheit einhergeht, und die Vorteile sind auf vielfältige Weise erkennbar. Untersuchungen ergaben, dass nach jedem Tanzkurs die Häufigkeit von Depressionen zurückging und die Wirkung von Kurs zu Kurs kumulativ war, mit deutlichen Verbesserungen nach 8 Monaten.

Dancing lowers the depression associated with Parkinson disease, and the benefits can be seen in multiple ways, a new study published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research involving York University researchers shows.

It was very cool to see that dance had a positive effect on the mood circuits in the brain, which we could see in the imaging,” says Faculty of Health associate professor Joseph DeSouza, an author of the study. “These improvements that we could see on MRI brain scans were also reported by the participants via survey. Our study is the first to demonstrate these benefits across these two detection methods.”

The study, published today, followed 23 participants in the Sharing Dance Parkinson’s program at Canada’s National Ballet School who had a diagnosis of Parkinson disease, as well as 11 healthy controls, who were mostly family members or caretakers of those with Parkinson disease. The participants took weekly dance classes for 8 months, which progressed from simple leg and foot work and pliés to interpretive movements, waltzes, and more complicated, choreographed dances.

The researchers include DeSouza; former York PhD student Karolina Bearss, now a professor at Algoma University; former York PhD student Rebecca Barnstaple, now assistant professor of Creative Arts, Health and Wellness, cross-appointed with Theatre at the University of Guelph; and Rachel Bar, a former York undergraduate student who is now director of research and health at Canada’s National Ballet School. They honed in on a node in the brain, the subcallosal cingulate gyrus (SCG), that has been shown in previous research to be implicated in depression. They measured mood and depression scores in all participants using the Geriatric Depression Scale before and after every class and conducted regular MRI scans at York.

The researchers found that after each dance class, reported depression rates dropped, and the effect was cumulative from class to class, with significant improvements after 8 months. They also found that the MRI scans showed reduced signals in a frontal-cortex brain region associated with emotional regulation and that in a smaller subset of the participants, a significant decrease in depression scores was correlated with changes in the SCG node.

[https://xmed.jmir.org/2024/1/e44426](https://xmed.jmir.org/2024/1/e44426)